A complete guide to using Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours

It’s 10 PM. A customer just placed their first order with you. They're excited, but they have a quick question about shipping times. They send a message, and... crickets. To them, it feels like their message just floated off into the void. We’ve all been on that side of the screen, and it’s not a great feeling.

In the world of ecommerce, your shop is always open. People are browsing at 2 AM, making purchases on their lunch break, and asking questions whenever the thought strikes them. This means their expectations don't neatly fit into a 9-to-5 box. Managing those expectations, especially when your team is off the clock, is a huge part of building trust. An automated response can be the difference between a patient customer and a potential chargeback.

Setting up a simple autoresponder in Gorgias is a solid first step. It’s like putting a friendly "we're closed, but we'll be right with you" sign on your digital door.

This guide will walk you through exactly how to set up Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours. But more importantly, we’ll be honest about where this simple automation hits its limits. We'll explore how a smarter AI solution can give your customers genuinely helpful, 24/7 support that actually solves problems instead of just saying "we'll get back to you."

The role of Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours

Before we jump into the setup, let's quickly get on the same page about what Gorgias rules are. The simplest way to think of them is as "if-then" commands for your helpdesk. They’re the building blocks of automation in Gorgias, and they’re made of three key ingredients:

• Trigger: This is the event that starts the rule. For our purpose, the trigger is usually "Ticket created". A new message has arrived.

• Conditions: These are the specific requirements the ticket has to meet for the rule to fire. Think of it as a checklist. For an after-hours auto-reply, the main condition is that the "Message is received outside business hours".

• Actions: This is what the rule actually does once the trigger and conditions are met. In this case, the action is to "Reply to customer" with a pre-written message.

By stringing these together, you can automate a ton of repetitive tasks, which lets your team spend their valuable time on the trickier customer issues that need a human touch.

How to use Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours

Alright, let's get into the nitty-gritty. This is the core function for managing expectations after your team has logged off for the day. It’s a pretty straightforward process, but it all starts with telling Gorgias when your team is actually available.

Setting business hours: The first step

You can’t have "outside business hours" if Gorgias doesn't know what your business hours are. The first step is to define your team's working schedule. Gorgias lets you set up universal business hours that apply to all of your support channels. This is what the system uses as a reference point to decide if a message has arrived "in" or "out" of office time.

Create the auto-reply

Once your schedule is locked in, building the rule itself is a breeze. Here’s how you do it step-by-step:

1. Navigate to Settings > Rules in your Gorgias dashboard.

2. Click Create Rule, and then select Create Custom Rule.

3. For the trigger, you'll want to set it to WHEN Ticket created.

4. Next, add your main condition: IF Ticket created outside business hours. This is the magic ingredient.

5. It’s a smart move to add a second condition to filter by channel, like IF Ticket channel IS Email. This lets you craft slightly different messages for email, chat, or social media, which is always a nice touch.

6. Finally, for the action, choose THEN Reply to customer. This is where you write your message. Keep it simple and clear. Something like: "Hey! Thanks for reaching out. Our team is offline for the day, but we're available from 9 AM to 5 PM ET on weekdays. We've got your message and will get back to you as soon as we're back in."

That's all it takes. You've now got a safety net to catch any customer questions that come in overnight or on the weekend.

A screenshot showing the 'if-then' command interface for setting up Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours.

The limits of using Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours

An "out of office" message is a good starting point, but let’s be real, it doesn't actually solve anything for the customer. It just postpones the conversation. For a customer with a simple, urgent question, waiting until the next morning can feel like an eternity. When you rely solely on Gorgias rules, you'll start to notice a few cracks in the foundation.

• They're not very smart. Rules are rigid. They work on simple logic and can't figure out what a customer actually means. Someone asking "where is my order?" gets the exact same generic reply as someone messaging in a panic saying, "my package arrived completely destroyed." One of these is a simple query, the other is an urgent, high-emotion problem. A basic rule can't tell the difference.

• They can't do much. A rule can send a message or tag a ticket, and that’s pretty much where its skills end. It can’t look up an order in Shopify, check your return policy in a Google Doc, or provide any kind of personalized answer. In fact, Gorgias documentation points out that you can't even use Macros with Shopify actions in your rules, which really ties your hands when it comes to meaningful automation.

• Their knowledge is stuck in one place. The auto-reply message you write is static. It’s a fixed piece of text. It has no way of pulling in real-time information from your help center, past tickets, or other knowledge sources your team depends on, like internal wikis in Notion or process documents in Google Docs.

• They don't scale well. As your business grows, your support needs get more complicated. You might want different rules for VIP customers, specific product questions, or different languages. But Gorgias has a hard limit of 70 rules per account. You can hit that ceiling faster than you think, leaving you with a tangled web of rules that's a nightmare to manage.

The eesel AI alternative

This is where you graduate from basic automation to a true AI agent. Instead of just acknowledging a ticket, an AI agent’s goal is to resolve it right then and there. By connecting a tool like eesel AI with your Gorgias helpdesk, you can leapfrog the limitations of simple rules.

Here’s what makes this approach different:

• It’s incredibly fast to set up. You don’t need to sit through long sales demos or wait for a custom implementation. You can connect eesel AI to Gorgias with a single click and get a working AI agent configured in minutes, not weeks or months.

• It unifies all your knowledge. Remember how rules are stuck with a static message? eesel AI is the opposite. It learns from all your existing information: past Gorgias tickets and macros, your public help center, and even private knowledge bases your team uses internally, like Confluence or Google Docs. It can even pull data directly from your Shopify product catalog. This means its answers are always based on your most up-to-date business information.

• It can take real action. This is the big one. eesel AI can be set up with custom actions to perform tasks like looking up live order information, checking if an item is eligible for a return based on your policy, or even processing a cancellation request. It gives customers the specific, actionable answers they're looking for, not just a message saying you're closed.

• You can test it with zero risk. Worried about an AI going rogue and saying the wrong thing to your customers? That’s a totally valid concern. eesel AI’s simulation mode is designed to solve this. It lets you test your setup on thousands of your past Gorgias tickets. You can see exactly how it would have replied in each situation, get a solid forecast of your potential automation rate, and tweak its behavior until you're 100% confident, all before it ever interacts with a live customer.

eesel AI’s simulation mode lets you test how the AI would have replied to past tickets, a safer alternative to basic Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours.

Gorgias pricing breakdown: How auto-replies affect your bill

When you're thinking about automating support, the cost is obviously a huge piece of the puzzle. Gorgias's pricing can be a little tricky to navigate because it's based on the concept of "billable tickets," and their AI features are typically add-ons with their own usage limits.

So, what’s a billable ticket? In Gorgias, it’s any conversation that receives a response from a human agent, a rule, or the built-in AI Agent. That’s right, even that simple auto-reply you set up counts toward your monthly ticket limit.

Here’s a quick look at their plans, based on the information on their official pricing page.

What this pricing model means for you

The biggest thing to watch out for here is the potential for your costs to fluctuate. Your monthly bill is tied directly to your ticket volume and how much the AI helps out. If you have a busy month, like during Black Friday or a big product launch, you could easily blow past your plan's limits and get hit with some surprisingly high overage fees. The AI Agent is a metered add-on, which creates a strange situation where the more effective it is at helping you, the more you could end up paying.

The eesel AI pricing approach

We think pricing should be simple and predictable. At eesel AI, our plans are based on the features you need and come with a generous monthly allowance of AI interactions. But here’s the key difference: we have no per-resolution fees.

This means your bill doesn't suddenly spike just because the AI is successfully doing its job. You get all the benefits of powerful automation without the fear of a monster invoice at the end of the month. It makes budgeting and scaling your support operations so much easier.

Moving beyond basic Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours

Using Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours is a fantastic and necessary starting point for any team. It’s a simple, effective way to manage customer expectations and make sure no one’s message gets lost in the shuffle.

But acknowledging a customer's question isn't the same as solving their problem. As your business grows and customer expectations rise, the limits of a rigid, rule-based system become pretty clear. True 24/7 customer service isn't about telling people when you'll be back online; it's about being there to help them, anytime, day or night.

This is where advanced AI becomes the logical next step. It lets you graduate from simple acknowledgments to instant, autonomous resolutions. A tool like eesel AI is what helps Gorgias users make that leap, transforming after-hours support from a passive waiting game into an active engine that solves customer problems on the spot.

Take the next step beyond Gorgias rules to schedule autoresponders outside business hours

If you feel like you're pushing the limits of what Gorgias rules can do and want to start providing instant, genuinely helpful answers to your customers around the clock, it might be time to look into a true AI agent.

See how eesel AI integrates seamlessly with Gorgias to handle a significant chunk of your support tickets all on its own.

Try eesel AI for free and run a simulation on your past tickets. You might be surprised to see just how many of your after-hours questions could have been solved instantly.