How to configure Zendesk Talk business hours: A complete overview

Setting up business hours for your support team is an important step in managing customer expectations and promoting a healthy work-life balance for agents. By defining when your team is available, you can prevent customers from calling for help only to receive no response and ensure your team gets their scheduled time off, which helps in preventing agent burnout.

Zendesk is designed to route calls and messages differently based on your team's schedule, so customers are always informed about your availability. The setup for basic phone support is relatively straightforward. However, it's important to understand how configurations change when you use tools like Zendesk's own AI agents or aim to maintain consistent hours across both chat and phone channels. 

This guide will walk you through the process. We'll cover the standard setup for Zendesk Talk, explain common challenges, and show you how to manage schedules across your platform effectively.

Understanding Zendesk schedules

In Zendesk, the feature for setting your availability is called Schedules. This feature is located in the Admin Center and serves as the main control panel for business hours on channels like Zendesk Talk.

Think of a schedule as a template for your workweek. It covers three key things:

1. A specific time zone.
2. Your weekly business hours (like Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM).
3. Any holidays you want to add, which Zendesk will treat as "outside business hours."

After you create a schedule, you apply it to your phone numbers to manage how calls are routed. A call at 2 PM on a Tuesday gets treated differently than one at 10 PM on a Saturday.

It's important to note the distinction between "Schedules" and the legacy "Operating Hours" feature from the old Zendesk Chat dashboard. "Operating Hours" is a separate system. As Zendesk’s documentation notes, schedules do not transfer between the old Chat system and the new Schedules feature. For current setups involving Talk, Messaging, or AI, "Schedules" is the relevant feature.

How to configure Zendesk Talk business hours: A step-by-step guide

Setting up your business hours in Zendesk Talk is a two-part process: first, you create a reusable schedule, and second, you apply that schedule to one of your phone numbers.

The number of schedules you can create depends on your Zendesk plan. According to Zendesk's documentation, the Suite Growth and Professional plans include one schedule. For multiple schedules to accommodate different teams or regions, an Enterprise plan is required.

Step 1: Creating a schedule

First, you need to build the schedule itself. This is the template that defines your working hours and holidays.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to your Admin Center, then find Objects and rules > Business rules > Schedules.
2. Click Add schedule.
3. Give your schedule a clear name, like "US Support Hours" or "Weekend Team Schedule." This will help you identify it later.
4. Next, pick the correct Time zone. This is important, as all the hours you set will be based on this choice.
5. Now, define your weekly hours. For each day, you can set the start and end times. If you’re closed on a certain day, uncheck the box next to it.
6. Finally, you can add any upcoming holidays. Under the Holidays section, click Add holiday. Give it a name (e.g., "Christmas Day") and set the start and end dates. As explained in Zendesk's holiday guide, any calls on these days will be treated as if they are outside your normal business hours.

Once you’re happy with it, click Save. You've now got a reusable schedule.

Step 2: Applying the schedule

Now that your schedule is ready, it's time to assign it to a phone number.

1. In the Admin Center, go to Channels > Talk and email > Talk.
2. Click the Lines tab and choose the phone number you want to apply the schedule to.
3. Go to the Routing tab for that number.
4. You’ll see a setting for Routing. It might be set to "Always route calls." Change this to Business hours.
5. A new dropdown menu called Schedule will appear. Select the schedule you just created.
6. Finally, decide what happens to calls that come in outside your schedule. You can have them routed to a group (if you have an after-hours team), sent to an overflow number or voicemail. Voicemail is a common option here.

Click Save, and you're done! Your Zendesk Talk number will now follow the business hours you've set.

The challenge with AI agents and messaging

Setting up business hours for phone calls is a well-defined process. However, when you add an AI agent to your messaging channels, the configuration works differently.

Under Messaging → Responses, it seems like once we added the Bot (AI Agent) we've completely lost respect to Business Hours. This is still really important when the customer selects *Talk to a human*. As now, it will always hang as it creates a ticket that no one answers.

Reddit

When you enable one of Zendesk's AI agents on a messaging channel, it acts as the initial point of contact for customer support. As Zendesk’s help articles confirm, activating the bot deactivates standard business hours for that channel. This change is an important consideration for teams.

How AI agents override standard settings

By default, a Zendesk AI Agent is active 24/7 and does not adhere to the business hours schedule you configure in the Admin Center.

This can create a disconnect in the customer experience. For example, a customer might interact with the bot outside of business hours and request to speak with a human agent. The bot may attempt the transfer, but if no agents are online, the customer could be left waiting in an empty queue.

Zendesk sends auto-emails saying Monarch Money is busy.... and then the ticket is auto-marked as solved within a few days. I have opened up three tickets to address 1 issue (failed sync with Raymond James). I first opened this issue 2+ months ago and I have gotten mostly only Bot feedback and nothing really useful or tangible. This is terrible.

Reddit

This situation occurs because the bot's logic operates independently of the channel's schedule.

The workaround for using an AI agent

Zendesk's solution is to manually build business hours logic within the AI agent's answer flow.

This means going into the bot builder and using a step called "Add business hours condition." This step lets the bot check a schedule and then create two different paths for the conversation. This process is laid out in Zendesk's guide for AI agents.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Path 1 (During business hours): The bot transfers the conversation to a human agent.
• Path 2 (Outside business hours): The bot tells the customer that no one is available and offers to create a ticket or suggests they check the help center.

This approach allows the bot to inform the customer about agent availability before attempting a transfer. While functional, this means the customer must first request an agent before being notified that the team is unavailable.

An alternative approach to AI availability

The process involves multiple steps within the bot builder to achieve the desired outcome. An alternative approach is to use a platform that allows you to manage an AI's availability similarly to a human team member.

For example, solutions like eesel AI are designed around the concept of an AI teammate. This model allows you to set working hours, define its scope, and control escalations using natural language instructions.

You can start with the AI in a supervised mode, such as an AI Copilot that drafts replies for human agents during office hours. As you gain confidence in its performance, you can expand its role to a fully autonomous AI Agent operating 24/7. This phased rollout provides more control over the AI's availability.

Managing schedules across channels

Beyond AI agents, another consideration is that Zendesk has historically maintained separate settings for its various products. For administrators, this can mean additional configuration to ensure consistent customer experiences across channels.

Talk vs. chat vs. messaging: Three different systems

Depending on your setup, you could be managing availability in three different places within Zendesk:

• Zendesk Talk: As we've covered, this uses the modern "Schedules" feature in the Admin Center to route calls.
• Zendesk Chat (Legacy): This product has its own "Operating Hours" setting, located in a completely separate Chat dashboard that doesn't sync with Schedules.
• Zendesk Messaging (with AI Agents): This channel ignores the main schedule and instead uses the business hours conditions you have to build into the bot's flow.

This means you might manage availability in three different locations for what customers perceive as a single point of contact. This separation of settings requires careful management to prevent inconsistencies that could affect the customer journey.

The risk of an inconsistent customer journey

The risk of this approach is how it can affect customers. A customer might call your support line after hours and be correctly sent to voicemail. If they then go to your website and open a chat, they may encounter a different availability status if the chatbot's logic hasn't been aligned with the phone schedule, potentially leading to a wait in an unmonitored queue.

This requires administrators to duplicate settings across different parts of Zendesk to maintain consistency.

An alternative is a unified AI platform. For instance, an AI solution like eesel AI for customer service can connect to all your channels but operates from a single, centralized configuration. Its availability, rules, and escalation logic are consistent everywhere. The rules are set once and apply across all channels, providing a consistent customer experience.

Zendesk plans and the "Schedules" feature

So, which Zendesk plans give you access to the "Schedules" feature? This is a key question because the answer might affect how well you can manage your team's availability. According to their official pricing page, here’s the breakdown:

• Suite Team: Doesn't include Schedules. You're left with basic triggers or other manual workarounds.
• Suite Growth & Professional: Includes one schedule.
• Suite Enterprise: Includes multiple schedules.

The main takeaway is that if you have different teams with different hours (like a weekday team and a weekend team) or support customers in multiple regions, you're required to use the Suite Enterprise plan. The ability to create more than one schedule, a common business need, is available on their highest tier.

For a visual walkthrough of setting up business hours logic within the Zendesk bot builder, the following video provides a detailed tutorial. It covers how to use the business hours condition to create different response flows for when your agents are online versus offline.

This video from Zendesk provides a detailed tutorial on how to use the business hours condition to create different response flows for when your agents are online versus offline.

Streamlining your support availability

Configuring Zendesk Talk business hours is a straightforward process for basic phone support. You create a schedule and apply it to a phone number. However, the process becomes more detailed when integrating AI agents or managing availability across channels.

Key considerations include the separate configuration required for AI agent availability and the need to manage settings across different dashboards to ensure a consistent customer experience. Additionally, the ability to create multiple schedules is available on specific Zendesk plans.

An alternative approach is to use a unified AI platform, such as an AI teammate for Zendesk. With a tool like eesel, you can manage the AI's schedule, scope, and responsibilities from a central location with simple instructions.

For those interested in exploring a different method for managing 24/7 support, you can see how eesel works.