Facility: Business Hours

The Business Hours tool in Facility allows you to set “Normal Business Hours” for your company. When enabled, Business Hours will automatically show a message or send an auto-reply to pet parents who message your business outside your normal business hours.

Enabling Business Hours

Business Hours can be enabled in the Messaging Settings section of your account.

When Business Hours are enabled, Time To Pet will automatically show a message or send an auto-reply to pet parents who message your business outside your normal business hours.

After enabling Business Hours, you can set your Normal Business Hours for your company:

screenshot of business hours normal business hours sliders

Note: The green section of the slider indicates your "Normal Business Hours", and the gray sections indicate times outside of your normal business hours.

Automate Scheduled Messages

With Business Hours enabled, you have the ability to Automate Scheduled Messages. When enabled, any messages your company sends outside of normal business hours will be automatically scheduled to be sent the next time business hours are open. This is not applicable to post-visit reports, as these are always sent immediately.

screenshot of automate schedule messages setting turned on

Outside Business Hours Message

Lastly, you can customize your Outside Business Hours message. This message is automatically displayed to pet parents who send your business a message outside of normal business hours via the Client App or Client Portal. This message is also sent to pet parents who reply to an email or a text message outside of normal business hours.

screenshot of outside business hours message setting enabled

We have a “default” message here, but you can customize this text to include when your normal business hours are or any type of messaging you would like to include.

What Clients See

When clients send a message to your business via the Client App or the Client Portal outside of normal business hours, they are shown your “Outside Business Hours Message” as soon as they begin typing their message.

If your clients reply to an email sent by Time To Pet or send your business a text message, the “Outside Business Hours Message” will be immediately sent to them as an “auto-reply”.

All messages sent by your clients outside of normal business hours are tagged with an Outside Business Hours label in the company view of the conversation feed:

screenshot of company view of conversation feed with outside business hours tag

As well as in the client's view of the conversation feed:

screenshot of client view of conversation feed with outside business hours tag

Your client can hover over this label to see that their message was sent outside of normal business hours. This is designed to help your customer understand that they should not expect an immediate response to their message.

screenshot of client view of conversation feed with mouse hovered over outside of business hours tag showing message that the message was sent outside of business hours

Bypassing Automated Messages To Send Immediately

If you have "Automate Scheduled Messages" enabled, all messages sent to clients will be scheduled to be sent during business hours by default. However, you can bypass this and send the message immediately instead.

From The Admin Dashboard

To bypass a scheduled message and send it immediately, click the arrow next to the Send button, select "Change To Send Now", then click "Send Now" to send the message.