How to Make SalesIQ Offline Outside Working Hours

How Can I Make SalesIQ Offline Outside Working Hours?

Yes, this is achieved by setting up Business Hours in Zoho SalesIQ, which controls when your chat widget shows as online versus offline to visitors on your site.

Setting Up Business Hours

  1. From your SalesIQ dashboard, go to Settings, then Brands, and select your brand.
  2. Click Business hours in the top-right corner.
  3. Toggle Business Hours on, and select the correct time zone.
  4. Set your working hours for each day of the week using the sliders, dragging to expand, shrink, or reposition each interval. Multiple sliders on the same day can represent separate blocks, such as a morning shift and an afternoon shift.
  5. Remove a day's slider entirely if you're not available at all that day.
  6. Click Save.

What Happens Outside Business Hours

Once configured, the chat widget automatically shows its offline message, typically inviting the visitor to leave a message, once your business hours end, rather than appearing available when no one is actually there to respond.

Optionally Hiding the Widget Entirely

If you'd rather the chat widget disappear from your site completely outside business hours, rather than just showing an offline message, tick the checkbox for "Hide Chat widget outside business hours."

Note: Hiding the widget outside business hours also hides visitor-facing resources like FAQs, and prevents interaction with any Zobot you've deployed, if you're relying on a bot to provide out-of-hours coverage, keep the widget visible rather than hidden.

Common Causes if the Widget Shows Offline Unexpectedly

  • Incorrect time zone. Business hours are calculated against the time zone set in your SalesIQ brand settings, not your computer's local time zone.
  • Logged into CRM instead of SalesIQ. Being logged into Zoho CRM alone, even with the integration enabled, doesn't count as being available; you need to be logged into the SalesIQ operator console itself.
  • Operator status set to Busy. If every operator attending visitors has their status set to Busy, the widget shows offline regardless of business hours.
If you want out-of-hours coverage rather than an offline message, consider deploying an Answer Bot or Zobot to keep engaging visitors even when no operator is available. See our article on Zoho SalesIQ Answer Bot for more.
Need help? 1 Cloud Consultants can help you configure business hours and out-of-hours bot coverage for Zoho SalesIQ. Book a discovery call with 1 Cloud Consultants.