Can I set business hours?

Yes. In General settings, you can define business hours for each day of the week. Simple Chat uses that schedule when deciding how to talk about staff availability and how conversations should behave during open versus closed periods.

Accurate hours prevent the AI from promising immediate human help at times your team is not actually monitoring the inbox.

Where to configure hours

1. Open Simple Chat in your Shopify admin.
2. Go to Settings → General (or the General section where business hours are listed).
3. Set open/closed (or equivalent) hours per weekday to match when your team typically handles live support.
4. Save your changes.

Adjust hours when you change time zones, move to seasonal schedules, or shift support coverage to different days.

How business hours are used

Business hours feed into how Simple Chat handles conversations:

• The AI informs customers about when staff are likely to be available for live help, aligned with the schedule you defined.
• Hours factor into how conversations are handled during and outside business hours—together with each staff member’s availability status and your merchant instructions.

Think of business hours as the store’s baseline schedule; individual staff still mark themselves available or unavailable within that framework.

Pair hours with staff availability

Update both when you change operations—for example, shorter holiday hours in General settings plus team members marked unavailable on days no one is assigned to chat.

Tips for accurate customer expectations

• Match hours to when someone actually monitors Simple Chat, not only your retail storefront hours if those differ.
• Review hours before peak seasons and add temporary FAQs or announcements for exceptions (warehouse closures, etc.).
• Combine clear hours with merchant instructions on tone for after-hours messages so automated replies stay on-brand.