The Autoresponder is a great way to give your customers a timely response even when you’re not in the office. When active, the autoresponder replies to all inbound messages with a prewritten text message.
Autoresponder is flexible and can be used for a variety of reasons. It’s perfect for when your team can’t manually respond to messages quickly, such as after business hours, on weekends, and during staff meetings.
Note: A response from the Autoresponder does not resolve the conversation, even with the Resolve on Send setting on. Any conversation receiving an autoresponse remains unresolved until a user responds to the message or manually resolves it.
Autoresponder Settings
Before making your first autoresponse, there are a few settings you’ll want to adjust.
Office Hours – If your business has scheduled hours of operation, enter them here to create your first autoresponse quickly and easily.
Time Zone – The autoresponder and autoresponses schedules will use whichever time zone you set here. This applies across the dashboard for all autoresponses regardless of which user creates it.
Cooldown Timer – This is the amount of time the system waits before resending the autoreply to the same contact. For example, suppose you set the timer to 30 minutes, and a contact texts in and receives the autoresponse message. In that case, the system will not send the autoresponse again, no matter how many times the contact messages you, until 30 minutes have passed from the first autoresponse message.
To set up office hours:
1. Go to Autoresponder under Settings.
2. Select the Settings tab.
3. Click Edit Office Hours.
4. Click the box you want to set the time for.
5. You can type exact times directly into the field, or click the dropdown arrow to select 15 minute increments.
6. Click Save Office Hours to save and apply your new schedule.
Note: If multiple autoresponders are active at the same time, only the autoresponder with the highest priority (closest to the top of the list) will go to contacts.
Creating Autoresponses
Most autoresponses run on a schedule, sending messages based on the time slots you’ve set up. New autoresponses will always be added to the bottom of your Response List.
The order of your responses determines which response contacts if you have more than one autoresponse active at a time. The active autoresponse closest to the top is the message that is sent.
There are 4 types of autoresponses:
When my office is open – The autoresponse will follow the office hours schedule you set in Autoresponder Settings.
When my office is closed – The autoresponse will follow the opposite of the office hours schedule you set in Autoresponder Settings.
With a custom schedule – You create a unique schedule for this autoresponse to follow.
When I manually set it – The autoresponse will only send messages when you manually toggle it on.
To create an autoresponse:
1. Go to Autoresponder under Settings.
2. Click + New Response.
3. Enter a name for your Autoresponder. Recipients will not see this name.
4. Type your message. Try to keep it under 160 characters because each autoresponse contributes to your usage.
5. Select an option from the dropdown for when this response should be sent.
6. Toggle the status On or Off. New autoresponses default to on when being created.
7. Click Add Response.
Following the above example, the Autoresponder would respond to messages all hours of the day except between 9 am and 5 pm. You can add as many time slots to a day as you need.
Custom Schedule Autoresponses
When selecting With a custom schedule from the dropdown, you’ll be given a schedule to set up for that specific autoresponse.
1. Click Add Time for any day you want the autoresponse on.
2. Times can be entered by typing or selecting the clock icon.
3. Click the 3-dot menu next to a timeslot to:
a. Duplicate the selected timeslot to other days.
b. Add another timeslot to that day.
c. Delete the selected timeslot.
Deleting or Editing an Autoresponse
Whether you want to make a quick change or delete an autoresponse entirely, the process is simple.
To delete an autoresponse:
1. Click the 3-dot menu icon next to the autoresponse you want to delete.
2. Select the trash can icon.
3. Click Yes, Delete to confirm the deletion.
To edit an autoresponse:
1. Click the 3-dot menu icon next to the autoresponse you want to delete.
2. Select the pencil icon.
3. Make changes to the name, message, or schedule.
4. Click Save Response to confirm your edits.