TekMatix Blog & Help Articles
Use the search bar below to look for help articles you need.
How to set working hours for your AI agent on Tekmatix
Your AI agent never sleeps. That is usually the whole point. But there are plenty of businesses where a bot answering at 2am is not the right look, and plenty of others where the agent should hold the fort overnight and hand the conversation back to a human in the morning. Working Hours lets you decide which one you get.
The short answer
Go to AI Agents in your Tekmatix sub-account, open Conversation AI, choose the agent you want to schedule, and turn on Working Hours. Set the days and times the agent may reply, tick the channels the schedule applies to, choose whether it runs on the contact's timezone or your business timezone, then save.
Everything else, the off-hours auto-reply, the team notification, the tag and the follow-up when you reopen, is optional and sits in the same place.
What Working Hours actually is
Working Hours is a schedule you set per AI agent. It tells that agent when it is allowed to respond to customers, and what should happen when someone messages outside those times.
It is set per agent, not per account. So a sales agent can run 8am to 6pm on weekdays while a support agent runs around the clock, and neither one interferes with the other.
It is also optional. If you never turn it on, your agent keeps replying at any hour exactly as it does today. Nothing changes until you choose to change it.
Why this matters for your business
- Your AI stops promising things your team cannot deliver at 11pm. If your service genuinely cannot start until Monday, the agent can say so instead of booking someone into a gap that does not exist.
- After-hours enquiries stop disappearing. The auto-reply acknowledges them, the tag marks them, and the follow-up catches them when you reopen. No lead sits in silence overnight.
- Your team finds out. An email notification means somebody knows a customer messaged at the weekend, rather than discovering it on Monday under forty other threads.
- You keep the human touch where it counts. Some conversations are better handled by a person in business hours. Working Hours is how you draw that line deliberately instead of hoping.
- It protects the customer experience in regulated and high-trust work. Health, legal, finance and coaching businesses often need a real person on certain conversations, and now the AI can be told to wait.
Before you start
You will need an AI agent already built in your Tekmatix account, and you will need to know two things before you open the settings:
- The days and times you actually want the agent live, including any breaks or split shifts.
- Which channels the schedule should apply to. SMS, Email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Chat Widget, Live Chat and TikTok can each be included or left out.
Which Tekmatix plan do you need?
AI Agents are included on every current Tekmatix plan, so Starter, Pro and Max users can all set Working Hours. The Max Plan also bundles the AI Employee Growth plan with 1,000 conversation AI replies and 100 voice AI minutes a month, so heavy AI users are not paying those as usage on top. Compare the plans on the Tekmatix pricing page, or change your plan any time at demo.tekmatix.com/subscription-updates.
How to set working hours on your AI agent
- In your Tekmatix sub-account, open AI Agents, then Conversation AI.
- Open the agent you want to put on a schedule.
- Find Working Hours in the agent's settings and switch it on.
- Set the days the agent should be active, and the start and end times for each of those days. You can add more than one time slot to a day if you break for lunch or run a split shift.
- Choose the channels the schedule applies to. Anything you leave unticked carries on responding normally, twenty four hours a day.
- Choose your timezone basis: the contact's local timezone, so a customer in Perth gets your Perth hours, or your business timezone, so everyone gets the same window.
- Decide whether the agent may finish conversations that started in hours. With this on, a chat that began at 4:55pm can keep going past closing until it goes quiet.
- Write your off-hours auto-reply. This is the message a customer gets when they arrive outside your window. Custom values are supported, so you can personalise it with their name.
- Set who gets the team notification. Admins, users, the assigned user, selected team members, or any email address you type in.
- Choose any tags to add to after-hours contacts, so you can filter and work through them later.
- Turn on the business hours follow-up if you want the agent to reach back out when you reopen.
- Save.
What your customers actually experience
A customer messages you at 9pm. If that channel is on your schedule, the agent does not answer the enquiry. Instead they get your off-hours auto-reply, so they know they have been heard and roughly when to expect a reply.
They get that acknowledgement once per closed period, not once per message. Somebody who sends five messages in a row at 9pm does not get five identical replies, which is exactly what you want.
Behind the scenes their contact record picks up the tag you chose, and the people you nominated get an email letting them know.
When you reopen, the follow-up goes out, unless they have already had a reply from the agent or from a human on your team in the meantime. If somebody has already answered them, the follow-up is skipped so they are not messaged twice.
Editing and managing your schedule
Working Hours can be changed at any time from the same screen. A few behaviours worth knowing before you rely on it:
- Your team can still activate the agent manually from the conversation panel, even outside its working hours. The schedule sets the default, not a hard lock.
- In Suggestive Mode, suggestions keep being generated for your team after hours. Working Hours governs what goes out to the customer, not what your team can see.
- If you also use Followup Hours for Advanced Follow-Up, the agent's own Working Hours takes priority on the channels included in its schedule.
- Each agent is separate. Changing one does not change another.
Test it before you launch
Set a temporary schedule that has already closed for today, then message the agent yourself on one of the channels you ticked. Check three things: that the auto-reply arrives, that the tag lands on your test contact, and that the notification email hits the right inbox. Then set your real hours. Five minutes now saves you an awkward conversation with a customer later.
Five ways to actually use this
1. Protect the first conversation in high-trust work
If you are a coach, therapist, consultant or advisor, the first message from a new enquiry often carries a lot. Put your AI agent on business hours for SMS and email so those conversations start with a person, and leave the chat widget running all night to capture details.
2. Run the agent overnight and hand over in the morning
Flip the logic. Let the agent answer the chat widget twenty four hours a day, and use tags plus the team notification so the overnight enquiries are already sorted into a list waiting for your team at 9am.
3. Use split shifts to match how you really work
Plenty of small businesses are on the tools from 9 to 12 and back on the phone from 3 to 6. Add two time slots to those days so the agent covers you when you genuinely cannot answer, and steps aside when you can.
4. Set different hours for different agents
A booking agent can run wide hours because taking a booking at midnight is a win. A refunds or complaints agent can run narrow hours because those conversations need a human. Same account, two schedules.
5. Turn the after-hours tag into a follow-up campaign
Because after-hours contacts get tagged, you can build a workflow off that tag. A gentle check-in the next afternoon, a link to your booking calendar, or a task for whoever is on the phones. The tag is the trigger.
One thing to get right in your auto-reply
Tell them when you will be back. "We are closed right now" leaves a customer guessing. "Thanks for your message, our team is back at 9am Brisbane time and will come straight back to you" does the job. Be specific, be warm, and keep it short.
Want us to set it up for you?
Working Hours is quick once you know where it lives. Getting the AI agent itself right, the training, the tone, the questions it asks and the booking it drives, is the part most people never finish. Our Teksperts do that for a fixed price.
AI Chat Bot and auto-responder set-up
We build and train your AI agent properly, connect it to your chat widget and channels, and set the hours, tags and follow-ups around it. That means enquiries get answered in seconds instead of hours, which is usually the difference between a booked call and a lead who went and found somebody else. See the AI Chat Bot set-up service.
Appointment booking system
An AI agent is only worth having if it books something. We set up your calendars, availability, reminders and confirmations so the agent has somewhere to send people and your no-show rate drops. See the Appointment Booking System.
Every fixed package we offer is listed at tekmatix.com/services, with the price on the page so you know before you book.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to use Working Hours?
No. It is completely optional. Leave it off and your agent keeps responding at any time, exactly as it does now.
What happens on the channels I do not select?
They carry on as normal. The schedule only applies to the channels you tick, so you can put email on business hours and leave the chat widget running all the time.
Will a customer get the same auto-reply over and over?
No. The off-hours auto-reply, the notification and the tag all trigger once per closed period, not once per message.
What if a conversation is already underway when you close?
You can allow the agent to keep replying until that conversation goes inactive, so nobody gets cut off mid-sentence at closing time.
Whose timezone does it use?
Your choice. Run the schedule on each contact's local timezone, or on your business timezone so every customer gets the same window.
Can my team still use the agent outside its hours?
Yes. It can be activated manually from the conversation panel whenever you need it, and in Suggestive Mode suggestions are still generated for your team after hours.
Will the customer get followed up twice?
No. The business hours follow-up is skipped if they have already had a response from the agent or from someone on your team.
Can different agents have different hours?
Yes. Working Hours is configured per agent, so every agent can run a completely different schedule.
Which Tekmatix plan includes AI agents?
AI Agents are included on Starter, Pro and Max. The Max Plan also includes the AI Employee Growth plan with 1,000 conversation AI replies and 100 voice AI minutes each month. Full detail is on the pricing page.
Does setting Working Hours cost anything extra?
No. Working Hours is a setting on your agent, not an add-on. Standard AI usage charges still apply to the replies your agent sends, at the rates shown on the pricing page.
Need a hand with it?
You never have to work this out on your own. Here is every way to get help, from free to fully done for you.
Free daily group training. Bring your screen and your question to a live session with a Tekspert, every weekday, at no cost. Book your seat on Time With A Tekspert.
Hire a Tekspert for 60 minutes. We share screens and build it with you, live, so you learn it once and can repeat it forever. Book a 60 minute Tekspert session.
15 minute advanced tech support. For one specific thing that is not behaving. Book a 15 minute session.
24/7 live chat. Click the chat bubble inside your Tekmatix account any time of the day or night. There is a real human on the other end.
The point of all this
An AI agent is not there to replace your team. It is there to make sure nobody who reaches out to your business is ignored, and to hand the right conversations to a person at the right moment. Working Hours is the setting that makes that possible.
Set your hours, write a warm auto-reply, tag the after-hours contacts, and let the follow-up do its job when you reopen. Ten minutes of setting up, and your business stops leaking enquiries overnight.
Happy Tekkin'!
Tekmatix is an all-in-one business platform for course creators, coaches and small service businesses, built on HighLevel infrastructure with our own templates, in-house Teksperts, 24 hour live chat and free daily training on top. Feature behaviour described here is current at the time of publishing and may change as the platform is updated.
Copyright © 2026 TekMatix. All rights reserved | [email protected]