Doc Summary
How to Set After-Hours Rules for Your Clinic’s AI Chat Assistant #
If your clinic’s AI chat assistant answers patient messages around the clock, that’s not always a good thing. A patient who texts at 11 PM asking about a cancellation fee, or messages your Instagram page about a rash at 2 AM, may get a reply that sounds like it came from staff — when no one on your team actually knows the conversation happened. Working hours settings fix that mismatch: you decide exactly when your AI assistant is “on duty,” and what happens to everyone else who reaches out outside those hours.
This guide walks through setting working hours for your OneSystemCRM AI chat assistant across every messaging channel it covers — SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, your website chat widget, live chat, and TikTok — plus how to configure the after-hours auto-reply, staff alerts, and automatic follow-up so no patient inquiry gets lost overnight.
Why This Matters for a Clinic #
Clinics run on trust, and trust breaks down fast when communication feels inconsistent. A few scenarios this setting solves:
- A patient asks the AI assistant a clinical question at midnight and gets an instant, confident-sounding answer — but nobody on your care team reviewed it before it went out.
- Your front desk closes at 5 PM, but the AI assistant keeps booking same-day appointments for slots that no longer exist, because nobody told it the day was over.
- An after-hours message about a billing dispute or a medication concern sits in the inbox until morning, with no flag telling your team it needs attention first thing.
Working hours give you a clean boundary: the AI handles routine, in-hours conversation, and anything that lands after close gets a polite holding message, a tag your staff can filter by, and a note in the queue so it’s the first thing handled when the clinic reopens.
Before You Start #
You’ll need:
- Admin or agency-level access to your OneSystemCRM sub-account
- An existing AI chat agent already deployed on at least one channel (SMS, webchat, WhatsApp, etc.)
- Your clinic’s actual operating hours, including any lunch breaks or split shifts you want reflected
If you haven’t deployed an AI chat agent yet, set one up first, then come back to this guide to layer in working hours.
How to Set Working Hours for Your AI Chat Assistant #
Step 1: Open Your AI Agent’s Settings #
Go to AI Agents in your OneSystemCRM sub-account and select the messaging agent you want to schedule. Voice-based agents are configured separately — this guide covers the text and messaging assistant that handles SMS, email, and social conversations.
[SCREENSHOT: AI Agents dashboard with the messaging agent selected]
Step 2: Choose Which Channels the Schedule Applies To #
Inside the agent’s configuration, find the Working Hours section. You’ll see a channel picker covering SMS, Email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Chat Widget, Live Chat, and TikTok.
Toggle on only the channels you want restricted. Any channel you leave unchecked will keep responding 24/7 — useful if, say, you want your website chat widget to always answer basic FAQs but want SMS and Instagram DMs to go quiet after your front desk closes.
[SCREENSHOT: Channel selection toggles inside the Working Hours panel]
Step 3: Build Your Clinic’s Schedule #
For each day of the week, set the hours the AI assistant should be active:
- Select the days your clinic operates.
- Enter a start and end time for each active day.
- Add a second time block on any day that has a split shift (for example, 9 AM–1 PM and 2 PM–6 PM around a lunch closure).
- Choose whether the schedule runs on the contact’s local timezone or your clinic’s timezone — for a single-location practice, your clinic’s timezone is usually simplest.
Days or hours you don’t define are treated as closed, and messages received then are handled by your after-hours rules in Step 4.
[SCREENSHOT: Weekly schedule grid with time blocks set per day]
Step 4: Configure the After-Hours Auto-Reply #
Write the message patients see when they contact the clinic outside your set hours. Keep it specific and reassuring rather than generic — patients messaging a clinic are often a little anxious, and a vague “we’ll get back to you” reads differently than a clear next step.
Example for a dental practice:
“Thanks for reaching out to Bright Smile Dental! Our team is offline right now, but we’ve got your message and will respond first thing when we reopen at 8 AM. If this is a dental emergency, please call [emergency line] or go to your nearest ER.”
This auto-reply sends once per closed period — a patient who sends five messages overnight won’t get five copies of it, but a new closed period (like a weekend) will trigger it again.
Step 5: Set Up Staff Notifications and Tagging #
Turn on email notifications so a designated staff member is alerted whenever an after-hours conversation comes in. Pair this with automatic tagging (for example, “After-Hours Inquiry”) so your team can filter the inbox each morning and handle those conversations first, in the order they came in.
If a patient’s after-hours message hasn’t been answered by a human by the time the clinic reopens, the assistant can automatically follow up on your behalf once hours resume — so a message from 10 PM doesn’t sit untouched until someone happens to scroll past it at 11 AM.
[SCREENSHOT: Notification and tagging settings for after-hours conversations]
Step 6: Save, Then Test It Yourself #
Save your configuration, then send a test message to each channel you restricted — once during business hours and once after. Confirm:
- During hours, the AI assistant responds normally.
- After hours, the auto-reply fires, the conversation gets tagged, and your designated staff member receives a notification.
You (or any team member) can still jump into a conversation manually at any time, even outside scheduled hours — working hours control the AI’s automatic behavior, not your team’s ability to respond.
Clinic Example: A Physical Therapy Practice #
A physical therapy clinic operates Monday–Friday, 7 AM–6 PM, with a front desk that closes promptly at 6. Before setting working hours, their AI assistant answered scheduling and insurance questions on Instagram and SMS at all hours — including a Sunday night message from a patient asking whether they could switch a Monday 7:15 AM appointment because of a work conflict. The AI confirmed availability, but the actual schedule had already filled overnight through a separate booking, creating a double-booked slot the front desk had to untangle Monday morning.
After enabling working hours on SMS, Instagram, and Facebook (leaving the website chat widget open 24/7 for general FAQs), that same Sunday-night message instead received an auto-reply confirming receipt, was tagged “After-Hours Inquiry,” and triggered an email to the office manager. On Monday morning, the front desk resolved the reschedule request first, before it ever became a conflict — and the AI sent the patient a confirmation once the change was made.
Troubleshooting & FAQ #
The AI assistant is still responding after hours on a channel I restricted. Double-check that the channel is toggled on inside the Working Hours panel for that specific agent — restrictions are set per agent, so if you run more than one AI assistant, each needs its own schedule.
Can I use different hours for different channels? Not within a single agent — one working-hours schedule applies to every channel you’ve enabled for that agent. If you need, say, SMS active longer than Instagram, run those channels through two separate agents with their own schedules.
Will patients get the auto-reply more than once per night? No. The after-hours auto-reply, staff notification, and tag all fire once per closed period, not once per message, so a patient sending several messages overnight won’t flood your team’s inbox with duplicate alerts.
What happens to a conversation that starts during business hours but runs late? It stays active and the AI keeps responding normally until the conversation goes inactive — working hours govern new incoming contact, not conversations already underway.
Can staff still respond manually outside scheduled hours? Yes. Working hours only pause the AI’s automatic replies; a team member can open the inbox and respond to any conversation at any time.
Do I need to set working hours on every channel? No — toggle on only the channels where you want restrictions. Any channel left off keeps answering around the clock, which some clinics prefer for simple FAQ-style webchat traffic even while restricting SMS and social DMs.
