What it is
An After-Hours Automation is a rule in Voxie that automatically sends a reply message to anyone who sends you a message outside your business hours, letting them know you're closed and when you'll respond. It’s like an “away message” but tailored for your SMS/MMS messaging.
Why it matters / Value proposition
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Customer experience: Your contacts won’t be left wondering whether their message was received — they get an automatic confirmation you’re away.
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Set expectations: You can tell people when they’ll hear back (e.g. “We’ll respond when we open tomorrow”).
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Professionalism: Even when you’re off hours or on vacation, you look responsive & caring.
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Reduced manual load: You don’t have to monitor and manually reply to every off-hour message — Voxie handles the reply automatically.
An Automation in Voxie is an automated action that can be triggered for a variety of reasons. You can set up an After-Hours Automation to let customers who text in know they will receive an answer when the business re-opens.
How to set up an After-Hours Automation
Please follow these instructions to set up an After-Hours Automation:
- Log into Voxie and Click Automation -> Event-Based Rules on the top of the screen
- Click the green New Automation Rule button on the right-hand side
- For Rule Name, please name the Automation something easy to remember. Voxie recommends After Hours Automation
- For the Trigger Event, please select New Inbound Message
- Under Attribute Name, select Current Time
- Once Current Time is selected, more options will appear
- For each day of the week, you can adjust the day and the times to reflect when the office is not open
Example: If your office is open from 9 am to 5 pm on Monday through Fridays, this is how to set up the automation for outside of those hours
- At the bottom, be sure to select your time zone
- After the times are set, click the green Action button
- On the next page is where you will set the out of office text that will be sent back to the customer
- Under Automated Action, select Respond to a Message
- Type in the Message you want to be sent
Ex: Here is the Voxie recommended response:
Thanks for reaching out. We’re presently closed. We’ll get back to you as soon as we open!
- After you are satisfied with how the message looks, click the Action is Live button to turn it green. This sets the automation live
- After the automation has been activated, Click the blue Create Automation Rule button in the bottom right-hand corner