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Keep follow-ups and replies out of the night with quiet hours

Quiet hours are the times when your assistant does not send automatic follow-ups (see follow-ups) or most phase opening messages (see phases) and, if you choose, does not answer messages either. They use each customer's local time, so a 21:00–09:00 window is the night wherever the customer is.

Set quiet hours

Owners and admins open Assistant → Playbooks, select a playbook and, in the Follow-ups & quiet hours card, turn on Quiet hours:

• From and to: the start and end time, such as 21:00 to 09:00. The window can cross midnight and must be shorter than 23 hours 30 minutes.
• Days: the days on which quiet hours start. With only Friday checked, 21:00 to 09:00 covers Friday night until Saturday 09:00. All days are checked by default.

Click Save. The setting applies to every sender using this playbook. The Consultant can propose quiet-hours changes too (see consultant-proposals).

A customer's time zone is the one set on their profile, else their sender's time zone, else your workspace's. Write quiet hours in your customers' time, not yours: a team in Madrid serving customers in Mexico City writes 22:00–08:00 for the Mexican night and sets the sender's time zone to Mexico City. Each sender's time zone is its Default Timezone in Settings → Senders, under the sender's setup. The Consultant can propose a sender's time zone too, and an admin approves it like any other Consultant change.

What happens to a follow-up due during quiet hours

Yapper never sends a follow-up inside quiet hours. It picks, in order:

1. A little early: just before quiet hours start, when that is only a small part of the step's wait. A follow-up due at 21:30 after a 22-hour wait goes out at 21:00.
2. After quiet hours: when they end, such as 09:00 the next morning.
3. Last call: on WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, for a step due before the 24-hour messaging window closes, if the morning would be past the window, it goes out just before quiet hours start instead.
4. Otherwise the step is past the window: on WhatsApp it is sent as its template if it has one, and is skipped if not. A step due after the window has closed is past it too, unless going a little early lands it before the window closes.

When several follow-ups fall in the same night, only the latest one is sent, in the morning.

Messages that waited for quiet hours to end go out within the first 10 minutes after they end, each conversation at its own minute, so your customers are not all messaged at once.

How early is "a little early"

Under Advanced, Stretch ratio sets how much earlier than planned a follow-up may go out to land before quiet hours: a share of its wait, kept between At least and At most. The defaults are 0.25, 5m and 3h: a step that waits 4 hours may go out up to an hour early, and no step goes out more than 3 hours early. Write durations as a number and a unit: 5m, 3h, 1d.

The preview table under the follow-up steps shows how your quiet hours move each step.

Hold automatic replies until quiet hours end

Check Hold auto-replies during quiet hours to keep your assistant from answering at night too. A customer who writes during quiet hours gets the assistant's reply when they end, such as at 09:00. If they send several messages during the night, they get one reply that answers all of them.

Some replies always go out right away:

• web chat, where the customer is waiting in the chat window;
• replies to an Instagram comment and to a customer accepting a comment trigger's message (see comment-to-dm);
• scheduled messages, and anything you or your team send yourselves.

A held reply still follows every other rule: if you pause the conversation, or you answer the customer yourself, the assistant does not reply in the morning.

A follow-up due while a reply is held waits for the held reply to go out first (see follow-ups).

In the Inbox, a conversation with a held reply shows Reply held until and the time, such as "Reply held until 09:00 (quiet hours)", under the Auto-reply switch. Click Reply now to have your assistant write and send its reply right away instead of waiting; the message shows "Replying now…" until the reply goes out. Typing a reply yourself also answers the customer, and the assistant then does not reply in the morning.

In the conversation list, a conversation with a held reply or a held opening message shows a small moon icon; hover over it to see when it goes out. This tells it apart from a conversation that is simply waiting for an answer.

Phase opening messages

When a customer moves into a phase that sends an opening message, quiet hours apply to that message too, depending on what moved the customer:

• The customer's own message moved them (a phase change on an incoming message): the opening message is treated like a reply. It waits only when Hold auto-replies during quiet hours is on, and then goes out with the held reply when quiet hours end.
• Anything else moved them: a phase that moves customers on after a set time, you or your team moving the customer, the API, or the greeting for a customer you added. The opening message never goes out during quiet hours; it waits until they end. If the customer's 24-hour messaging window would close first, WhatsApp sends the phase's re-engagement template when quiet hours end, and on Instagram and Messenger the opening message is skipped.
• A customer who accepted a comment trigger's message gets the opening message right away (see comment-to-dm).

A waiting opening message is dropped if, by the time quiet hours end, the customer has moved to another phase, you paused or escalated the conversation, someone has answered the customer, or the customer has written in the meantime (their own message gets the assistant's reply instead). In the Inbox, the conversation shows "Opener held until 09:00 (quiet hours)" under the Auto-reply switch while it waits.

Messages right at the start of quiet hours

Replies still go out for a short while after quiet hours start. Under Advanced, Reply stretch sets how long. The default is 30m: with quiet hours from 21:00, a message at 21:05 is answered right away, and so is one sent at 20:50 that the assistant answers at 21:10. A message at 21:40 gets its reply when quiet hours end.

Different quiet hours for one phase

In a phase's settings, Quiet hours offers Use playbook default, Off or Custom. Custom replaces the playbook's quiet hours while a customer is in that phase, including whether replies are held; Off lets follow-ups and replies and opening messages go out at any time. See phases.