Keep useful answers available after your team signs off
Fire Away can run its AI assistant outside your site’s configured business hours, when nobody is connected, or throughout the day. Customers can get help from your support knowledge while your people are away. Requests that need judgment still need a human follow-up; AI availability is not a promise of round-the-clock staffing.
For teams with customers in different time zones or website enquiries arriving after closing time.
Choose what “after hours” means for your business
An outside-hours schedule and an offline trigger solve different problems. A schedule follows your site’s office hours and timezone. An offline trigger depends on whether anyone is connected for that site. Choose the rule that matches your staffing routine, then test the boundary at opening and closing time rather than assuming that closing a browser is the same as ending a shift.
Offer an answer without promising a person is awake
Keep delivery windows, account setup instructions and common troubleshooting steps in current knowledge. A visitor should know they are talking to AI. If a question requires an investigation, collect enough context for the team and explain the next step using your actual service expectations. Do not advertise an instant human response unless you have people available to deliver it.
Make the morning handover usable
Review escalated conversations when the team returns, read what the assistant already explained, and continue in the existing thread. Email fallback helps an agent reach a visitor who has left the site. Separately review incorrect answers and fix the underlying knowledge so the same overnight question has a better outcome next time.
What should AI answer, and when should people help?
Illustrative scenarios for planning your setup. These are examples, not customer results.
| Customer question or situation | Useful AI role | Where people or your app take responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| A customer needs setup instructions at night. | Explain the approved setup steps. | The steps fail or the account needs investigation. |
| Someone asks about a policy exception. | Explain the standard policy without approving an exception. | A person reviews the request during staffed hours. |
| The visitor leaves before an agent returns. | Preserve the chat history. | The agent follows up by email in the same conversation. |
Test this workflow with your own customers’ questions
Use your trial to check useful outcomes, including the cases that should reach a person.
- Set the correct site timezone and office hours.
- Choose outside-hours or offline triggering deliberately.
- Test an answerable question and a case requiring a person.
- Check the next-day queue and a disconnected visitor’s email reply.
Questions about this setup
Is this a 24/7 human support service? +
Can we enable AI only outside office hours? +
Work through the details
How can a small team handle support outside business hours?
Set honest after-hours support expectations, answer documented questions with AI and keep unresolved requests ready for human follow-up.
Read the guideHow should an AI chatbot hand over to a human?
Plan AI-to-human handover triggers, preserve conversation context and avoid competing replies when a teammate takes over.
Read the guideRelated AI support workflows
AI customer support for small businesses
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