The holiday season is the perfect time to ensure your customer support remains seamless, even while your team is out of the office.

Fin, your AI-powered teammate, works around the clock to keep your customers happy, offering fast resolutions and maintaining high customer satisfaction levels. With just a few easy setup steps, you can position Fin as your always-on support hero, while setting reply expectations for when teammates will be back in the office.

Set up Fin AI Agent as your 24/7 teammate

Make the holiday season stress-free. Let Fin handle customer queries 24/7 while your team enjoys the break.

Get Fin ready for the holidays

Activate Fin for the holiday season
- Head over to Fin AI Agent > Overview and navigate to the Set live for chat tab. (You can also set Fin live for email 👌).
- Before going live, make sure you've added all relevant content to Fin to help it assist your customers effectively.
Target the right audience
- Decide which customers will interact with Fin. You can set it up to assist users, leads, and visitors. Refine Fin's audience by creating rules with Intercom’s data attributes, ensuring Fin helps the right people at the right time. For example, you might enable Fin Outside Default office hours and set new default office hours for your team during the holidays.
Introduce Fin as your holiday helper
- Configure an introduction message for Fin that lets your customers know Fin is here to assist while your team is away. This introduction sets the stage for customers to understand what Fin can do and how it can help them during the holiday period.
- Example message: "Hi there! This is a bot speaking. My team is on holiday, but I’m here to help with all your queries!"
Handle unresolved conversations
- In case Fin can’t resolve an issue, decide the next steps. Choose between passing the conversation to a team (and assigning it to a specific teammate) or closing the conversation and offering alternative solutions. You could, for example, offer a link to a resource your customers can use until your team returns.
Collect additional context for efficient handover
- If Fin is unable to resolve an issue, enable the feature to "Collect more information when a customer asks to speak to the team". By gathering extra details, Fin increases the chances of resolving the issue itself, and if not, it provides valuable context to your human support team when they return.
This feature helps in two ways:
- It gives Fin another chance to answer.
- If a teammate needs to step in, they’ll have more information to troubleshoot faster when they're back online.
Gather Customer Feedback with CSAT
- Toggle the Send CSAT options to gather feedback from customers at the end of their interaction with Fin. This will provide valuable insights into Fin’s performance during the holiday period, and you can use this feedback to refine your AI agent’s skills further.
Auto-close abandoned conversations
- Avoid a backlog of abandoned conversations by setting Fin to auto-close chats after a specified time. You can also customize Fin’s final message to ensure the customer feels supported even as the conversation ends.
- Example message: "It looks like this conversation has been inactive for a while, so I’ll close it for now. If you need further help, don’t hesitate to reach out again!"
Review and set Fin live
- Once you’ve finished the setup, click Review and set live to preview Fin’s workflow. If everything looks good, click Set live and let Fin take the reins during the holiday season.

Fin is always ready to take care of your customers, so your team can enjoy a well-deserved break. Simple to set up, reliable, and always on—Fin is your perfect holiday support teammate.

Learn more about customizing and configuring Fin AI Agent.

Set up a workflow or add Fin to an existing workflow

To set up a workflow for public holidays with delayed response times, use the trigger Customer sends their first message or Customer sends any message.

Then you can choose custom times to display the Workflow from the trigger settings. Click the start time, then hold the Shift key and click the end time.

Keep in mind that trigger times are based on your workspace's timezone.

Add a message in the path builder when a customer starts a new conversation, informing them about the delayed response times during public holidays.

Then add the Let Fin answer step to your workflow so Fin can jump in and provide customers with support while your team is unavailable. If Fin isn't able to resolve the query, it can still pass to your support team for them to pick up when they're back.

The whole workflow could look like the example below 👇

Set reply time expectations

It's a good idea to also adjust your office hours and set new reply time expectations for customers while your team is out of office.

Set new office hours

Leverage your office hours to display when you'll be back in the office right from the Messenger Home, and respond to incoming chats with your expected reply time.

Go to Settings > Workspace > Office hours and open your Default office hours & reply times.

Then set up the individual days you'll be available, and remove the days you're out of the office.

You'll need to adjust these days before the holiday, and add them back manually afterwards.

Remove reply times from the Messenger

If you want to temporarily hide your usual reply times while you're on holiday, you can turn these off from Settings > Channels > Messenger > Conversations > Reply expectations.

This will remove any expected reply times from appearing on the Messenger Home or Messages space.

You'll need to toggle this back on when you return from holiday.

Show a special notice

You can also set a special notice to display at the top of the Messenger when a customer opens a new chat, to let people know that you're off for the holiday and will contact them when you return.

Remember to turn this notice off when you're back 😉

Please note, that it is not possible to set the location of the Special notice. It will be always displayed at the top of the conversation within the Messenger.

Direct customers to self-serve

If your team is unavailable to respond to incoming messages over the holiday, you can toggle off "Let visitors start a conversation" from Settings > Channels > Messenger > General > Control inbound volume so visitors and/or users can't start a conversation.

Use the Article Search app in the Messenger Home so customers can search for answers to their questions. You can also leverage Fin AI Agent in workflows for automated interactions.

FAQs

Can I schedule a special notice for the holidays instead of having to turn it on and off manually in real time?

No this currently isn't possible and is not planned for the near future. You can upvote, comment and subscribe to this feature request in our Product Wishlist.

Can I add holidays days instead of editing my existing office hours?

No, currently you must edit your office hours before your holidays and add them back after you return.

💡Tip

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