Business hours
Business hours are the scheduled times during which a support team is staffed and actively responding to tickets.
Business hours define when SLA clocks run. If a team supports 9am–5pm Monday to Friday, a ticket received Friday at 4pm has its SLA timer pause at 5pm and resume Monday at 9am. Without this adjustment, weekend and overnight gaps distort response time metrics.
Teams publish their business hours so customers know when to expect a reply. Many teams also post them in auto-replies and on contact pages to manage expectations proactively.
As teams grow, business hours can expand to cover more time zones or a follow-the-sun model — where different regional teams hand off at shift boundaries — without each individual team working nights.