Automatic replies for everything that arrives after hours
Published on March 25, 2025
At nine on a Friday evening someone asks where their order is. You see the email at nine on Monday morning. Sixty hours have gone by, the customer has chased twice and asked once on Instagram. Your shop sells best at the weekend, and that is exactly when nobody answers.
Automatic replies fix this. Just not as bluntly as it sounds.
The four conditions for an automatic reply
For a reply to go out without you, four things have to be true at the same time. The ticket is classified. Autosend is switched on for that label. The current time falls inside the hours you configured. And a delay greater than zero is set.
If one of them is missing, nothing happens, and nothing tells you so. That is the most common reason someone concludes the automation is broken. Usually it is switched on, only for a different label than the one the requests actually land under.
Why the delay is not a bug
A reply that arrives after four seconds reads like a machine, even when every word in it is correct. So the delay is a setting, not a brake. Two minutes is usually enough.
You set the hours
Round the clock is possible, but few merchants want it. An email at three in the morning raises more questions than it answers. A better window is one that stays open longer than your desk does. Weekdays until ten in the evening, Saturday and Sunday until the end of the day. The customer from Friday evening then gets an answer on Friday evening, with their order status in it.
What still reaches you
Autosend applies per label, not to everything at once. Order status runs automatically in most shops, refunds and complaints do not. Independently of that, the system pulls a case back to you when it is legally delicate, when money is attached, when the reply contradicts your rules, or when the tone is off. Even if the label itself is set to automatic.
How much actually went out without you shows up in the dashboard as a share. When it is lower than you expected, one of the four conditions is almost always the reason.