Find your busiest times
A heat map of customer messages by weekday and hour, plus your busiest day, hour and slot, to plan shifts, business hours and chat cover.
Last updated 2 min read
Busiest times shows when customers write to you. Use it to set shifts, business hours and chat cover where they help most.
Before you start
- Who can do this: everyone.
- Plan: all plans.
Step by step
- Open Analytics and choose Busiest times ("Darker = more customer messages. Use it to set business hours and shifts.").
- Pick Last 30 days or Last 90 days.
- Read Customer messages, Busiest day, Busiest hour and Busiest slot.
- Study Messages by weekday and hour: rows are Monday to Sunday, columns are hours.
- Filter by Channel to compare chat and email.
What happens next
Darker squares mean more customer messages. Empty squares show No messages on hover. The report states which time zone it uses.
Turning it into action
| You see | Consider |
|---|---|
| Monday mornings darkest | Extra cover on Mondays, no meetings before noon |
| Evening chat peak | Later chat shift, or the AI agent in Copilot overnight |
| Quiet weekends | Weekend business hours off, with an honest away message |
| Lunchtime dip | Stagger breaks around it |
Reading the heat map
Each row is a weekday and each column an hour of the day. Look for three things: the darkest band (your peak), the lightest band (good times for training or meetings) and sudden dark squares (a campaign, a newsletter or a problem).
Chat and email peak differently
Chat usually follows when shoppers browse, often evenings and weekends, while email builds up overnight and lands in the morning. Filter by Channel to see each one on its own, then plan chat cover and email cover separately rather than staffing for one combined peak.
Tips
- Re-check after a big campaign or a new sales channel; patterns shift.
- Match Settings > Business hours to the hours customers actually write.
- Compare with Agents to see whether the busiest hours have enough people.
- Schedule newsletters and promotions when your team is on shift, since each one creates its own spike in customer messages over the following hours.
Troubleshooting
The heat map is almost empty
Few messages in the period. Widen the range to 90 days.
Peaks look an hour off
Check the workspace time zone under Settings > Business hours. Clock changes in spring and autumn can also shift a peak by an hour for part of the range.
One square is much darker than the rest
A single busy hour is usually a campaign, a newsletter or an outage. Check what happened that day before changing shifts.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Busiest times report count?
Customer messages, not tickets, by weekday and hour, in your workspace's time zone. A customer who sends three messages in an hour counts three times, because each one needs attention. Darker squares in the heat map mean more messages in that hour.
How do I use Busiest times to plan shifts?
Look for the darkest band in the heat map and make sure your strongest cover is on then. If evenings or weekends are busy, consider later shifts, business hours that cover them, or letting the AI agent draft answers overnight for your team to check in the morning.
Which time zone does the heat map use?
Your workspace's time zone, set under Settings, Business hours. The report states it, for example customer messages by weekday and hour, Europe London time. Change the workspace time zone if your team works somewhere else, and the heat map shifts to match the next time you open it.
How much data should I look at?
At least the last 30 days, and 90 days if your volume is low, so one unusual day does not distort the picture. Use filters such as Channel to compare chat and email, because chat usually peaks at different times from email.
What are busiest day, busiest hour and busiest slot?
Busiest day is the weekday with the most customer messages, busiest hour is the hour of the day with the most across all days, and busiest slot is the single weekday and hour with the most, such as Monday at 10:00.
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Related articles
- Set your business hours and holidaysSet your time zone, opening hours for each day and holidays. SLA clocks count only these hours and the chat widget shows your away message outside them.
- Watch the live overviewSee right now how many tickets are open, unassigned, waiting and past their SLA, who is available, and how today is going hour by hour.
- Read the Agents reportCompare agents on tickets replied, messages sent, tickets closed, first response, resolution, one-touch and satisfaction, and filter by team or tag.
- Set agent availability (Available, Away, Offline)Mark yourself or a teammate as Available, Away or Offline. Only Available agents receive auto-assigned tickets; others keep the tickets they have.
Still stuck?
Chat with the Hushdesk team. A person answers on every plan.