Most of our DMs arrive between ten at night and two in the morning and we answer them at nine the next day. By then half of them have gone quiet. What do people do about the overnight gap?

Answer the question immediately with an automation, and let the human part wait until morning. The problem is not that you were asleep, it is that nothing happened for eleven hours. What to automate for the overnight window: - The three questions you get most. Price, availability, how it works. These do not need you. - An acknowledgement with substance for everything else. Not "we will get back to you", but what you can tell them now plus when a person will reply. - A clear next step they can take at one in the morning: book a slot, read the page, leave their email. Two mechanics that matter here: - Business hours. A wait step can hold a message until your team is actually there, so a human sounding follow up does not arrive at three in the morning. - The 24 hour window. If they wrote at midnight and you reply at nine, you are still inside it. If they wrote at midnight on Friday and nobody replies until Monday, you are not, and the reply will fail. An automated first response also keeps the conversation alive for the human one. The measurement worth adding: an alert for conversations with no reply after a set time. It turns the overnight gap from something you discover in a monthly review into something you see the next morning. The [Inbox basics](/help/article/inbox-basics) article covers the unanswered alert and how assignment works when the team comes back online.

How do you stop losing DMs that arrive while you sleep?

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ChatinFlow TeamTeam

2026-09-20

Answer the question immediately with an automation, and let the human part wait until morning. The problem is not that you were asleep, it is that nothing happened for eleven hours.

What to automate for the overnight window:

The three questions you get most. Price, availability, how it works. These do not need you.
An acknowledgement with substance for everything else. Not "we will get back to you", but what you can tell them now plus when a person will reply.
A clear next step they can take at one in the morning: book a slot, read the page, leave their email.

Two mechanics that matter here:

Business hours. A wait step can hold a message until your team is actually there, so a human sounding follow up does not arrive at three in the morning.
The 24 hour window. If they wrote at midnight and you reply at nine, you are still inside it. If they wrote at midnight on Friday and nobody replies until Monday, you are not, and the reply will fail. An automated first response also keeps the conversation alive for the human one.

The measurement worth adding: an alert for conversations with no reply after a set time. It turns the overnight gap from something you discover in a monthly review into something you see the next morning.

The Inbox basics article covers the unanswered alert and how assignment works when the team comes back online.

Miloš J.

2026-09-20

The automated first reply keeping the window open is a benefit we had not even considered. We thought of it as politeness.