Two Advisors, a Boutique Open Online All Night: 3 Approaches

A jewellery boutique with two advisors can give every client real attention during the day: a conversation at the counter, a call, a video consultation with the piece in hand.

In the evening, the advisors go home. The boutique’s website does not. And the evening is often when a client finally has time to look carefully at the ring she has been considering, and has a question.

Here are three ways a small house can handle those hours, compared.

The approaches at a glance

Approach	What the client meets in the evening	What the advisors find in the morning	Keeps the house’s register	Best for
1. Hide the chat after hours	No chat button at all	Nothing	Quiet, but she can’t ask	Houses with no evening interest
2. A message form after hours	”Our office is currently closed” and a form	Messages to answer	Courteous, but she waits	Questions that can wait a day
3. The AI by night, advisors by day	An answer from the AI in chat; a form if she asks for an advisor	A notification when the shift starts, then a reminder	Attentive at any hour	Houses whose clients browse in the evening

1. Hide the chat after hours

The chat button is shown only during the hours set in the house’s “Widget schedule”. Outside them it disappears entirely: no offline state, no form. The boutique closes its doors, and online the invitation is withdrawn with them.

The check runs when a page loads, so a client who already has a page open keeps the button until she opens another.

This is discreet, and right for a house with little evening interest. But a client who browses at night has no way to ask anything, and the house learns nothing about her.

2. A message form after hours

Outside the advisors’ hours, the client sees:

“Hi there. We apologize, but our office is currently closed.” / “Please leave a message, and one of our associates will get back to you during our regular business hours.”

with a form for her name and contact details.

Courteous and honest. But a client with a question about a piece usually wants an answer, not an appointment with tomorrow.

3. The AI by night, advisors by day

During the advisors’ hours, conversations go to them. Outside those hours, the AI agent receives the client in chat and answers her questions out of the house’s catalogue and the information it provides.

If she asks to speak to an advisor while the office is closed, she sees “Hi there. We apologize, but our office is currently closed.” and a form to leave her details. The AI hands over to a chat with an advisor, not to a video call, so a video consultation is something the advisor arranges during their own hours.

In the morning, the advisors are reminded: a push notification five minutes after their working window opens, and a reminder 30 minutes after that. If she asked for a particular advisor, that advisor receives a push five minutes after her request.

Which approach fits the house?

• No evening interest: approach 1.
• Evening questions that can wait: approach 2.
• Clients who browse and decide in the evening: approach 3, consultations by day and the AI by night.

The house’s choice of who answers first during the day is a separate decision; we’ve compared AI first and AI last when every advisor is busy.

What to know before setting hours

The advisors’ hours are set once, as a weekly template, in Settings → Store → “Associate availability”, with the house’s “Headquarters time zone” and, for each day, “On/ Off”, “Work all day” and “Store hours”.

• One working window per day, with no break and no second window.
• No holidays or one-off closures.
• A shift across midnight must be split over two days.
• Hours follow the house’s time zone, not the client’s. With boutiques in several time zones, open by the easternmost and close by the westernmost.
• No separate hours per advisor or per department.
• The “office closed” and “leave a message” texts are fixed, in English, and cannot be edited, which is worth reviewing against the house’s clientele.

There is also a separate “Widget schedule” on Settings → Widget that hides the chat button itself, with the same limits: one window a day, and a window across midnight never opens. The back office recommends ticking “Show 24/7” and managing advisors’ hours in “Associate availability” instead.

Closing the chat for a period

For a boutique move, a private event or a stock-take, the house can switch the chat off entirely by unticking “Enabled” in Settings → Widget, with no change to the website itself.

One caution: links built to open the chat automatically, such as those in a client email or an invitation, still open it while it is switched off. Worth remembering before a campaign goes out during the closure.

What to measure

How many clients open the chat outside the advisors’ hours, and on which days.

How many evening conversations end with a request for an advisor, and how many of those the advisors pick up the next morning.

Which evening conversations lead to a consultation or a purchase in the days that follow.

Where Immerss fits

Immerss is a live commerce platform, and two of its modules carry this decision.

• AI Sales Agent: receives clients in chat outside the advisors’ hours, on the house’s own site and under the house’s chosen name, and answers out of the house’s own catalogue and the information it provides. When she asks for an advisor after hours, her request is left for the next shift.
• Clienteling: the advisor who picks up the request in the morning has the evening conversation in front of them, and can follow up by text, email or phone from a shared client record, or arrange a consultation during their own hours.

The evening stays human, because a client who asks for an advisor reaches one at the start of the next shift; personal, because a request for a particular advisor goes to that advisor; and measurable, because the house can count evening conversations and how many become consultations.

For a house, the entry point is a conversation.

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By day, the advisors. By night, the AI. And every request from the evening is waiting for them in the morning.