“We are here to help” sounds welcoming until the customer waits in an empty chat window for an hour. A useful greeting should describe the service available at that moment, not the service the business hopes to provide.
Begin with the actual staffing arrangement. Is someone monitoring the inbox now? Does the chat create a ticket for later? Is the first response automated? The wording should make those differences easy to understand without exposing internal software details.
Write for three ordinary situations
Available: invite the customer to describe the issue and explain what information helps the team respond. Avoid asking for payment details, passwords or unnecessary personal data.
Busy: acknowledge the queue and provide a realistic alternative. If you cannot reliably estimate a response time, say that replies are delayed rather than displaying an invented countdown.
Offline: state the monitored hours with the time zone and explain what happens to a message left now. A customer in another country should not have to guess which “9 am” you mean.
For example: “Our team is offline. Leave your order reference and a short description, and we will reply during our next support session.” Add the real hours and channel before using it. This is a writing example, not a promise about any particular business.
- Test the greeting outside opening hours.
- Check holiday and unexpected-closure messages.
- Make sure the suggested contact route is actually monitored.
- Remove an immediate-response claim when staffing changes.
Read the message on a small screen. The first two lines should tell someone whether to wait, leave a message or use another route. Long promotional introductions make that decision harder.
Review the wording alongside real support conversations. If customers repeatedly ask whether anyone is there, the greeting is not doing its job. Clear expectations can make even a delayed response feel more organised and respectful.