Auto-Reply to Support Tickets on Australian Public Holidays

Why is this hack helpful?

Customer service is about keeping people informed even when your team isn't there. Automate the ticket response for public holidays and weekends and nobody who lodges a ticket on Anzac Day is left wondering whether it went anywhere. This hack shows you how to build workflows that reply based on the day of the week and whether that day is a holiday.

With this setup, your customers know their ticket has been received, and you keep a professional, responsive image on the days your team isn't working.

Which holidays you are actually building for

There is no single Australian holiday calendar, and that is the part that catches this build out. Seven public holidays run nationally:

• New Year's Day
• Australia Day
• Good Friday
• Easter Monday
• Anzac Day
• Christmas Day
• Boxing Day

The King's Birthday is national as well, but the date moves: June in most states, later in the year in Queensland and Western Australia. Past that it fragments. Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday in Victoria and nowhere else. Labour Day falls in a different month depending on which state you are in. Easter Saturday, show days and regional holidays vary again.

So build the list for the states your customers are in, not only the state your support team sits in. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the national list, and each state and territory government publishes its own gazetted dates. That is the source of truth to check your property against each year.

Steps to Set It Up

1. Write Your Emails

Before creating your workflows, draft the emails that will be sent to customers based on the day they submit a ticket. You'll need two types of emails:

• Holiday Email: A message informing customers that your team is unavailable due to a public holiday and will respond as soon as possible. Name the day and say when you are back, so "we are closed for Anzac Day and back on Monday" rather than a generic out of office.
• Daily Notification Email: A standard message acknowledging the ticket submission and providing next steps.

Once your emails are ready, you can start building your workflows.

2. Create Two Workflows

You'll need two separate workflows: one for weekdays and one for weekends. Here's how to set them up:

1. Start a New Workflow

   • Go to Automation > Workflows and create a new Ticket-based workflow.
   • Set the enrolment trigger to include tickets submitted during the relevant time period (e.g., weekdays or weekends).

2. Add an If/Then Branch for Holidays

   • Add an If/Then branch to check whether the ticket submission date matches one of the dates on your holiday list.
   • Manually add the holiday dates for the year as filters. For example:
     • Ticket submission date is equal to [Holiday Date 1]
     • OR Ticket submission date is equal to [Holiday Date 2]

   Note: You'll need to update these dates each year. Put it in the calendar for December, so the new year doesn't start on last year's list.

3. Set Email Actions for Each Branch

   • Under the Holiday branch, add a Send email action to send the holiday email.
   • Under the None met branch, add a Send email action to send the daily notification email.

3. Schedule the Workflows

So the workflows only run on the right days, adjust the workflow settings:

1. Weekday Workflow
   • Set the workflow to run only on Monday to Friday.
2. Weekend Workflow
   • Set the workflow to run only on Saturday and Sunday.

That way customers get the right email for the day they submitted on.

4. Enrol Contacts After Activating the Workflow

When activating the workflows, make sure to enrol only contacts who meet the criteria after the workflow goes live. This prevents emails from being sent to a large number of existing tickets unnecessarily.

Wrapping Up

Automating the holiday and weekend reply keeps people informed without adding anything to your team's workload. The customer knows the ticket has been seen, and nobody has to remember to switch on an out of office before the long weekend.

With a bit of planning and a diary note to update the dates, this workflow will keep your customer service running smoothly year-round.

Once the holiday reply is sorted, the same thinking covers automatically following up on and closing stale tickets, and getting reminded of an overdue SLA in HubSpot Help Desk when the queue comes back on Tuesday. If you are not sure what the queue looks like right now, start by auditing your HubSpot response time in five minutes.

Want the whole help desk built this way? That is our RevOps and HubSpot work.