Hey ​@Tinsel the Elf Support Engineer Paul here.

At the moment, there’s no way to automatically hide or disable the “talk to a person” option when teammates are unavailable but you can train FinAI to handle this gracefully using Custom Answers and Communication Guidance.

You could set up a Custom Answer that triggers when someone types or clicks “talk to a person” or similar phrases. In this answer, you can say something like:

“Our team is currently offline, but we’d love to help! Please leave your name, email, and your question, and we’ll follow up as soon as someone is available.”

Make sure this answer has:

• High confidence trigger phrases (e.g. "talk to a person", "speak to someone", "agent", etc.)

• A clear handoff instruction, so FinAI doesn’t stay silent

Communication Guidance helps Fin shape tone and responses, but Custom Answers give you full control over the exact wording, which is more reliable for these kinds of handoff cases.

If you'd prefer a more structured handoff (e.g., collect email and route the conversation), you could also:

• Trigger a workflow based on certain phrase and tag and route conversations that need follow-up

To sum it up:

• FinAI can’t disable “talk to a person,” but you can train it to set expectations clearly

• Use Custom Answers instead of just relying on Communication Guidance

• Consider pairing with Workflows to automate the follow-up

Let me know if you’d like help crafting the Custom Answer or testing the flow.

Thanks ​@Paul Byrne That’s great info!  I’m giving the Custome Message a try so it will automatically divert to an agent if we are available, but send a message if we are not.  Can you tell me how I would differentiate between a “we’re not here” message and sending it through to a live agent?  Is there a trigger that tells it when we are all set to ‘away’ so it will send that message, vs. always sending a chat through when someone is marked available?  

 

Hey ​@Tinsel the Elf 

Right now, Intercom doesn’t offer a way to dynamically check whether teammates are online to change how a Custom Answer or workflow behaves. The “Talk to a person” option can’t be automatically disabled or redirected based on availability either.

Here’s the best workaround:

• Use a Custom Answer to respond when someone asks to talk to a person.

• In that response, set expectations clearly — for example:
  “Our team might be away right now, but if you leave your question and email, we’ll follow up as soon as we can.”

• Fin will always give this response regardless of teammate status, so it’s important to frame the message to cover both cases.

If you're using Workflows, you can still route the conversation to the right team or inbox but again, it won’t check if someone’s online before doing so.

Hi!
Sorry to jump in like this, but wouldn’t it just be a matter of clicking “Set expectations for human support”?
If you check that, it will stop showing that your team is online. After that, you can create a message in the workflow saying something like:
“Our team is currently unavailable, but feel free to reach out again during our opening hours” (and then insert your actual hours).

I’d also recommend setting up the workflow with your business hours so Fin knows when you’re open or closed — then you can play around with “Set expectations for human support.”

Once all that is set up, and your message says you're closed, you can assign the conversation to the appropriate inbox. :)