As most of you already know, SUMO is volunteer driven, and Live Chat is no exception. Because of this, we’ll be constantly revisiting our officially offered hours to make sure they are the most convenient for our helpers and that they offer users the best chance at getting support. Now that we’ve been in full swing for a month and a half our helpers have been getting a better idea of how much time they need to set aside for helping with Live Chat and when they have that time. As such, we’ve had to make some not minor changes to our hours, but we feel they’ll be much better for everone.
The new hours are as follows:
Monday – Friday
- 1pm to 4pm
- 7pm to 9pm PST (GMT -8)
The hours are now the same Monday through Friday. While we lose the advantage of having more varied hours, it makes it much easier to remember for users and helpers alike when we’re open. We’ve also added an evening shift, which is more convenient for students in North America, and for many on the other side of the world. While we’ve retained our afternoon shift, we’ve had to drop our morning hours. Our hope is that the new consistent hours will make it easier for new helpers to become involved and that it will only be a matter of time before we’re expanding our hours again.
As always, our hours are only the times we’re trying to guarrantee someone will be around to help. You can help, and get support at many other hours in the day. If you find you can help during hours we aren’t already covering let us know and as soon as enough people have signed up for those times, we’ll add them. See our article on helping with Live Chat for more information.