Guide
More than half of customer questions arrive outside business hours
Short answer
52% of customer questions arrive outside business hours: at the weekend, before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m. 53% of the questions are about products. The 52% figure is based on 1,686 visitor questions at 21 paying customers, and the 53% figure on the topic tagging of 1,831 questions, both between 8 July and 6 October 2026. The data comes from the websites of our customers in Hungary, measured in Budapest time.
Source: own platform data, 90 days of usage, 8 July – 6 October 2026
Key figures
At the 21 paying customers, 1,686 visitor questions arrived over 90 days. Of these, 51.8 percent arrived outside business hours: 22.2 percent at the weekend and 29.5 percent on weekday evenings or early mornings.
53.2 percent of the questions are about products: product search, recommendations, product features. This is based on the topic tagging of 1,831 questions from the same period.
Breakdown by sample
| Sample | Questions | Customers | Outside business hours | Weekend | Weekdays 17:00–8:00 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paying customers | 1,686 | 21 | 51.8% | 22.2% | 29.5% |
| Paying online stores | 1,666 | 20 | 51.4% | 22.1% | 29.3% |
| Without the highest-traffic customer | 1,323 | 20 | 54.6% | 24.5% | 30.1% |
| All external traffic | 1,928 | 26 | 51.3% | 22.2% | 29.1% |
| Conversations (first message) | 842 | 21 | 52.3% | 21.6% | 30.6% |
Without the highest-traffic customer the share is higher, so it is not a single online store that pushes it up. The service provider sample (20 questions, 1 customer) is too small for a standalone claim, so it is not shown here.
What this means for a business
The assistant also answers from the knowledge base in the evening and at the weekend. If it has no answer to a question, it asks for the customer’s contact details.
Downloadable table
The breakdown in CSV format: after-hours-questions.csv.
Methodology
From the SmartAIAssist (formerly SmartAIChat) platform’s own logs, read-only. Period: 8 July – 6 October 2026, Budapest time. Genuine visitor traffic only: our own, test and demo traffic was filtered out. Business hours: weekdays 8:00–17:00; the 20 August public holiday in Hungary counts as a weekend day. The topic tags come from classification by an in-house language model, checked by manually reading a random sample of 60 (about 9 in 10 correct).
Changelog
- 7 October 2026: first version
Sources
- Own platform data, 90 days of usage, 8 July – 6 October 2026 · own data · smartaiassist.eu/data/after-hours-questions.csv
- Own platform data, topic tagging of 1,831 questions, 8 July – 6 October 2026 · own data · smartaiassist.eu/data/after-hours-questions/#key-figures
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FAQ
Customer questions outside business hours
What does outside business hours mean here?
The weekend, plus the time before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m. on weekdays. If business hours start at 9 a.m., the share is 55%.
Whose customers does the data come from?
From the websites of 21 of our paying customers in Hungary, mostly online stores. Our own sites and test traffic were left out.
Why is the service provider sample not shown separately?
Because 20 questions and one customer are not enough for a standalone claim. The figure is included in the full sample.
Can I download the table?
Yes, in CSV format, from the link at the bottom of the page.
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In the example conversations, the assistant's answers are given by artificial intelligence. Disclosure under Article 50 of the EU AI Act: "Artificial intelligence, not a human".