Replying to a prospect at 2 am is not necessary: what matters is that the reply is ready when you open. A Muzau agent drafts it on receipt, day or night. With reply hours set, the one it sends on its own goes out at the next opening; until then, you can edit it or send it. If you review everything, it waits for you in "To approve". An appointment it books on its own does not wait for opening.
A prospect writes when they finally have time: in the evening, late, once the day is over. They may be asking several companies at once, and the one that replies first, clearly, gets ahead. Leaving them without news until the next day at noon hands that lead to someone else.
On the other hand, a reply that lands at 2:03 am, one minute after their request, tells them something else: that nobody read it. For a company that sells on relationship, that is a bad first sign. So the real question is not "reply at night or not", but how to separate two steps: write the reply right away, then choose the time it goes out.
A request that reaches the agent's address is handled as soon as it arrives. If the agent replies from your connected Gmail or Outlook inbox, it checks it every minute. The reply is drafted right away, day or night: in the morning it is already there, to review or to let go.
You give the agent reply hours: the days, the times, and a minimum delay between the request and the reply. At first setup, Muzau suggests Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6 pm, and a reply at least 10 minutes after the request; on the agent's page, the minimum delay goes up to 12 hours. A reply ready at 2 am then goes out on its own at the next opening. Until then, you can edit it, or send it right away if the request cannot wait. With no reply hours, an agent that sends on its own replies as soon as it is ready, at any hour.
These hours apply to email replies. The site chat answers within seconds and without approval, because the visitor is waiting at the bubble: see the page on website visitors at any hour. For text messages, see whether to reply in the evening and at weekends.
Reply hours only delay the replies the agent sends on its own. If you chose to review everything, the reply waits for you in "To approve": you send it as it is, edit it, or set it aside. Muzau emails you that a customer is waiting, then reminds you if the reply is still waiting after four hours. And a reply the agent is not sure about does not go out on its own, even if it is set to reply alone: it waits for you with the reason.
If the agent books appointments on its own and the prospect picks a slot in the middle of the night, the appointment is booked at once, and its confirmation goes with it, even when replies wait for your opening hours: the slot is not lost. If you preferred to approve appointments, it waits for you in a "To approve" card, and one click books it and sends the confirmation.
With or without an agent, a few guidelines for choosing when to send.
A night reply must be as accurate as a daytime one: if a piece of information is missing, it is better to say so than to promise. For what an AI can write on its own, see whether an AI can reply to your customers' emails.
Autonomous does not mean unchecked. You set the level of autonomy of every agent, its limits cannot be crossed, everything it does is recorded in a plain-language log, and one gesture stops it all.
For the tasks you don't have time for. You give the address of your website, then describe the work in your own words. Nothing to install.