Office hours, not 24/7.

24/7 isn't support. It's anxiety.

24/7 is a marketing claim, not a workflow. Solo founders aren't on-call 24 hours. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, burning out, or about to.

What “24/7” means when there's one of you

One person, every hour, every day. 8,760 hours a year. Even at four-hour shift handoffs, that's a team of six. You don't have a team. You have you.

So in practice, “24/7” means: the customer thinks you're available all the time. You feel guilty when you're not. You answer at the dinner table. You answer in bed. You answer on vacation.

That's not 24/7 support. That's 24/7 anxiety.

What office hours actually look like

Pick a window. 9 to 6. 11 to 4. Whatever fits your life. Put it on your contact page, in your auto-responder, in your pricing.

Reply inside the window. Don't reply outside it.

Half the founders reading this just got nervous. What if it's an emergency? If you're the kind of business where 2 a.m. emergencies matter, you're not solo anymore — you hired ops. For the rest of us, the 2 a.m. answer is the same as the 9 a.m. answer: I'll handle this when I'm working.

Customers don't want 24/7. They want predictability.

“I read messages between 9 and 6.” Tells them when to expect you.

“Average response: under 4 hours.” Tells them how fast.

“We're here whenever!” Tells them nothing — and you'll fail to live up to it anyway.

Customers respect a clear boundary. They distrust a fake one.

Calmness is a competitive advantage

The reply you write at 9 a.m. — calm, coffee in hand, customer history on screen — is twice as good as the one you type at 11 p.m. from bed.

Speed is theatre. Quality is the work.

SuppyHQ is built for this

Snooze. Scheduled auto-replies. Batched inboxes. Pick your window, tell your customers, reply inside it. Get your evenings back.