Follow the Sun Support Schedule

Start with support hubs, not timezone abbreviations

List the cities where support agents actually work, then add them to the world clock online. Real city names are safer than labels like PST, EST, GMT, or CST because daylight saving rules can differ by country and date.

If customer demand is concentrated in a few regions, include those customer cities too. A schedule that looks balanced for agents may still leave an important market uncovered during its normal business day.

Protect every handoff with overlap time

Use the meeting planner to compare the exact handoff date between each support hub. Build in at least 15 minutes of overlap for open tickets, incident notes, escalations, and customer callbacks.

For bigger teams, reserve one overlap block for live handoff and a second block for async review. That keeps urgent work moving without turning every shift change into a meeting.

If you need a more detailed transfer workflow, use the remote team handoff time zone planner to write local-time notes and rotate difficult handoff windows.

Confirm rotations on the exact start date

A follow the sun schedule can drift when only one region changes clocks. Before publishing the rota, check the first week of coverage and the next daylight saving transition week with the time zone converter.

This is where a city-based converter matters. A London to New York handoff, a Berlin to Singapore handoff, and a Sydney to San Francisco handoff can each move differently across the year.

Use local-time wording for public coverage

Customers should not need to interpret a timezone abbreviation to understand when support is available. Publish coverage in the customer's primary region and in each support hub's local time.

Follow the sun priority support: Americas coverage starts at 8:00 AM New York, Europe handoff at 2:00 PM London, and APAC handoff at 5:00 PM Singapore. During daylight saving transition weeks, confirm local coverage in your calendar invite.

For broader coverage planning, pair this workflow with the customer support time zone planner and the timezone overlap calendar.

When coverage turns into an active outage, use the incident response time zone planner to convert update deadlines, escalation calls, and handoff notes for each response city.

Related guides

• Incident response time zone planner
• Customer support time zone planner
• Client meeting time zone planner
• Timezone overlap calendar
• Working hours time zone converter
• Global meeting invite time zone format