topic Re: Customer Agent custom instructions in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Can I add custom instructions to Customer Agent responses in HubSpot?

chris305 — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:16:39 GMT

Hello,

Is it possible to provide the Customer Agent with custom instructions (similar to what I would do with a custom GPT)?

Right now, the agent thinks for a while and comes back with a long and verbose answer (almost like performing deep research) that reads very scripted. It feels rigid and robotic - not "conversational". In comparison, when I feed the same questions to a custom GPT I can tell that the GPT is connecting dots and engages in actual conversation.

Ideally I want the customer agent to:

- Respond faster, starting with shorter higher-level answers.

- Offer follow-up paths or clarifying options to dive deeper.
- Combine information across products & services to address the user's desired goals or concerns.
- Suggest actions like “Watch a demo,” or “Schedule a call” when relevant.

I created a set of such instructions and uploaded as PDF to the agent's content. As far as I can tell they get completely ignored.

Is there a way to do this or is it wishful thinking at this point?

Thanks

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

ArisudanTiwari — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 21:34:44 GMT

Hi @chris305 ,

At the moment, it’s not possible to give the HubSpot Customer Agent custom instructions to control its tone, response style, or pacing, unlike what’s possible with a custom GPT. If this kind of behavior customization is important for your use case, I’d recommend sharing your feedback in the HubSpot Ideas Forum to help prioritize it in future updates.

In the meantime, here are a couple of tips that might help improve how the agent responds:

Keep content concise and well-structured:- Upload short, focused documents like FAQs or step-by-step guides. Avoid uploading long PDFs or instructional prompts about tone or behavior; they’re typically ignored by the agent.
Provide clear context:- The phrasing of the user’s question and the flow of the conversation can influence the response. You can guide users with prompts or phrasing that help the agent surface the most relevant content.

While this won’t change how it responds, it can refine what it says.

Hope this helps!

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

Brad-E36 — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 15:50:56 GMT

I second this request! The customer agent works very well overall, but there are circumstances where I wish to tailor how the agent responds beyond just giving it additional context. Our use case is when making e-commerce product recommendations, where we wish to better control how accessories are recommended. Thanks!

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

auto-mate — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 07:12:07 GMT

The Customer Agent seems like a beta still. We have tested a lot and it there is no basic "prompt" functionality. As the OP, we have tried uploading guidance in the sources, and we are contuing adding to the short answers - but it seems impossible to give the agent red lines.

As in the OP, answers are way too long, our attempts to define paths, links, languages are failing. It is nowhere near reliable enough to launch in an enterprise tech B2B environment today.

We are considering cutting it right down e.g. removing our website from the sources. This would be pretty extreme and we would end up with a dumb agent with a tailored document as a source - just e.g. giving navigation paths. But without a way to give basic prompts and set red lines, we presume this is also going to challenging.

This is the only AI "agent" I have seen so far from multiple vendors with no ability to prompt. Does not seem ready Hubspot friends!

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

auto-mate — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 06:32:02 GMT

We have tried to renew our customer agent with a limited set of source and a (landing page) set of instructions - but these are ignored.

The Customer Agent is missing a basic prompt interface where we can set the guidelines and guardrails. This is also standard in competitor AI chatbots and AI agents generally - so it is a big miss here.

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

BérangèreL — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:58:42 GMT

Hi @auto-mate,

I am sorry to hear about your experience regarding the Customer Agent instructions and your experience with setting guidelines.

I also want to thank you for taking the time to share your valuable feedback with the HubSpot Community.

Your suggestion for a built-in prompt interface is a great point, and I’ve made sure to share your feedback with our product team.

In the meantime, if you have any specific use cases or examples of how you’d like to use this functionality, please feel free to share them in our Ideas Forum.

The more detail you provide, the better we can understand your needs and advocate for improvements.

For information on the topic, here are some resources:

- Create a customer agent
- Manage your customer agent
- Set up actions for your customer agent

Also, I'd love to ask our Top Experts : Hi @ArisudanTiwari, @danmoyle and @Lucila-Andimol are you also using the customer agent? If yes, do you have any workarounds or tips to help @auto-mate, please?

Thanks so much for your help!
Bérangère

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

danmoyle — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:48:04 GMT

+1 for @BérangèreL's suggestion to offer this feedback in the ideas forum, @auto-mate. Product managers pay attention there.

As for a recommendation, I might think about building a custom AI agent using HubSpot’s APIs and a third-party language model (such as OpenAI or even Agent.ai) to more fully enable full prompt, response style, and guideline management. You might need some developer resources, but it would give you maximum flexibility.

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

BérangèreL — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 14:55:20 GMT

Hi @auto-mate and all,

I’m happy to confirm that custom instructions are indeed on our roadmap! 🤗

While we don’t have a specific timeline to share just yet, we’re excited about this upcoming feature.

Thank you for your interest and thanks @danmoyle for your help!

Have a wonderful day!
Bérangère

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

danmoyle — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 15:38:10 GMT

That's great news @BérangèreL thank you!

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

auto-mate — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 05:42:53 GMT

I hear you but you are suggesting basically use another AI agent tool - and yes, like many marketeers, we have a lot to choose from - I think I have four "free" ways to make a "customer agent" with our existing tools today.

But that's not the point - we don't want the Hubspot AI customer agent to be the only one on the market that we can't prompt! 😉

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

auto-mate — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 05:47:34 GMT

Great news;)
Ideas-wise, I think you have much better people than me to research and benchmark. I have seen a few different AI "chatbot" admin interfaces with various prompt windows/interfaces or varying complexity, and something like Copilot at the basic level with it's combination of conversational prompt and preferences ("memory") gives some clues.

From where I sit today, I don't think there's a need for anything complicated. A free prompt field would be great. A special prompt field just for red lines/guardrails would be a boon and help admins a bit more. For me, I just want the ability to prompt yesterday so we can crack on with this!

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

auto-mate — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 07:53:54 GMT

Hi, where are we with this?
The Hubspot customer agent is still the only AI chat I have with no prompting interface. The Hubspot Sales Prospecting agent is a great example - the description and selling information give us plenty of scope to prompt the agent. The customer agent is really missing this!

Not solved by the way;)

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

STierney — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:24:39 GMT

Hey @auto-mate - thanks for following up here!

As of right now, we're still waiting on those custom instructions to be rolled out. I'd recommend keeping an eye on this knowledge base article for updates in the future, as we'd expect the actions component to house those updates!

Shane, Senior Community Moderator

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

auto-mate — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 10:23:39 GMT

There's a private beta for this now - yay!

Give instructions to your Customer Agent

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

BérangèreL — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 10:32:57 GMT

Hi @auto-mate, That's exciting news, thanks for the heads up and for sharing it with the HubSpot Community! 🎉

Have a wonderful day!
Bérangère

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

chris305 — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:00:59 GMT

Is there a way to sign up for the beta?

Re: Customer Agent custom instructions

BérangèreL — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:48:11 GMT

Hi @chris305, here is how to "Opt into a private beta feature".

I hope this helps!
Bérangère