AI Chatbot Improvements

HubSpot Ideas
1

Hey HubSpot Community,

I’m currently using the HubSpot AI chatbot on our website to handle customer inquiries, and I’ve noticed a bit of an issue when it escalates conversations to human support.

Here’s the current flow we’re seeing:

  1. If the chatbot encounters a question it can’t answer, it offers to “transfer to an agent” and asks the user to “hold for a moment.”
  2. Then, it collects the customer’s email with the message: “Leave your email so we know how to reach you.”
  3. Once submitted, the customer sees: “Thank you for your email. We’ll be in touch as soon as possible.”

The problem? This process sets unclear expectations for customers. There’s no indication if they should continue waiting in the chat for a live response or if they should expect an email follow-up later on. It feels like the chat just leaves them hanging.

Would love to see improvements such as:

  1. Clearer Chat Flow Control

    • The ability to specify whether a live agent will respond immediately or if the chat will close with a promise of a follow-up email. This way, customers aren’t left wondering if they need to stay online.

  2. Custom Messaging

    • Allow us to set custom messages based on the availability of live agents. For example:
      “An agent will join the chat shortly” vs. “We’re currently offline, but we’ll respond via email within the next business day.”

  3. Chat Closure & Callback Options

    • The option to automatically close the chat if no agents are available, with a clear message like:
      “Thanks for reaching out! We’ll call you back shortly or respond via email.”

Why this matters:
In my experience (especially after speaking with third-party support providers), managing live chat can be challenging and costly because customer expectations are often unclear. Many customers treat live chat like an emergency hotline, and if we don’t have the tools to manage expectations properly, it leads to frustration on both sides.

I think adding more control over how the chatbot escalates conversations and communicates with customers would be a game-changer for those of us using HubSpot for customer support.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

2

Yes, agreed 100%. Right now it is very confusing for the customer, which makes it almost unusable. A few basic improvements will make a huge difference.

3

Agreed

4

Anyone find a way around this?? We’re not using the AI agent because we can’t edit the “Thank you for your email. We’ll be in touch as soon as possible.” message. Our system leverages logged in customers so it doesn’t ask for their email it just replies with “Thank you for your email. We’ll be in touch as soon as possible.” Very bad UX.

5

@Falcon16

Customer Agent > Configuration > Hand-off

There is now some control, but I still look forward to some sort of integration into the Chatflows feature so we can really customise how live chats are handled.

6

I agree with you. I also want to use this feature on our website, and I’m currently testing it. I asked a question about closing the chat, but the chatbot didn’t understand the keyword. That’s when I realized that the AI chatbot can’t close the chat on its own—a human needs to do it.

It would be helpful if HubSpot could update the system so the AI chatbot can also close chats by itself.