Setting up Help Desk or reworking how tickets get assigned? Help Desk gives you three ways to route incoming tickets automatically:
-
Assign to a Specific User or Team
-
Skill-Based Routing (Entreprise plans)
-
Workflow-Based Routing
New to Help Desk? Start here (optional)
Help Desk is a central workspace in HubSpot where all customer questions and conversations come together. Your team works from a single view. Every request becomes a ticket. Agents open tickets, reply, add notes, and close them, all from the same workspace.
A lot of teams still manage requests through shared inboxes or spreadsheets. It works, until it doesn’t. Help Desk fixes that. Everything lands in one place, every ticket has a clear owner, and automation handles the routing. The result: every ticket has an owner, every rep knows what’s open, and customers get faster answers.
How does ticket routing work?
When you connect a channel to your Help Desk (email, chat, form…), HubSpot automatically routes incoming tickets to the right team, pipeline, or rep. The right ticket lands in the right place from the start.
Want to go deeper? Join our free Help Desk coaching session, build it live. Join here
1) Assign to a Specific User or Team
The simplest setup. Tickets from a connected channel go to one person or get distributed across a team automatically.
How it works in practice:
You connect support@yourcompany.com to Help Desk. Every ticket is assigned to your support team, rotating evenly across reps.
More examples:
-
Billing emails go directly to your billing specialist
-
Onboarding form submissions go to your onboarding team
-
Live chat tickets rotate across three reps
When to use it:
Best for small teams or straightforward support processes. Easy to set up, covers most inbound support scenarios.
We walk through this exact setup in our free Small Group Coaching Sessions. Join here
2) Skill-Based Routing
(Available on Enterprise plans)
Tickets are routed based on a rep’s skills or language. HubSpot lets you define skills per rep and match tickets accordingly.
How it works in practice:
A customer writes in Spanish. HubSpot assigns the ticket to a Spanish-speaking rep automatically.
More examples:
-
Technical tickets go to reps with a “Technical Support” skill
-
Enterprise tickets go to senior reps only
-
Product-specific tickets go to the trained team
When to use it:
Best when your team has different areas of expertise. Reduces back-and-forth and gets customers to the right person faster.
3) Workflow-Based Routing
The most flexible option. Tickets are routed based on specific conditions or properties.
How it works in practice:
You create a workflow that says: if a ticket comes in marked as “urgent” and comes from a customer on a paid plan, assign it directly to a senior rep.
More examples:
-
Customers on a paid plan go to a dedicated support team
-
After-hours tickets go to your on-call rep
-
Tickets with “invoice” or “refund” in the subject go to billing
-
High-priority tickets go straight to a team lead
Find the video below showing how to build a ticket routing workflow: High and Urgent tickets go to senior reps, Low and Medium go to the support team.
Create a Ticket Routing Workflow
When to use it:
If your team needs more granular routing logic, based on ticket properties, customer tier, or time of day, this is the option for you. Full control, no manual work once it’s set up.
We walk through workflow creation in our free Small Group Coaching Sessions. Join here
High ticket volume? Let customer agent handle the rest
That is where customer agent comes in. It is HubSpot’s AI agent that handles incoming tickets directly inside Help Desk, automatically, without a human stepping in.
How it works alongside your team:
-
Customer agent resolves what it can
-
When customer agent can’t resolve a ticket, it hands it off to a human rep
-
Your team handles the conversations that need a human touch
Even when your team is offline or at capacity, customer agent keeps tickets moving.
We have a full session dedicated to setting up customer agent. It is free, live, and you build it alongside a HubSpot professor. Join here
Want to see this in action?
The best way to learn routing is to build it live, with a HubSpot professor walking you through the setup.
Our Small Group Coaching Sessions are free for HubSpot customers. HubSpot professors guide you through real setups live, alongside other customers. You follow along and build it in your own portal. Ask questions, learn from other teams, and leave with something ready to use.