I have a question about the behavior of the Customer Agents test environment vs. its live environment.
The only difference between the examples below is that the test environment has no feature for form submissions so instead I copy and pasted the contents of the form.
Now my question is what is causing the difference in behavior? Is it because the live environment was form submission through a form connected to the inbox? Even if that is the answer I want to know why that would be a factor that matters.
Hi @OCoppinger ,
I think the main difference here is the way the Customer Agent is receiving the information, rather than the information itself.
In the live example, the visitor is submitting the actual HubSpot form. The inbox is therefore receiving a real form submission, with the submitted values available as structured form/contact data. That gives the Customer Agent more context to work with, and it can then use that information when taking the “create deal” action.
In the test environment, you’re copying and pasting the form contents into the conversation. To a human, the two inputs look almost identical, but to the agent they’re not necessarily the same event. The pasted content is just conversation text; it isn’t necessarily recognized as a HubSpot form submission with all of the associated properties and context.
That would explain why you’re seeing the live agent create the deal and produce the more complete “Request submitted” response, while the test behaves differently.
For a proper apples-to-apples test, I’d try to trigger an actual form submission in the test environment rather than pasting the form values into the chat. Then compare the result.
I’d also check a few things on the test agent:
Are the same CRM properties available to the agent?
Are the form fields mapped to the same contact properties?
Does the test agent have the same “create deal” action enabled/configured?
Are the required properties for creating the deal available in the test conversation?
Is the test agent using the same knowledge sources and action configuration as the live agent?
If the real form submission works in the test environment as well, then you’ve pretty much isolated the difference to the input method.
If it still fails with an actual form submission, then I’d look at the agent/action configuration rather than the form itself.
So I wouldn’t conclude that the Customer Agent is simply behaving differently in Test vs. Live yet. The first thing I’d rule out is the difference between a genuine HubSpot form-submission event and manually pasted form content. That’s the biggest difference I can see from the examples you shared.
Thanks for asking the HubSpot Community about the Customer agent!
As @SBhat3 mentioned (thank you!), yes, the form connection can be the reason for the difference, but not because Customer Agent inherently interprets form submissions differently.
A form connected to the Inbox follows a different processing path from text pasted into the Customer Agent test window. The live submission can create a conversation and, depending on the configuration, a ticket; it can also populate contact or ticket properties and trigger channel routing or form-based automation. The Customer Agent preview is a simulated Email or Live Chat interaction, so pasted text may not include that same structured CRM context or trigger the same routing and workflows.
For the closest comparison, you could submit the live form with a unique test email, inspect the resulting contact, conversation, ticket, and deal, then run the preview as that same CRM contact. Also compare the exact form field names and values with the text entered in the test.
I see that you are on a paid subscription, if you want to investigate further, you can also contact our Support Team and they’ll be happy to look into this for you.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from our Top Experts: Hi @danmoyle and @elizheleva have you experienced the same, please? Do you have any insights to share?
Thanks so much in advance for your help and wishing you a relaxing weekend!
Thanks for the tag @Berangere. I don’t have more to add after your advice for @OCoppinger. That’s what I was thinking as well. No additional experience on my end to share.
