AI Chatbot Settings and Email Collection Challenges

[NicoleRinker]

Hi HubSpot Community,

I’m reaching out to share an ongoing challenge we’ve encountered with our AI chatbot setup and to see if anyone else has faced a similar issue—or found a solution!

The Situation

We noticed that when users interact with our AI chatbot, it promises a transfer to a live agent, even though we don’t staff live chat. To address this, we attempted to configure the chatbot to always collect the user’s email so we could follow up asynchronously.

However, it seems that if we already have a customer’s email recorded in our system, the chatbot (specifically the AI Chatbot customer agent) skips asking for it. This behavior isn’t ideal, as it leaves customers uncertain about how their issue will be resolved or when they’ll hear back from us.

 

What We’ve Tried

• Testing Configurations: We checked for email recognition settings within the chatbot and confirmed that no specific options control this behavior in the AI settings.
• Updating the Welcome Message: To mitigate confusion, we’ve adjusted the chatbot’s welcome message to explain that users should expect a follow-up via email.

Remaining Challenges

The chatbot’s behavior still causes confusion for returning customers because:

1. It doesn’t explicitly confirm or collect their email.
2. It creates the impression that live agent support is available when it’s not.

What We Need

We’re looking for advice on:

• Configurations to force the chatbot to always confirm the user’s email, regardless of whether it’s already recorded.
• Alternative solutions to ensure returning customers feel reassured about how and when their issues will be addressed.

Has anyone faced a similar issue with their chatbot? If so, how did you resolve it?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

[JAxani]

Facing the same issue here. It's so basic, yet so impossible! 

[aviafriat26 · Accepted solution]

HubSpot’s chatbot won’t ask for an email if it’s already stored. You can add a message to confirm the email explicitly, like “We have [email address]. Is that right?” For the live agent confusion, tweak the bot message to say, “We’ll follow up via email soon” to set expectations. Let me know if that helps!

[JHanson]

Are you adding that in the Customer Agent "Configuration" section? If so, it doesn't offer personalization tokens, so are you adding {{contact.email}}? Thanks

[NicoleRinker]

Thanks for your response! I don’t actually see the option to tweak any of the AI agent’s language at all. For example, I’d love to remove or modify the 'transferring to an agent' message, but it doesn’t seem like I can edit that anywhere. Let me know if I’m missing something!

 

[DianaGomez]

Hi @NicoleRinker 

Thanks for reaching out to the Community!

I know you had this question a few days ago and I wanted to check if you’ve been able to resolve it. If so, could you share how you did it? And if you haven't been able to fix it yet, just let me know so we can continue investigating. 

Thanks!

Diana

[mtndank]

And an even more basic question... I need the AI bot to collect an email. Otherwise I can't follow up, other than chat.

[mtndank]

I'm facing a similar challenge. I love the breeze ai chatbot but I also want to collect data to help route tickets appropriately. How can i allow the ai bot to handoff to another traditional bot or form?