HubSpot has released HubSpot AI and a new Sales Hub, which enable customer service automation, future sales projections, daily task centralization, and lead prioritization.
Two feature highlights of these offerings are AI Forecasting and AI Agents. AI Forecasting improves the accuracy of future sales projections by connecting with HubSpot’s predictive AI and historical sales tool, while AI Agents assist with customer service automation and communication in chat and email.
The CRM vendor, HubSpot, unveiled the capabilities at its annual conference and product showcase, INBOUND 2023.
Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, gave his reaction to the launch of Hubspot’s new AI capabilities: “We are experiencing a transformative shift with generative AI.
Customer expectations are changing, and businesses now have the opportunity to leverage AI to drive customer connection at scale.
“HubSpot has been thinking deeply about these changes and iterating quickly to help our customers thrive in the age of intelligence.
“We introduced many powerful new features and capabilities at INBOUND 2023, and I’m excited by our progress in becoming the #1 customer platform for scaling companies.”
HubSpot AI Features
- AI Assistants can instantly draft content, create images, generate blog ideas, build websites, and develop reports across the entire HubSpot platform.
- AI Agents help small to medium-sized businesses automate and enhance their customer service via live chat and email. These will launch in early 2024.
- AI Insights includes predictive AI features to improve analysis and recommendations, such as AI-powered forecasting.
- ChatSpot, currently in beta, brings together ChatGPT with unique data sources, like a customer’s Smart CRM, to unlock a customized generative AI experience. ChatSpot launched in March 2023, and since then, it has gained 80,000 users with 20,000 prompts created.
Andy Pitre, EVP of Product at HubSpot, commented on the benefits of generative AI for its customers: “It’s our job at HubSpot to help growing businesses take advantage of new technology without any of the burdens.
With HubSpot AI, we’re taking the guesswork out of generative AI and giving all customer-facing teams across sales, marketing, and service the complete toolkit to help them accomplish even more.
Sales Hub Features
- Lead management and reporting tools allow sales reps to improve their organization, tracking, and prioritization of leads to gain richer data and increased visibility for sales and marketing teams.
- Lead reports, such as source reports and contact rate reports, offer marketers insight into the impact of their leads and provide sales leaders with visibility into the way in which reps interact with high-value leads.
- Prospecting activities reports give sales leaders a greater view of rep outreach effectiveness, which includes conversion rates and activity metrics.
- Intelligent deal management and forecasting use artificial intelligence to allow sales teams to prioritize efforts more effectively and predict outcomes.
- AI Forecasting uses predictive AI and historical sales to project future sales. According to early tests, AI Forecasting has helped teams to improve their accuracy by up to 95 percent.
- Deal insights let reps easily prioritize their deals by providing them with contextual insights into the health of their pipeline and sales process.
- Deal tags categorize deals using colored labels and quick presents to help reps focus on the right deals.
- Scheduling and handoffs enable smooth handoffs to the correct rep, no matter where an opportunity comes from.
- Booking meetings on behalf of others allows reps to action streamlined handoffs between sales development and sales.
- Lead for routing, which is currently in beta, makes sure website leads are qualified and quickly routed to the correct reps.
- HubSpot’s relationship with LinkedIn expands across marketing and sales by syncing HubSpot’s Smart CRM with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. As a result, sellers can be smarter and more efficient in the way they prospect, build relationships, and close deals.
HubSpot says its Sales Hub and LinkedIn are both bringing critical data sources for sales teams closer together. A private beta is due to begin later in September.
Michael Walton, VP of Product, Sales Hub, at HubSpot, spoke about the new Sales Hub: “With buyer behavior evolving quickly, the old playbook of adding more headcount, more activities, and more point solutions to drive sales no longer delivers.
“We reimagined Sales Hub to help sales teams unlock greater productivity while deepening customer connection.
“From prospecting and lead reporting to deal management and forecasting, we’ve doubled down on building the modern sales solution sales teams need to win today and in the future.”
Earlier in the year, HubSpot was forced to downsize by seven percent, equating to approximately 500 team members.
The company came to the decision following operations decelerating in 2022, but it provided the laid-off staff with job transition support, including severance pay, medical benefits, equity, and career support.
Soon after, HubSpot’s CEO provided reassurance to its investors that the company had a bright outlook, despite having previously warned of “challenging times ahead”.
