About the P.S. from Attacat newsletter
P.S. = Problem Solved
This monthly newsletter aims to create the “I didn’t realise HubSpot could do that” moments for our clients and other invested HubSpot users. Each month, we’ll share feature updates, opinions, and inspiring real-world examples, large and small, to help you rethink what’s possible with HubSpot.
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In this edition
- The art of the possible
- HubSpot updates
- Troubleshooting corner
- Form submissions from site going to spam folders
- Bot-created live chat tickets swamping customer services
- Good question!
The art of the possible
Challenges big and small that we have been working on recently that might spark an idea for you.
Building a brand ambassador system
Do you have brand ambassadors or third parties promoting you but aren’t sure how they’re performing?
Background: Reaching university students is key priority for our client. One initiative is appointing student ambassadors on each campus to promote the brand.
The problem: No way to measure how effective the ambassador program is, even in aggregate.
The solution: Creating a landing page with a HubSpot form and assigning each ambassador a unique URL. Interested students would use this link to register, and their submission would be credited to the ambassador. This enables HubSpot to report the impact at overall, campus, and individual levels.
The “clever” bit: Hidden fields in the HubSpot form capture the association between the lead and the ambassador.
What other situations might this apply to? This “unique form” approach works for sales agents, referral partners, or campaigns like exhibitions or videos—anywhere you control the exact sign-up URL. (Tip: use a QR code.)
When you have to offer a sub-optimal customer experience
There are countless reasons why you may not be able to offer the level of service your customers expect. Could clearer communication help?
Background: Our client fulfils orders on behalf of a government department.
The problem: Orders took far longer than expected because they had to be individually approved by another government department. The process was slow, inconsistent and completely outside the control of our client. Yet it was the client’s reputation that suffered.
The solution: Using HubSpot’s Customer Portal feature to show order progress.
The “clever” bit: Clearly highlighting where delays occurred, who was responsible(!) and setting expectations from the start.
What other situations might this apply to? Any scenario involving manual or delayed approvals e.g supplier payments, onboarding, recruitment, credit checks, insurance claims.
Reporting on Gross Margin in HubSpot
Revenue isn’t always the most important metric for a business.
The problem: An IT consultancy uses gross margin as its primary KPI across the business, however HubSpot does not allow reporting of gross margin by default.
The dilemma: There is no perfect solution, just options with pros and cons:
- Option 1: Adding a property in deals to record gross margin and then custom-building the reporting. The advantage is that it doesn’t break anything, so all functionality that will need top-line revenue figures still work (e.g. invoicing). The downside is that creating the reports is time-consuming and always going to be limited.
- Option 2: Recording gross margin in HubSpot’s default “Amount” property (i.e. the primary £ value used in HubSpot). This then means that all default reporting uses gross margin, as the client wants. The risk of this approach is that functionality that does require revenue is likely to be compromised.
The solution: Having tried option 1 and felt that the reporting was not strong enough, the client opted for option 2. In their case, the downsides were limited by the fact that they have a HubSpot integration with NetSuite that handles revenue-dependent functions like invoicing, leaving HubSpot to focus on sales and marketing performance.
The “clever” bit: The “amounts” are all calculated from price and cost data held within HubSpot, it would still be possible to calculate revenue figures, giving a fair degree of future proofing.
Bringing customer service and marketing to Magento ecommerce
Do you offer ecommerce but still prioritise offline relationships?
Background: A traditional in-store retail service is the core of our client’s offering. We had integrated HubSpot with their point-of-sale system to modernise the in-store experience. They also ran a Magento-based ecommerce site.
The problem: High net worth customers expect a seamless experience. It’s not a good look to call a customer who’s visited the shop and already ordered online to ask if they’re still interested!
The solution: Integrating HubSpot and Magento. Step one was to surface orders in HubSpot so the sales representatives had a full picture of a customer’s on and offline order history. HubSpot now also powers live chat, cart abandonment and customer service for ecommerce customers, extending the experience far beyond what Magento can do alone.
HubSpot updates
Are these the problem solvers you’ve been waiting for?
Customer Agent can now work with any of your systems
AI bots are now handling increasing numbers of customer enquiries, often delivering faster and better answers than human agents. Customer Agent (aka Breeze Customer Agent) is HubSpot’s tool for this. It’s able to learn from all your historic tickets, knowledge base and any other resources you want to give it access to. With its latest update, it can now access your customer’s record to give tailored replies. It can even connect with any of your systems via API. So it can handle tasks like updating statuses, retrieving invoices, or resetting passwords.
Why do we care?
If you can resolve 50%+ of enquiries before human involvement, the time savings are obvious. Don’t be put off by the terrible chatbot experiences we have all experienced, but do invest time to get it right. Klarna offers an interesting case study: a year ago, they fired their entire customer service team, claiming AI was the only way forward. Now they are hiring again, this time with AI supporting, not replacing, staff.
Learn more about Customer Agent in this video:
Expanded automation issue troubleshooting tool
You can now view and manage more types of automation issues directly in the workflows tool, making it easier to identify and fix problems.
Why do we care?
With any tool that empowers your teams to deliver change, mistakes will happen. As HubSpot is centred on customer interaction, errors can have a big impact, so any tool that will help unearth and resolve issues quickly will always be welcome.
More information being pulled into Sales Workspace
HubSpot continues to enhance Sales Workspace. This month sees an improved dashboard and increased information with deals – prioritisation indicators, company news, AI suggested tasks, and risk scores all to help sales reps be more productive and better prepared for calls.
Why do we care?
As discussed in a previous edition, Sales Workspace (essentially a home page in HubSpot for sales reps) has been well received by sales teams. These updates make it an even more valuable daily tool.
Automatic enrichment of contact properties based on incoming email
For a while, HubSpot has been able to automatically create contacts from incoming email, detecting names, titles etc in signatures. This new Breeze enhancement goes further, detecting:
- Additional contacts mentioned in conversations
- Dates of return from holiday (from out-of-office replies)
- Employees leaving a company (from email confirming their departure)
Why do we care?
Productivity increases always make us happy. We wanted to highlight this one to encourage caution. We’re not sure yet how well it handles known data or how accurate it’s detection is, although accuracy is likely to improve over time. Please share your experiences as you try it.
Host HubSpot content on a WordPress subfolder
SEOs and developers have long waited for this! HubSpot content (like landing pages) can now be hosted on your main domain instead of a subdomain.
Why do we care?
WordPress is still widely used yet multiple domains can complicate site management and hurt user experience and SEO. This update removes a key objection to using HubSpot for blogs and other content.
Why do we care?
Multiple domains can complicate site management, hurt user experience and SEO. This update removes a key objection to using HubSpot for blogs and other content.
Troubleshooting corner
Niggles put to bed. (A gentle bit of self-promotion to highlight the sort of small but painful challenges that we often end up sorting for clients). Please feel free to share your own discoveries that might help others.
- Form submissions from site going to spam folders → Identified that the cause was the use of a shared email so connected the form directly to the inbox
- Bot-created live chat tickets swamping customer services → Implemented workflow using calculated property to close tickets after 10 minutes of inactivity unless out of hours.
Good question!
Our view on questions we’ve been asked or have asked recently.
Q. Can we use HubSpot to generate and send personalised certificates to people that complete our courses?
A. We’d do this using Portant, a HubSpot app that has been designed to create personalised documents using HubSpot properties. HubSpot workflows would make the request, Portant could generate the pdf certificate that could be stored on the associated record in HubSpot and then sent to the successful participant automatically!
Have you joined the Edinburgh HubSpot User Group?
The Edinburgh HUG is a community of HubSpot users who meet regularly to share best practices, learn about new features, and network. Join us to connect with other professionals and enhance your HubSpot skills.
Until next time,
