How to Create Chats and Chatbots in HubSpot

To create chats and chatbots in HubSpot, you connect a chat channel to your inbox or help desk, then build a chatflow that either routes visitors to live agents or runs a bot that qualifies leads, books meetings, creates tickets or answers from your knowledge base. The business value comes from designing those conversations around your sales and service process.

For executives, website chat is not a widget decision. It is the first live conversation many buyers have with your company, and it shapes three numbers leaders care about: how quickly a qualified lead reaches a seller, how much it costs to resolve a routine question, and whether customers feel the company is easy to do business with. A well-designed chat program shortens the sales cycle and lowers cost to serve. A poorly designed one frustrates buyers, floods sellers with unqualified conversations and quietly damages the brand.

HubSpot has omnichannel qualities that aim to centralize information, business processes and team management on one platform, and its chat tools follow the same logic without leaving the CRM. They can be installed on any web page and configured to handle frequently asked questions, qualify leads, schedule meetings or escalate the conversation to a person, which helps marketing, sales and service stay aligned. If you already automate your commercial follow-up, this guide complements our article on how to automate business processes with HubSpot Workflows and Sequences.

This guide explains what HubSpot chats and chatbots are today, when each option makes sense, how they improve lead management and service, and the concrete steps to set them up with the right governance.

What are chats and chatbots in HubSpot?

In HubSpot, a chatflow is the conversation experience that appears on your website or other connected channels. It lives in the customer service area of the platform and sends every conversation into a shared inbox or help desk, where it is recorded on the contact's CRM record. There are three ways to staff that conversation.

• Live chat: visitors talk directly with a person from your sales or service team, with routing rules that send each conversation to the right team member.
• Rule-based chatbot: a scripted bot asks questions, captures answers into CRM properties and triggers actions such as booking a meeting or creating a ticket.
• AI customer agent: part of HubSpot's Breeze AI, it answers open questions in natural language using your approved content and hands the conversation to a person when it cannot help.

Chatflows can be created for two types of channel. Website chat covers both live chat and chatbots on the company's sites, while Facebook Messenger supports chats with instant replies and bots, as described in HubSpot's guide to creating a live chat. Taken together, HubSpot's communication structure has two parts, the internal channels that make up the inbox and the website chatflows, as explained in HubSpot's knowledge base article on conversations.

The common thread is that all three run on the same CRM data. A seller who picks up a conversation sees who the visitor is, which pages they read and what they asked the bot, so the customer never has to repeat themselves.

Why chat matters to revenue and customer experience

Chat sits at the point where buying intent is highest. A visitor who opens a chat window on a pricing or product page is often ready for a conversation, and the speed and quality of the response influence whether that interest becomes an opportunity or disappears to a competitor.

The same channel also carries a large share of routine service questions. When those questions are answered instantly with accurate content, service teams spend their time on complex cases that genuinely require expertise. That is the efficiency argument for automation.

There is, however, a trust dimension that leaders should not ignore. A Gartner survey of 5,728 customers found that 64% would prefer that companies did not use AI for customer service, and 53% would consider switching to a competitor if they found out a company was going to use AI for service. Their top concern was that AI would make it harder to reach a person. Gartner's guidance is that AI chatbots should tell customers when they will be connected to an agent and hand off smoothly to a live chat. The lesson is not to avoid automation but to design it so that a human is always one clear step away.

Live chat, rule-based bot or AI agent: which one should you use?

Each option fits a different business situation. Most companies end up combining them, for example a bot that qualifies visitors on product pages and routes the best leads to live sellers during business hours.

Bot templates available in HubSpot

According to HubSpot's official guide to creating a rule-based chatbot, website bots can start from scratch or from templates that include a concierge bot, a qualify leads bot, a meetings bot, a tickets bot, a knowledge base and support bot, and an offline bot. Some of these templates require Service Hub Professional or Enterprise, or Sales Hub, so confirm your subscription before designing the experience.

Bot actions cover the core commercial moments. A bot can ask qualifying questions and save the answers to contact or company properties, share a meeting link, create a support ticket, share knowledge base articles and route the conversation to a team member based on availability.

Live chat also comes in variants. It can open with an immediate welcome message when the visitor starts the conversation, or include a knowledge base search bar so the customer can find an answer before waiting for an agent, a feature HubSpot lists as requiring Service Hub Professional or Enterprise. These models can be directed to different business areas, such as sales, marketing or customer service, depending on how the company is organized.

The AI customer agent

HubSpot's guide to creating a customer agent explains that the agent uses your HubSpot content and public URLs, including knowledge base articles, website pages, landing pages and blog posts, to answer visitors' questions. When it cannot answer, it asks the visitor to rephrase or reassigns the conversation to a human agent, and you decide which users or teams receive those handoffs. It is assigned to a live chatflow on your website and is available in Service Hub Professional and Enterprise.

How do HubSpot chatbots improve lead management?

The strongest business case for chatbots in B2B is not answering questions faster. It is turning anonymous website traffic into qualified, well-documented opportunities without adding headcount.

• Qualification at the first touch. A bot can ask the same questions your sellers would ask, such as company size, need and timing, and save the answers in the CRM so that lead scoring and routing work from facts instead of guesses.
• Faster handoff to sales. Qualified visitors can book a meeting directly on a seller's calendar or be routed to a live seller, removing the delay between interest and conversation.
• Cleaner pipeline. Visitors who are not yet ready can be offered relevant content and nurtured, so sellers spend their time on conversations with real potential.
• Full context for the seller. Every conversation is stored on the contact record, so the first sales call starts where the chat ended.
• Multiple inboxes for different channels. HubSpot's level of customization lets a company create several inboxes that handle different channels for the same business, which makes it practical for small companies and large corporate groups alike.
• Content that nurtures. Chats can also deliver valuable content that supports the lead through the awareness, consideration and decision stages, for example followed by a HubSpot sequence after the conversation.
• Coverage outside business hours. An offline bot collects the request and sets expectations, instead of leaving the visitor without an answer.

For service teams, the equivalent benefits are ticket intake with complete information, instant answers to repetitive questions and better routing of complex cases. You can read more about the service side of the platform in our overview of what HubSpot Service Hub is and what its tools do.

How to create a chatbot in HubSpot step by step

The setup itself is straightforward. The work that makes the difference happens before and after the configuration. The steps below follow HubSpot's current documentation and add the business decisions that should accompany each one.

1. Connect a chat channel. Connect chat to your conversations inbox or help desk. If your website is not hosted on HubSpot, install the HubSpot tracking code first, or the chat will not appear.
2. Create the chatflow. In HubSpot, go to More, then Service, then Chatflows, click Create chatflow and select Website. Choose the inbox or help desk and the language.
3. Choose the experience. Select a rule-based chatbot template that matches the goal, such as qualify leads, meetings or tickets, or set up live chat or the customer agent for open questions.
4. Write the conversation. Edit the welcome message and questions in your brand voice. Keep scripts short and map every answer to a CRM property that your sales or service process actually uses.
5. Define targeting. Decide on which pages the chat appears, using page URL, query parameters or visitor information, and exclude pages where it would distract.
6. Set display and availability. Configure the launcher, triggers such as time on page or exit intent, operating hours and what happens when no one is available.
7. Configure privacy and consent. Set data privacy and consent options appropriate to your markets before going live.
8. Test, publish and measure. Preview the flow, turn it on and review conversations and outcomes weekly during the first month.

What this means for the C-level

Chat and chatbots touch several links in the commercial value chain. Leaders should decide explicitly which outcomes the program must deliver and fund it accordingly.

• Convert: use bots to qualify and route high-intent visitors to sellers fast, and measure the share of chats that become meetings and opportunities.
• Serve: use bots and AI agents to resolve routine questions instantly, and measure resolution and handoff quality, not just deflection.
• Retain and build loyalty: make it effortless to reach a person when needed, because that is the moment customers judge whether you value them.
• Efficiency: quantify the hours that automation removes from sales and service teams and redirect them to higher-value work.

Building chat and chatbots in HubSpot does not require major investments or complex development. Because the tool is integrated with the CRM, each conversation uses the contact's data for real-time personalization, and the system scales. A company can start with a simple chatbot and evolve into more sophisticated interactions as the business grows.

The executive responsibility is governance. Someone must own the content the bot and AI agent use, the rules that route conversations and the metrics that show whether the experience helps or hurts.

A practical checklist before you launch

Use this checklist with your marketing, sales and service leaders before turning on any chatflow.

• Purpose: one clear goal per chatflow, such as qualify, book, resolve or capture after-hours requests.
• Qualification criteria: agreed definition of a qualified lead, written as the questions the bot will ask.
• Routing rules: who receives which conversation, during which hours, and what happens when no one is available.
• Human handoff: a visible, simple way to reach a person, and a message that tells the customer when that will happen.
• Content quality: knowledge base articles reviewed and current before an AI agent is allowed to answer from them.
• Data: every captured answer mapped to a CRM property used in scoring, routing or reporting.
• Metrics: chats started, qualified leads, meetings booked, tickets resolved without escalation, handoff time and customer feedback.
• Review cadence: a weekly review in the first month and a monthly review after that.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting designs conversational experiences as part of the commercial and service process, not as isolated widgets. As a HubSpot partner, we implement these experiences directly in the platform. Our AI agents for sales and customer service practice defines where bots and AI agents add value and where people must stay in the loop, while our service automation and lead management services connect every conversation to routing, scoring and follow-up. We use our ICX Compass methodology to map the customer journey first, then implement the experience in HubSpot.

To decide where chat fits in your buyer's path, map the moments that matter with the ICX Customer Journey Toolkit and identify the questions customers ask at each stage.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a chatflow and a chatbot in HubSpot?

A chatflow is the overall conversation experience that appears on a website or channel, including its targeting, display and availability settings. A chatbot is one way to staff that chatflow with automated questions and actions. A chatflow can also be staffed by live agents or by the AI customer agent, depending on your goals and subscription.

Do I need a paid HubSpot subscription to create a chatbot?

Basic chat and bot capabilities are available broadly, but several templates and features depend on the subscription. HubSpot's documentation notes that the concierge and knowledge base bots require Service Hub Professional or Enterprise, and if/then branching requires Professional or Enterprise plans. Confirm your edition before designing the flow.

Will a chatbot replace my sales or service team?

No, and it should not try to. Bots work best on repetitive, well-defined tasks such as qualification, scheduling and ticket intake. People remain essential for complex questions, negotiations and sensitive situations. The best programs use automation to give people more time for the conversations that create value.

How do I measure whether chat is working?

Track outcomes, not activity. For sales, measure the share of chats that become qualified leads, meetings and opportunities. For service, measure resolution without escalation, handoff time and customer feedback. Review the conversation transcripts regularly, because they reveal gaps in content and process that dashboards miss.

Chat is often the first real conversation a buyer has with your company, and it deserves the same care as any sales meeting. If you want to design chat, chatbots and AI agents that convert more visitors and serve customers better, talk to an ICX consultant and build an experience your customers trust.