How to setup a HubSpot chatbot: A step-by-step guide

Let’s be honest, chatbots are everywhere these days. They’ve gone from being a cool new thing to a must-have for talking to website visitors, figuring out who the good leads are, and giving people instant answers. HubSpot has its own chatbot builder to get you started, but getting one running well takes a bit of know-how.

This guide will show you exactly how to set up a HubSpot chatbot, from beginning to end. We’ll go over all the essential steps, from picking a template to customizing the chat flow. We’ll also dig into how you can go beyond a simple, rule-based bot to build something that feels genuinely helpful.

What you’ll need before you start

Before we jump in, let’s get a few things sorted out first. Trust me, having this stuff ready will make the whole setup process go a lot smoother.

• A HubSpot Account: You’ll need a HubSpot account with access to either Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub (Starter, Professional, or Enterprise). Keep in mind that some of the fancier features are only on the pricier plans.

• The right permissions: Make sure you have "Chatflow permissions" to create and edit chatflows. If you can’t see the options we’re about to talk about, this is probably why.

• A connected chat channel: Your conversations inbox needs a connected chat channel to it. This is where you’ll set your team’s availability and tweak how the chat widget looks.

• The HubSpot tracking code: If your website isn’t hosted on HubSpot, you need to have the HubSpot tracking code installed on your pages. The chatbot won’t show up without it.

The 5-step setup process

Okay, let’s get our hands dirty. HubSpot’s builder is pretty visual and easy to get the hang of, but following these steps will make sure you don’t miss anything important.

Step 1: Navigate to chatflows and choose your channel

First things first, you have to actually find the chatbot builder in your HubSpot portal.

1. In your HubSpot account, make your way to Service > Chatflows.

2. Look for the Create chatflow button in the top right corner and give it a click.

3. It’ll ask where you want this chatbot to live. Go ahead and choose Website.

4. Next, you’ll pick an inbox and a primary language for your bot.

A screenshot of the HubSpot dashboard, showing where to find the chatflows to begin the setup.

Step 2: Select a chatbot template

HubSpot gives you a few templates to get you up and running quickly. You can either grab a pre-built flow or be brave and build one from scratch.

• Qualify Leads Bot: This one asks all the typical qualifying questions to see if a visitor is a potential customer.

• Meetings Bot: Helps visitors book a meeting with someone on your team without the back-and-forth emails.

• Tickets Bot: Creates a support ticket directly in your Service Hub.

• Knowledge Base + Support Bot (Pro+): This bot tries to answer questions by searching your HubSpot knowledge base.

Pick the template that makes the most sense for your goal. For this walkthrough, let’s say we’re setting up a simple support bot.

An example of the lead qualification bot template in HubSpot.

Step 3: Build your conversation flow

This is the fun part, where you get to be the director and design the conversation. The builder is a visual editor where you add and connect different "actions" to map out how the chat will go.

You’ll want to start by editing the Welcome message. It’s the first thing people see, so make it friendly and clear. After that, you can add more steps by clicking the little plus icon. Here are a few of the common actions you’ll probably use:

• Ask a question: A straightforward way to get information from the visitor.

• If/then branches (Pro+): This lets you add some logic. For example, if a user says they’re interested in "Sales," you can send them down a completely different path than someone who picks "Support."

• Send to team member: Hands the conversation off to a live agent.

• Submit ticket: Gathers up all the info and neatly packages it into a new support ticket.

A view of the HubSpot chatbot builder, focusing on editing the welcome message.

Step 4: Define your targeting rules

Once you have your conversation mapped out, click over to the Target tab. This is where you get to decide when and where your chatbot appears. You can get pretty specific here based on:

• Website URL: You can have the bot show up only on certain pages, like your pricing page or contact page.

• Visitor Information: You can target people based on their device, country, or even known info if they’re already a contact in your CRM.

For example, you could have a support bot that only appears on your help center pages and a sales bot that only pops up on your product pages.

Step 5: Customize the display and publish

We’re almost at the finish line. The last step is to hop over to the Display and Options tabs to put the final polish on everything.

• Display: Here you can customize the chat heading, the little avatar, and how the chat widget behaves on desktop and mobile. Do you want it to pop open on its own or wait for the user to click? Your call.

• Options: This is for the smaller details, like the typing delay between messages (to make it feel more real), how long a session lasts before timing out, and the data privacy consent messages for GDPR and CCPA.

When you’re happy with how it all looks and feels, click Preview to give it a test drive. If it’s all working the way you want, just flip the toggle switch at the top of the page to publish your chatbot and set it live on your site.

Common challenges with HubSpot chatbots

The HubSpot chatbot builder is a great place to start. But as your business grows and your needs get a bit more complex, you’ll probably start bumping into a few walls.

First, its knowledge is pretty siloed. A HubSpot bot is fantastic at finding answers in the HubSpot Knowledge Base, but what about all that useful information scattered across your Google Docs, Confluence, past support tickets, or Notion pages? Trying to copy all of that into HubSpot manually is a huge, never-ending project.

A screenshot of the HubSpot Knowledge Base, illustrating where the chatbot's information is stored.

Second, the "AI" in the more advanced bots isn’t quite as smart as it sounds. The bots are mostly rule-based, meaning you have to manually build out every single conversational path with if/then logic. This can get incredibly complicated fast, and the bot can easily get stuck if a user asks a question in a way you didn’t plan for.

Finally, there’s no good way to safely test changes. You can’t run a simulation to see how a new conversation flow would have handled thousands of your past customer chats. This makes it a bit nerve-wracking to automate new types of questions, because you can’t be sure how the bot will do until it’s live with real people.

Upgrade your HubSpot chatbot with eesel AI

If those limitations are sounding a little too real, you might need an AI platform that works with HubSpot but isn’t stuck inside it. This is where a tool like eesel AI comes into the picture. Instead of asking you to ditch your helpdesk, eesel AI connects to the tools you’re already using, including HubSpot, to add a truly smart automation layer right on top.

Integrate all your knowledge in one click (not just HubSpot’s KB)

Unlike the native bot, eesel AI can instantly pull together your knowledge from everywhere. With one-click integrations, you can connect it to:

• Your Helpdesk: It learns from all your past HubSpot tickets to automatically get your brand voice and common answers down pat.

• Your Wikis: Connect it straight to your company knowledge in Confluence, Google Docs, and Notion.

• Other Tools: You can even integrate it with internal chats on Slack, PDFs, and your e-commerce platform like Shopify.

All of a sudden, your AI has the full context of your business, letting it answer a much wider range of questions correctly, without you having to do any manual data entry.

Automate smarter with AI that learns from past tickets

eesel AI isn’t about rigid if/then branches. It uses generative AI to figure out what your customers are actually asking and gives them natural, human-sounding answers based on all the knowledge you’ve connected. It’s also completely customizable, so you can define its personality, tone of voice, and what it’s allowed to do, from sorting tickets to looking up order details.

Test and deploy with confidence using simulation

One of the coolest features in eesel AI is its simulation mode. Before you ever turn the bot on for real customers, you can test it on thousands of your past HubSpot tickets. The dashboard gives you a clear report card on its potential resolution rate and shows you exactly how it would have answered every single one of those questions. This risk-free testing lets you roll out automation feeling good about the results.

Tips for a successful chatbot setup

No matter which tool you go with, a few good habits will help make sure your chatbot is actually helpful.

• Start with a clear goal: Don’t try to make your bot do everything on day one. Pick one specific job to start with, like qualifying new leads or answering your top 5 most frequent support questions.

• Give it some personality: A chatbot doesn’t have to sound like a robot. Give it a name and a friendly, helpful tone that matches your brand.

• Always provide an escape hatch: Make it super easy for people to ask for a human if the bot gets confused or if they have a tricky problem.

• Review and iterate: Check in on your conversation logs every so often to see where the bot is succeeding and where it’s struggling. Use what you learn to make it smarter over time.

From basic bots to intelligent automation

So there you have it, you now know how to set up a HubSpot chatbot to talk with visitors and handle simple tasks. It’s a great feature that comes with your HubSpot subscription and a solid first step into conversational support.

But when you’re ready to move on from simple, rule-based bots to a truly intelligent AI agent that can learn from all your company knowledge and solve complex problems all on its own, it might be time to look beyond the built-in tools.

With eesel AI, you can boost your current HubSpot setup with a powerful AI platform that automates support, drafts replies for your agents, and gives you the confidence to automate a whole lot more.

Ready to see what a truly intelligent AI agent can do? Try eesel AI for free and go live in minutes.