It's hard to keep track of all your customer interactions, especially as your business grows. It’s even more difficult to manage that customer support manually.
Here and there, you’ll find tools that can automate and optimize this process or that process. While most customer service software solves for something, we love HubSpot’s Service Hub because it solves for everything.
What is HubSpot Service Hub? A platform that helps you smoothly manage both online and offline customer experience, all in one place:
- Support
- Onboarding
- Upselling
- Cross-selling
- With the right strategic mind and investment level, just about anything
B2B customer service and sales teams like yours are using it to improve customer retention and increase new sales every day.
Contents:
- What Is HubSpot Service Hub?
- Pricing
- New Features in 2023
- Integration With Other HubSpot Tools
- B2B Use Cases
What Is HubSpot Service Hub? Review of Main Features
Business folks best know HubSpot as a website, inbound marketing, and sales software platform. One of its newer software platforms is Service Hub.
Launched in 2018 (and relaunched in 2022), HubSpot Service Hub allows teams to streamline customer relationships by bringing data, channels, and service tools into one space.
The main goal of this Hub – and hopefully your team – is to make all types of customers feel heard at all times. Here’s how this digital customer service tool makes it happen:
- Live chat – Use a bot to route visitors to the right people on your services team, and gain context about those visitors. The chat window appears for customers as a clickable widget on your website.
- Help desk & ticketing – Spend less time on data entry, while easily ID’ing priority issues. These tools let you track, organize, and record customer issues in one spot. Deep analytics give you insight into how to improve your support system.
- Automated service – Eliminate manual inefficiencies so your team can focus on solving for the customer. Key features include ticket routing and automation, conversation routing and automation, and automated feedback.
- Knowledge Base – Reduce support team workload by arming customers with educational resources. You can create a whole library of FAQ articles, organized by topic, so customers can help themselves.
- Customer portal – Empower customers to resolve issues quickly with easy access to conversations with a rep. Portal setup doesn't require a developer, and it allows you to connect your help desk and shared inbox.
- Internet calling – Integrate VoIP software so you can call customers directly from the HubSpot platform. Includes call logging and analytics.
- Customer feedback software -- Build surveys you can customize and share with the team. Includes data analysis so you can quickly take action!
HubSpot Service Hub Pricing
For those just getting started or who run small businesses, HubSpot’s customer service software offers a free version with limited features. There are three paid tiers, with more features in each successive tier:
|
HubSpot Service Tier |
Base Price (Monthly) | Notable Fees (One-Time) | Notable Fees (Monthly) | Default User Limit |
| Service Hub Free | Free | None | None | No limit |
| Service Hub Starter | $18 | None | $9 per add'l user | 2 |
| Service Hub Professional | $450 | $750 onboarding fee | $90 per add'l user | 5 |
| Service Hub Enterprise | $1,200 | $3,000 onboarding fee | $120 per add'l user | 10 |
In our experience, Professional is the most common choice for B2B marketers and sellers. However, teams with unique needs and challenges have seen great success with the Enterprise tier’s Custom Objects feature. (Example coming in a bit.) Starter is best for small teams just getting their feet wet with HubSpot.
New Service Hub Features in 2023
A great thing about using HubSpot is that the company constantly updates its Service Hub software based on user feedback. Already in 2023, users have gotten several new features to further boost the customer experience.
The ability to RECEIVE phone calls in HubSpot is one of the big ones. This feature is available at Starter tier and up, as long as you use either Service, Marketing, Sales, or Operations Hub. Answering calls in your desktop browser allows you to easily access records and write notes in the same space. Once you answer the call, it saves to the Call Index Page for post-call review and additional note-taking.
Seamless conversation handoff between inboxes is another new boost to workflow efficiency. Also available from Starter and up, this feature lets reps control how to reassign a conversation. Reps can reassign it to any agent, a specific team or agent, the currently assigned agent or contact owner, or as unassigned. Users can also leave comments on reassigned conversations as a way of providing valuable context.
Other new Service Hub features include:
- Mandatory questions in playbooks (Pro & up)
- Custom phone number property (in beta)
- Session timeout for private content (Pro & up)
- Create custom goals from custom properties, not just default properties (Enterprise)
- Goal endpoints (Pro & up)
Does Service Hub Integrate w/ Other B2B Marketing & Sales Tools?
All five of HubSpot's Hubs are part of the same symbiotic HubSpot CRM ecosystem. The product catalog includes:
When you use two or more hubs together, HubSpot automatically connects your data throughout each platform. With all company tools and data centrally stored, your customer service team can see the whole story of each customer's past interactions with Marketing and Sales. This makes it easier to serve customers in a more effective, personal way.
HubSpot’s service software also integrates with nearly 200 third-party tools (and counting!). Being able to toggle between Facebook Messenger, Google Sheets, etc. helps you quickly take a full snapshot of your customers’ journey.
How Can Service Hub Help B2Bs?
If you run a manufacturing floor or offer healthcare software, you know the value of a cloud-based platform. Here’s how Service Hub can help B2Bs improve new and existing customer relationships with data and connectivity:
- Give customers what they need in-app without having to wait for a ticket response
- Leverage pre-written upsell messages to save time and show the customer what they’re missing out on
- Easily roll out other automated, sequenced emails in each stage of the sales cycle
There are many specific examples of clever, time-saving HubSpot Service Hub implementation. Here are a few of our favorite real-world ideas, from simple to out-there:
Example(s) #1: Ticketing & Automation
- This example client’s basic ticketing system triggers when a customer purchases a product but experiences an issue. It sets up the support team to receive inquiries from a website form submission or a dedicated email inbox (i.e. support@yourcompany.com). This outreach prompts HubSpot to send a ticket/reminder to the responsible party so the team remembers to follow through quickly.
- You can also automate specific actions that happen to a ticket that moves from one stage to another. For example, if a rep moves a deal to Closed inside the software, the customer could automatically receive a “How’d we do?”
- Another example of improving communication and accountability: A ticket comes in, and HubSpot automation assigns it based on the type of request. At the same time, it sends a separate message to the account’s manager to keep them in the loop.
Example #2: Aligning With the Engineering Team
For a B2B niche manufacturer using Service Pro, we created a service pipeline that tracks the progress of engineering drawings and correlates with the sales process. This sales alignment gives reps their own line of communication and processes, while the engineering team has a simultaneous, more specific process.
And it’s all automated (the key to time-saving sales/marketing tricks).
If the sales rep chooses “send to engineering” in his toolkit, HubSpot automatically creates a ticket and sends it. The engineer can now see the customer’s drawings and general expectations. This process doesn’t muddy the waters by making the engineers talk directly to the customer. The engineers never have to touch the sales process.
Example(s) #3: Delivery & Installation
Delivery
A Pro-level user that specializes in B2B vending uses Service Hub to avoid delivery snafus.
When a truck driver gets an ID badge to enter a building, he records the badge’s expiration date, the badge ID number, etc. in HubSpot. Then, 60 days prior to the badge’s expiration, an automated message notifies the supervisor on that delivery route that renewal is necessary. The ticket moves to the Renewal stage, and once that happens, the user sends it to the Renewed stage.
Thanks to this system, the vendor no longer faces service hiccups in which the delivery driver can’t enter a customer’s building.
Installation
Another example from the same company: streamlining the installation process. This second setup defines what should happen when the B2B gets a new customer, a sale closes, a contract is signed, and they want to confirm installation.
Once the sale closes, an automated process copies certain values over to the Installation Service pipeline. It tracks scheduling, issues an internal “30 days from installation” notification, and seconds the customer a “7 days from installation” message. When the process reaches each stage, automation assigns tasks to the appropriate employee.
It’s like a high-level project management tool that aligns the service and installation teams with the customer.
Example #4: Tracking Safety & Service
This use case is specific to the Enterprise tier. A mining equipment manufacturer (think large, concrete layers and exploding things) wanted to track mission-critical issues affecting its products.
We created Custom Objects in the Service Hub so this B2B could track each one of its machines worldwide, down to:
- Serial #
- Location
- Model
- Year
- Engine model
- Axle model
When a service, safety, or replacement issue comes up, it’s logged in HubSpot. This associates that ticket w/ the custom object’s serial number and follows that ticket until resolution.
Where the technology really gets helpful is in fault analysis. The customer service team can review and report on any machines, locations, or dealers that are causing trouble on a recurring basis. The system automatically prioritizes tickets that are safety or “equipment down” issues.
This B2B holds monthly meetings with its dealer and customer networks to report how many issues were opened and closed in the previous month, and how long it took to close them. The manufacturer heavily relies on Service Hub to drive continuous improvement!
HubSpot Service Hub Onboarding
Just about any B2B looking to grow its revenue can benefit from a matching level of commitment to customer service. Many consider Service Hub the best customer service management software for accomplishing that.
We recommend Enterprise since Custom Objects offer so many unique solutions, but any tier is a good start toward improving your reputation and sales pipeline.
HubSpot has specialists who’ll help your whole team get up and running quickly with a personalized onboarding plan and tech support. After that, you can use the HubSpot Community forums, HubSpot Academy training for Service Hub, and HubSpot Knowledge Base to become an expert in no time.
There are also inbound marketing and sales agencies that specialize in HubSpot onboarding and training. If you seek better team efficiency through HubSpot, consider a consultation to learn how a HubSpot Partner Agency can help:
(Editor's note: This article was originally published in February 2022 and was recently updated to reflect current features and pricing.)
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If you are executing digital marketing, congratulations! You are most likely already one step ahead of your competition, and making strides to meaningfully connect with prospects online. But, how do you know if you’re seeing continual success year over year, and improving your metrics?
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