HubSpot's AI Integration: Revolutionizing Platform Performance

0:00So the news here is that HubSpot, which is of course a company very well known for its suite of social media, digital marketing, and customer relationship management, CRMTools, is setting its sights on the future of customer acquisition and communication. So at the Inbound 2023 conference, if you don't know, that is, you know, HubSpot's big marketing conference they host. I've been to it in the past. It is, you know, pretty good. I think I did it during COVID and so it was all like remote, but I'm sure in person it's even better. In any case, HubSpot has recently pulled back the curtain on HubSpot AI, which is a comprehensive set of AI features seamlessly integrated across the company's existing platforms.

0:39So if you've used HubSpot, you'll know they typically have some very solid software. It's built really well. I used to use it quite a lot at my first job out of college. We used it for our CRM. We used it for social media scheduling and all that kind of stuff. I worked in the marketing department. And so this is a software I'm definitely very familiar with. But I definitely can see a ton of areas where AI would help because I was stuck doing many things manually that were, you know, not super fun. So Christopher Miller, who's HubSpot's VP of Product for AI, offered a couple insights into the new offerings in an exclusive interview he did recently.

1:18And Miller elaborated saying, quote, it's platform wide AI powered tooling that helps small to medium sized businesses grow more effectively. So these features span the entire platform. So let's dive into a couple of the features, talk about them a little bit more in detail. So HubSpot AI introduces a couple things that, you know, they say are designed to push the boundaries of automated assistance and predictive analysis. But here's the main things. The first one is an AI assistant. So the or essentially AI assistants. And these are capable of drafting emails, conceiving image designs and even generating blog post ideas.

1:54That seems more just like a tiny little tool. I don't know. Generating blog post ideas seems kind of lukewarm of a tool. But of course, one that's drafting emails, that's more useful. Image designs, that's more useful. So I'll give it to them. I'll give them two thumbs up, one thumbs down on those. In any case, they have some AI agents. So slated for launch next year, these virtual customer service attendants aim to enhance customer service capabilities through live chat and email. Okay, let's dive into that for a second. So they're actually creating AI agents. I think this is a no-brainer, right?

2:33HubSpot works in this space. And up until now, I don't believe they have had a very strong response to customer service. So essentially what they're going to be doing is creating virtual customer service representatives. Now, what does that mean? They say that that means that it's going to enhance customer service capabilities. What I think it means is whether it's them or someone else, it's going to replace customer service representatives. So if you know, yeah, I just think essentially, these things are going to be customer service bots, they're going to solve most of your customer service problems.

3:07HubSpot already has access to a ton of company data. They're plugged into a lot of your different systems, they know a lot about what you do, you could probably feed it a ton of information about what your return policy, what your refund policy, what your, you know, all of your different policies are, and it'll just have these bots and these agents that go and chat with people. And I think a lot of people that are doing, you know, a lot of customer service reps are going to get laid off. I think HubSpot is going to be able to bump the price quite a bit on this. And like, just to give you an idea for anyone that hasn't used HubSpot, I believe, uh, my, the, the last company I worked at that used HubSpot, we're paying over$50 ,000 a year for our HubSpot subscription.

3:45So these things can be quite like costly compared to other software. Um, and I'm sure, you know, a bit of that was the seats we had and whatnot. But like, we weren't a huge company. I think there's like 130 of us in the company or something. So it's like, wasn't a massive company to be shelling out like 50 grand for a software, we used it for a lot, it was all of our customers for the whole company were stored there at our sales team used that we used it for emails and for social media and for like a lot of things. So not to say like, it wasn't like a very well used product, but it did cost like 50 grand plus 60 grand, you know, a year.

4:20And so I think people are used to spending a lot on HubSpot. And if you can start tacking on something like a virtual customer service, that's completely done by AI. And if you can, you know, let go of half 75%, 80%, or 100 % of your customer service representatives and replace it with this, people are going to pay a lot of money for the cost savings there. Okay, the third thing they launched is AI Insights. So this predictive analytics tool assists in smarter decision making so yeah that sounds like a good a good ai tool there the last one is chat spot um which is a public beta offering that leverages open ai chat gpt of course and combines it with hubspot's smart crm data it can answer a bunch of different questions related to clients and business prospects and even help refine marketing content chat spot also already has 80 000 users i've heard it you know like shout it out on a bunch of different podcasts.

5:16If you don't know, HubSpot has purchased a bunch of podcasts. They paid for a bunch of people to start podcasts. There's a My First Million podcast. There's a bunch of different podcasts that HubSpot is in. They got a HubSpot podcast network, I think. They've been shouting it out on a bunch of these. They got 80 ,000 users. Kudos to them on that. It's kind of a no-brainer. It makes sense. You just chat with this thing, ask it questions about your company, about your data and it's an easy way to get data. So Miller referring to ChatSpot said, quote, the focus shifted rapidly from a side project to something much bigger.

5:51And yeah, so I guess they see a lot of potential here. So to really adapt to the rapidly changing sales landscape powered by AI, HubSpot has also revamped its sales hub and they have a couple key upgrades included. So one is a unified dashboard that streamlines prospecting activities, whatever sounds like a UX kind of thing. They have advanced lead management and reporting utilities, which offer auto-generated reports on lead progress. That's kind of nice, right? That's really convenient to get those automatic or like auto-generated reports. They also have intelligent deal management, which is a feature that uses predictive AI to help prioritize deals and project future sales with 95 % accuracy.

6:29This is actually really, really gangster in my opinion. Like this is a cool feature, right? They're essentially using predictive AI to help prioritize deals. Like this deal is more likely to close than that deal, right? Like maybe like the prospect seems a lot more open, a lot more interested, has a lot more questions, there's all sorts of things. And apparently this thing can predict, you know, it can project future sales with a 95 % accuracy. So very, very cool. I think that's the slam dunk when it comes to all of this new sales AI features, all the new sales stuff. That's really the feature that I think is kind of the standout winner that I have not seen necessarily anywhere else.

7:05So I'm talking about this Miller noted, quote, generative AI may be the talk of the town, but predictive AI continues to be extremely crucial for business. He's kind of emphasizing the comprehensive utility of AI powered insights across the platform. And what I think is interesting is HubSpot isn't, you know, working in isolation. It has expanded its collaboration with LinkedIn by allowing users to integrate data from LinkedIn sales navigator into HubSpot smart CRM. And the feature is currently in private beta testing right now. But I think with all of these advanced AI features, partnerships with category leaders like LinkedIn, OpenAI, and a focus on kind of being invaluable from, you know, day zero, HubSpot really kind of aims to be the go-to, like the go-to platform for small businesses, medium-sized businesses looking to navigate the complexities of modern marketing and sales.

7:53They said, quote, our mission is to ensure that SBMs don't find themselves overwhelmed by emerging technologies like generative AI. Often they don't have the luxury of time or resources for in-depth research and effective implementation. So HubSpot apparently aims to fill that gap, acting as a trusted platform for growth. That was Miller that said that. In any case, it remains to be seen how these advancements are actually going to reshape the whole landscape of small and medium-sized businesses, but I think the initial indications are pretty promising. HubSpot is already like a very trusted name.

8:24I know like a ton of people use it. And with the AI-driven expansion, I think it's clear that the company is very committed to staying ahead of the curve. So definitely one that we will continue to follow into the future.