Latest / Sidekick's What Just Shipped / HubSpot Customer Agent handoffs your support team can trust | Shipped Sep 2026
Transcript
- Rob (AI host): Your customer explains everything to the chatbot, gets passed to a human, and has to explain it all again. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's Customer Agent lets you decide when it hands off, who gets the conversation, and what the customer sees. Rob (AI host): Stick with us for the one routing option that hands off even when nobody's there to pick it up. Narrator (AI voice): This is Sidekick's What Just Shipped, presented by Sidekick Strategies. Narrator (AI voice): Your hosts, Rob and Dana, are AI. Narrator (AI voice): The voices are synthetic, the research is real, and humans check every claim before it reaches you. Rob (AI host): Real quick: Dana and I are AI hosts. Rob (AI host): We've never worked a support queue, and we're reading HubSpot's help article on the customer agent's handoff process, updated this week. Dana (AI host): For this one, today I'm playing the support manager at a meal-kit subscription company, with separate billing, delivery, and retention teams. Rob (AI host): Then this one's yours. First, who has the customer agent? Rob (AI host): HubSpot lists the Professional and Enterprise tiers of every hub, plus Smart CRM, and it uses HubSpot Credits. Dana (AI host): Okay. When does the agent give up and pass a chat to a person? Rob (AI host): By default, in three cases. Rob (AI host): It can't answer the question, the visitor asks for a human, or the agent is paused. Dana (AI host): And if I want more reasons than that? Rob (AI host): You write custom handoff guidelines. Rob (AI host): HubSpot's example is a visitor who mentions Cancellation, Refund, or Can't log in. Dana (AI host): Where do those guidelines live? Rob (AI host): Click More, then Service, then Customer Agent. Rob (AI host): In the left sidebar, click Train, then Human handoff, then Create guidelines. Rob (AI host): You name it, write when to hand off, and there are prebuilt templates too. Dana (AI host): Can different customers get different rules? Rob (AI host): Yes. Each guideline can apply to all customers, or to one customer agent segment. Dana (AI host): Then what happens at the moment of handoff? Rob (AI host): You pick one of three options, and chat and email are set up separately. Rob (AI host): Live handoff assigns the conversation to the next available human right away. Rob (AI host): Async handoff assigns it to someone who follows up later. Rob (AI host): And Don't hand off keeps the customer agent answering. Dana (AI host): Hm, three doors, not two. Rob (AI host): Next, where it goes. Rob (AI host): You can send everything to one inbox or help desk, with the users or teams you choose. Rob (AI host): Or, for help desk channels, pick a ticket-based workflow, so different issues land with different teams. Rob (AI host): With that option, the customer agent creates a ticket and moves it to the help desk. Dana (AI host): Who can be on the receiving end of all this? Rob (AI host): Only users with an assigned Sales or Service seat can be in your routing rules. Rob (AI host): And to edit ticket assignment routing, you need customer agent editor permissions, an assigned seat, and Account Access or Super Admin permissions. Dana (AI host): What if my whole team is offline? Rob (AI host): Here's the sneaky part. Rob (AI host): The customer agent assigns based on user availability, not your chat widget's availability. Rob (AI host): And if you choose Team only, availability isn't checked at all. Rob (AI host): It hands off even when nobody is available. Rob (AI host): HubSpot suggests the Specific users and teams option instead. Dana (AI host): Yikes, a handoff to an empty room. Rob (AI host): You also write the messages customers see when your team is available or unavailable, and HubSpot translates them automatically into the visitor's language. Dana (AI host): Nice, one message, every language. Rob (AI host): A workflow template called Reassign Tickets for Customer Agent Handoff rotates the ticket owner based on the channel the ticket came from. Rob (AI host): And a property called Customer Agent ticket status updates on its own at handoff, so you can see which tickets need your team. Rob (AI host): Here's a made-up scenario. Rob (AI host): A meal-kit company adds a guideline: any mention of Refund or Cancellation triggers a handoff. Rob (AI host): Chat uses live handoff, and a ticket-based workflow sends refunds to billing and cancellations to retention. Rob (AI host): Their unavailable message tells customers a person will reply in the morning. Dana (AI host): And the morning shift checks Customer Agent ticket status to see what's waiting. Rob (AI host): Why it matters: the handoff decides whether a customer feels helped or bounced. Dana (AI host): And whoever picks it up deserves context, not a blank ticket. Rob (AI host): So which teams feel this most? Dana (AI host): Our research points to support operations managers running several queues, RevOps leaders who own the CRM data model, and growing companies with three or more support teams. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Hey, it's George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Full honesty, this is my AI voice clone, made with my permission. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Smart routing only works when the properties behind it are clean, so how healthy is your CRM data? George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Our data health scorecard asks ten questions and scores your HubSpot data on completeness, accuracy, consistency, governance, and automation. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): In about five minutes you get a letter grade and a list of what to fix first. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Look under tools at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Dana (AI host): Rob, what about the agent collecting details before it hands off? Rob (AI host): That's the feature our September write-up covers, an action called Collect Ticket Properties. Rob (AI host): Before the handoff, the agent asks the visitor questions, writes the answers to the ticket as properties, and a workflow routes the ticket. Dana (AI host): Does HubSpot's help article describe it? Rob (AI host): Not yet. The handoff article and the actions article, both checked today, don't mention it. Rob (AI host): And the write-up itself says HubSpot marks it as a current development plan that's subject to change. Dana (AI host): So it may not be in my account yet. Rob (AI host): Right. Rob (AI host): Look under Train, then Human handoff, and if you see it, test it in a sandbox first. Rob (AI host): The no-limit claim on properties is also ours, not HubSpot's. Dana (AI host): What can I do today, with what HubSpot has documented? Rob (AI host): Use the actions library. Rob (AI host): Under Train, then Actions, you can add actions like Update CRM object or Enroll visitor in workflow, up to twenty actions in total. Dana (AI host): And if an action touches someone's account details? Rob (AI host): You set a protection level. None runs it without checking. Rob (AI host): Match email confirms the visitor's email matches their contact record. Rob (AI host): Verify email sends a link, and the action only runs after they click it. Dana (AI host): Okay, that's a real guardrail. Rob (AI host): And HubSpot says sensitive changes, like account access or credentials, should only send secure links or instructions, not happen inside the chat. Rob (AI host): You can preview each action's triggers before you publish it. Dana (AI host): So what's my plan for this week? Rob (AI host): Step one: write one custom handoff guideline for your most sensitive topic, like refunds. Dana (AI host): Step two: choose live or async handoff, once for chat and once for email. Rob (AI host): Step three: if you route to Team only, switch to Specific users and teams, so nothing lands on an empty shift. Dana (AI host): Step four: write your available and unavailable messages. Rob (AI host): Step five: watch the Customer Agent ticket status property, and check whether Collect Ticket Properties shows up in your account. Dana (AI host): Meal-kit verdict: I'd set up guidelines and routing this week, but I wouldn't plan around collecting ticket properties until it shows up in my own account. Rob (AI host): This week's checkpoint: open Human handoff and compare the chat tab with the email tab. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's two help articles and our September write-up are in the show notes, with more at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Rob (AI host): Thanks for listening, and may your queues stay short. Dana (AI host): Route it right, then rest. Narrator (AI voice): Sidekick's What Just Shipped is presented by Sidekick Strategies, with AI hosts Rob and Dana and AI-generated music. Narrator (AI voice): We're independent, and not affiliated with HubSpot. Find our research at Sidekick Strategies dot com.