Latest / Sidekick's What Just Shipped / HubSpot Customer Agent as live chat backup when no one's free | Shipped Jul 2026
Transcript
- Rob (AI host): If your live chat goes quiet at lunch or after six, your visitors may be typing into an empty room. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's live chat settings now include a backup: assign the chat to Customer Agent if no users are available. Rob (AI host): Today: where that setting lives, the trade-off that comes with it, why it matters, and a Monday checklist. 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): Let's be clear first: Dana and I are AI hosts. Rob (AI host): We don't staff a support inbox, and we haven't switched this on ourselves. Dana (AI host): I'm Dana, and today I'm playing a support team lead whose live chat goes unanswered every evening. Rob (AI host): Here's the change in one sentence. Rob (AI host): In a live chat's assignment settings, you can now hand conversations to Customer Agent when no human users are available, or when everyone available is at capacity. Dana (AI host): And before this, what happened to those chats? Rob (AI host): HubSpot's routing help page says it plainly. Rob (AI host): If no agents are available, the conversation is unassigned, and it waits for your team to triage it. Dana (AI host): Which, for the team I'm playing, means first thing tomorrow. Who can use the new option? Rob (AI host): HubSpot's live chat help page lists live chat on all products and plans, with seats or extra subscriptions needed for some features. Rob (AI host): And people need an assigned Sales or Service seat to be included in routing rules. Dana (AI host): Okay. Walk me through turning it on. Rob (AI host): Open the live chat and go to its assignment settings. Rob (AI host): For a chat connected to the inbox, turn the Assignment switch on and choose users or teams. Rob (AI host): Then select the checkbox Assign to Customer Agent if no users are available, and pick a customer agent from the dropdown. Dana (AI host): And by default, chats only go to people who are available? Rob (AI host): Right. By default, conversations are only assigned to available users. Rob (AI host): There's an Assign to available users only checkbox if you ever want to turn that off. Dana (AI host): Walk me through a real evening, then. Rob (AI host): At six fifteen, a visitor opens the chat. Rob (AI host): Everyone on the team is set to away, so instead of sitting unassigned, the conversation goes to the customer agent you picked. Rob (AI host): The same thing happens at noon if every available person is already at capacity. Dana (AI host): Which teams need this most? Rob (AI host): Small support teams with set hours, and any team whose chat traffic spikes at lunch. Rob (AI host): Those are exactly the moments when every person is away or full. Dana (AI host): What's the catch? There's always a catch. Rob (AI host): Here it is. Rob (AI host): While that fallback box is checked, the customer agent's deployment options for that channel can't be set from the agent's own settings. Rob (AI host): That covers conversation coverage, working hours, and targeting rules. To change them, clear the checkbox first. Dana (AI host): So for that channel, the chat settings are in charge, not the agent settings. Rob (AI host): That's the practical effect, yes. Rob (AI host): One more default: if the customer agent is assigned to the chatflow, visitor verification is turned on automatically. Dana (AI host): Why does this matter beyond fewer unassigned chats? Rob (AI host): Why it matters: our research says many admins held back on Customer Agent because there was no clean line between when AI handles a chat and when a human does. Rob (AI host): A fallback draws that line. The agent steps in only when your people can't. Dana (AI host): Can I hand a single conversation to it myself? Rob (AI host): Yes. Rob (AI host): HubSpot's August post says you can assign any conversation to Customer Agent from the owner dropdown in the help desk or inbox. Rob (AI host): That one needs Service Hub Professional or higher, with Customer Agent. Dana (AI host): And how would I know where a handoff stands? Rob (AI host): HubSpot's July post added a Customer Agent status property on tickets: Pending, Awaiting Human Assignment, Handed Off, or None. Rob (AI host): It updates automatically and can't be edited by hand. 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): An AI backup is only as good as the routing rules and help articles standing behind it. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Our Service Hub training maps your support workflow first, then helps your team write and structure its first batch of knowledge base articles, inside your real portal. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): You also get written documentation of your ticket stages, routing rules, and escalation paths. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Find Service Hub training under services at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Dana (AI host): Before the checklist, what's still open? Rob (AI host): Three things. Our July write-up placed the setting under Settings, then Inbox. Rob (AI host): Our August write-up points to Chatflows, which matches HubSpot's live chat help page, so go with the help page. Rob (AI host): Our August write-up also described a public beta with a full rollout on the twenty-ninth of September, across all hubs and tiers. Rob (AI host): No HubSpot page we found confirms that date or that reach. Rob (AI host): And HubSpot documents this checkbox for live chat. Rob (AI host): Whether the same fallback works for email or other channels, we couldn't confirm. Rob (AI host): If your support also runs through those, check them separately before you assume the agent covers them. Dana (AI host): Got it. Here's the Monday list, from the team lead I'm playing. Dana (AI host): Step one: make sure your customer agent is set up and tested before it becomes anyone's backup. Dana (AI host): A badly prepared agent is worse than no backup at all. Rob (AI host): Step two: write down the agent's current coverage, working hours, and targeting rules, because you can't edit them from the agent's settings while the box is checked. Rob (AI host): That way, you can put them back if you turn the fallback off later. Dana (AI host): Step three: check that everyone in the routing rules has a Sales or Service seat. Rob (AI host): Step four: turn the checkbox on for one live chat, then test it after hours and watch where the chat lands. Dana (AI host): Step five: add the Customer Agent status property to a ticket view, so handoffs don't get lost. Rob (AI host): And watch the Unassigned view for a week. It should get quieter. Rob (AI host): If it doesn't, check who's marked available, who's already at capacity, and whether the checkbox is on for the chat you tested. Rob (AI host): Put simply: let people answer first, and let Customer Agent cover the gaps. Dana (AI host): All of our sources are linked in the show notes, and our research is at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Rob (AI host): We appreciate the time you gave us today. Dana (AI host): Humans first, then the agent, never silence. 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.