Hubspot for Customer Success?

Before purchasing Totango and meeting with other vendors during the CS platform hunt, I was asked to review HubSpot first as we use them for our Sales and Marketing. I was not impressed with the demo as many of our requirements would not be met and the answer I would receive from the HS rep was usually "We could possibly create a custom field" or "Let me check if we can do that". I may have received a not-so-great demo, but I am happy with moving forward with Totango as many of our "must haves" were simply out of the box with Totango. We now connect Totango to HubSpot, Zendesk, and Microsoft GP. We are looking to bring in SkillJar later this year as well as information from our own DW.

LOL I get it Jeff! Hubspot is far from ideal as a CSP but it's what I've got to work with at the moment!

This is going to be a longer reply, so please bare with me. The company I work for purchased Hubspot about a year ago. We were previously using Pipelines for Sales and CS. I had very little experience using any CRM tool, let alone building processes and reports. I spent a ton of time in Pipelines trying to nail down CS Processes for our team, creating custom fields, reports, etc...

Fast forward to the last year. After purchasing Hubspot, our team decided to migrate everything we had from Pipelines into Hubspot. In theory this was ideal and should have made everything a little easier, but this seemed to create a few speed bumps for us. However, I think the mess was created because Pipelines was not so easy to manage and is really geared towards Sales, so take that part with a grain of salt.

Over the last 4 months, I've been working to get our Hubspot instance geared towards CS because it really isn't right out of the box, at least for us. We do use it for Marketing and Sales too. I've built out a few custom fields, and built out custom reports. Here's a few of my pros and cons with Hubspot

Pro:

• Creating Custom Fields is great with all the different options you have, i.e date fields, picklist, multi-line text, etc...
• Customizing the Companies list view for each member is great. I have different metrics I want to see for my accounts that someone else may not want, or need, to see. It's also a great way to quickly add notes, or update some fields (as long as the column is added to the list view). Well, being able to customize just about any view is amazing
• Adding custom reports into a single dashboard is a nice feature. We send out a Weekly CS Recap to our team, and with this Hubspot Dashboard we're able to automate most of this Weekly Recap. This includes account updates (multi-line text custom field), our calls for the week, and account health (needed a custom field for this)
• The Hubspot X Gmail integration is amazing! I love having emails logged easily into accounts, and with the Hubspot mobile app you can see when your email is opened! Unfortunately if you send an email to multiple people the app does not tell you who opened it though.

Cons - Most, if not all, are around reporting from Hubspot

• Building custom reports is frustrating. Often times the report will not refresh properly and it can feel like something is wrong. I had built out a custom report to pull in data from a custom field and even after receiving a little assistance from Hubspot support, I ended up deleting the report I was working on and re-do everything with the same configuration and... it magically worked. This has happened twice so far, but re-building the report wasn't that difficult, just frustrating
• When building reports, there isn't an option to report on the last posted update for a given field. There's a couple weird work arounds, but nothing ideal
• Contacts who move, or leave, companies can be a tough decision. If you want the historical record of the companies a user is with, that user will remain associated with any previous company. So when you're viewing a company, even though a user may have another company set to be their primary, they will still appear in the contact list for the company you're viewing (their old company)

All in all, it's a good tool to use but it's not perfect and it is not a CS CRM. You do need to put in a little elbow grease to make it what you want or need, but it is a good tool to have.

Hope this helps!!

IMHO, the ability to have usage and support and other factors wired into a CSP to get health score data is that main reason I like those tools.

I want to pipe in here a sec. What do you need to support a Customer Success organization at this moment? Is it to be able to capture ongoing conversations, meeting dates and possibly content (Fathom syncs call transcripts and calls to a contact), create and send templated emails? Or are you looking for a health score that "stays up-to-date", automate processes (ie playbooks) based on triggers, have an easy to read overall summary of clients and/or 360 view of a client?

Start with needs and work from there. If a CRM can capture some of the essential information you need for now, that might be enough for the time being. I would encourage you to spend time creating and running manual playbooks, health scores, etc to test and refine them before spending money on a customer success platform. The value of the platform is only as good as how it is set up.

We personally use our in house developed CRM however I know many companies who uses Hubspot for CSM.

Yes, HubSpot is a good option for customer success and support. It offers a variety of features that can help you manage your customer relationships, including:

• Customer relationship management (CRM): HubSpot CRM helps you track customer interactions, keep track of their purchase history, and identify their needs.
• Ticketing system: HubSpot's ticketing system allows you to manage customer support requests, track their progress, and assign them to the right team members.
• Knowledge base: HubSpot's knowledge base allows you to create and manage a library of self-service articles that customers can use to find answers to their questions.
• Chatbots: HubSpot's chatbots can answer customer questions and resolve simple issues without the need for human intervention.
• Reporting and analytics: HubSpot's reporting and analytics tools can help you track your customer success metrics and identify areas where you can improve.

Overall, HubSpot is a comprehensive customer success and support solution that can help you improve your customer relationships and reduce churn.

Here are some of the pros and cons of using HubSpot for customer success and support:

Pros:

• All-in-one solution: HubSpot offers a variety of features that can help you manage your customer relationships, including CRM, ticketing, knowledge base, chatbots, and reporting.
• Easy to use: HubSpot is easy to use for both technical and non-technical users.
• Scalable: HubSpot can be scaled to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.
• Affordable: HubSpot offers a variety of pricing plans to fit your budget.

Cons:

• Not as customizable as some other CRM solutions: HubSpot is not as customizable as some other CRM solutions, such as Salesforce.
• Can be complex to set up: HubSpot can be complex to set up and configure, especially for businesses with complex customer needs.
• Not as many integrations as some other CRM solutions: HubSpot does not have as many integrations with other business applications as some other CRM solutions.

Overall, HubSpot is a good option for customer success and support for businesses of all sizes. It is easy to use, scalable, and affordable. However, it is not as customizable as some other CRM solutions and can be complex to set up.