HubSpot's customer agent is an AI agent that answers customer questions from content you give it and hands the conversation to your team when it can't help. You build it under Service > Customer Agent by naming it, connecting your help content, writing guidelines and handoff rules, testing it, and deploying it to a channel such as live chat or email.
As of October 2026 it needs a Professional or Enterprise subscription to Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Data Hub, Content Hub, Smart CRM or Revenue Hub, plus HubSpot Credits. Service Hub isn't required for the agent itself, though the help desk and SLAs around it need Service Hub Professional.
The settings screens are short. Most of the work comes before you open them, in the policies the agent will quote and the rules for when a person takes over.
What the customer agent is
HubSpot used to call it Breeze Customer Agent, and older guides still use that name. As HubSpot's overview describes it, the agent reads the sources you sync and, depending on how confident it is, answers with a source behind the reply, asks a follow-up question, or passes the conversation to a person. It can also run actions you set up, such as booking a meeting.
What you need before you can switch it on
Subscription, seat and permission
Per HubSpot's setup article, whoever builds the agent needs the Customer agent editor permission and an assigned seat. The generative AI switches in your AI settings have to be on, and if the chat runs on a site HubSpot doesn't host, the HubSpot tracking code must be on those pages.
HubSpot Credits, as of October 2026
The agent is charged per resolution, so extra messages in one open conversation cost nothing more. HubSpot counts a resolution when the agent answered from a content source or ran an action, and the visitor didn't ask for a person or trigger a handoff phrase within 72 hours of their last message.
HubSpot's Products and Services catalog lists 50 credits per resolved text conversation. Professional plans include 3,000 credits a month and Enterprise plans 5,000 (Data Hub gets more), shared by every feature that uses credits. If nothing else used them, 3,000 credits would cover about 60 resolved conversations. Accounts on HubSpot's flexible seats-and-credits pricing have different rates, so check your own Usage & Limits page.
Previewing and testing don't use credits, and accounts new to the agent may be able to opt in to 14 days of free access. When credits run out, the agent stops taking new conversations and they follow your handoff rules, so the handoff has to work.
Which channels it can answer on
HubSpot's deployment article lists these as of October 2026:
- Live chat on your website
- Forms, with a reply email address you choose
- Facebook Messenger
- Calling, in beta
Deployed straight to a channel, the agent takes every new conversation there during its working hours, or the share you set. To limit it to one customer tier or one issue type, assign it through a workflow or rule-based chatbot instead.
What to prepare before you switch it on
Help content written from your policies
The agent is only as accurate as what it reads. Its content sources can be knowledge base articles, website and landing pages, blog posts, public URLs, uploaded files such as PDFs and Word documents, short answers you type as question-and-answer pairs, and AI-generated pairs drawn from past tickets that you review first.
You don't need a HubSpot knowledge base, which requires Service Hub Professional or Enterprise. Help pages on your own site, files and short answers do the same job. HubSpot recommends content that is current, has clear headings and lists, uses plain words and includes the phrases customers actually type. Write down what your team knows but never published, like return windows or shipping rules for oversized items. Keep personal and confidential data out of every source, since HubSpot warns that private sources can still appear in answers.
A list of what it should not answer
List the topics the agent must leave alone and what it should say instead. These go in the guardrails section of the agent's guidelines. HubSpot's own planning example sends refunds outside policy, billing disputes and sensitive account changes to a person, which makes a sensible first list.
Handoff rules and who receives them
Decide which words trigger a handoff (HubSpot's examples are refund and cancellation), whether it's live or a later follow-up, and who receives it. Per the handoff article, only users with an assigned Sales or Service seat can be in the routing, and the Team only option hands off even when nobody is available.
A help desk for what gets handed off
Handed-off conversations land in the conversations inbox or the help desk. HubSpot recommends the help desk, which needs Service Hub Professional or Enterprise. Before launch, set up:
- Support email moved into a shared help desk channel, out of anyone's personal inbox.
- A ticket pipeline whose stages match how the team works.
- Ticket categories. HubSpot's AI-filled Category property needs Service Hub Enterprise as of October 2026, so on Professional use a custom dropdown property.
- SLA goals for reply and resolution times, set by a Super Admin.
- Saved replies. HubSpot calls short ones snippets and full emails templates.
Setting it up in HubSpot, step by step
- Go to Service > Customer Agent and click Continue to agent setup. Name the agent and pick a personality (Friendly, Professional, Casual, Empathetic or Witty) or your brand voice.
- Add content. Choose existing HubSpot content or enter your website address. Import related URLs crawls up to 5,000 pages on the domain, and you can limit it to one path or subdomain and exclude paths such as /blog/.
- Click Create, then add files and short answers under Train > Knowledge.
- Under Train > Guidelines, write the communication style, guardrails and any custom instructions, and publish.
- Under Train > Human handoff, add handoff guidelines, choose live, async or no handoff, and route to fixed users and teams or through a workflow.
- If needed, set up actions and give the agent access to the CRM properties it may read or update.
- Under Deploy > Channel settings, choose when chat asks for an email address and whether email replies go to the sender or the whole thread. Senders on the ignore list go straight to a person.
- Under Deploy > Channels, pick a channel, set working hours, choose the share of conversations it takes and who gets the rest, then deploy or save as a draft.
Testing before it goes live
Click Test [agent name] on the Customer Agent page. You can test email or live chat, as a particular CRM contact, and with actions. The testing insights panel shows why the agent answered as it did and which sources it cited, and you can coach it from there.
Batch testing runs a set of questions at once, written by you or generated from past conversations. You mark each answer as looks good or looks bad and coach the bad ones. Test the handoff on purpose too. Ask for a person, use your trigger words and check the conversation reaches the right people.
HubSpot suggests starting with one channel or a small share of conversations, with live chat before email. A gentler start is reply recommendations, where the agent only drafts replies in the help desk and reps decide whether to send them. They use no credits but need Service Hub Professional and a Service seat.
Monitoring and fixing gaps after launch
Under Analyze > Reports you get resolution rate, handoff rate and deflections. HubSpot notes that a deflection doesn't always mean the problem was solved, and the current week's resolution numbers lag because of the 72-hour window.
Most fixes come from the Coaching opportunities page, covered in the performance article. It lists knowledge gaps (nothing to answer from), knowledge conflicts (two sources disagree), thumbs-down ratings from visitors and replies flagged by help desk reps. The Source Usage report also flags underperformers, sources used often that rarely resolve the question, which are good pages to rewrite first. Sources outside a HubSpot knowledge base re-sync weekly, so refresh one by hand after a policy change.
Common mistakes
- Thin help content. If answers live in people's heads and old emails, the agent has nothing to quote and you'll see knowledge gaps and extra handoffs.
- Two versions of one policy. An old PDF and a newer web page that disagree become knowledge conflicts. Remove the old one or exclude it from the crawl.
- A handoff that goes nowhere. Routing to users without a Sales or Service seat, or to a team with nobody available, leaves customers waiting.
- No guardrails. Without a written list of off-limits topics, nothing keeps the agent away from pricing exceptions or disputes.
- Crawling the whole website. Old campaign pages and job ads become sources too. Path filters keep it to help and policy pages.
- Going live everywhere on day one, before the coaching page has shown you what's missing.
What I've seen on client builds
Sauna Heater Supply sells high-ticket sauna equipment on Shopify. Before their customer agent went live, I wrote 19 help articles from the store's own policies, then set up guardrails and handoff rules. Behind it sits a Help Desk with ticket categories, SLAs and 12 saved replies, plus sales and support dashboards, with no Enterprise upgrade. In a later round of the owner's requests, I moved the agent's shipping answers for large kits onto the store's published rules and tested them in the agent before they went live. HubSpot chat is also ready on a preview theme to replace the old chat tool. See the Sauna Heater Supply case study.
For Conference Badge, which makes event badges and handles registration, I built an AI chatbot and AI agent inside HubSpot for inbound enquiries and moved support email from a personal inbox into a Help Desk channel (see the Conference Badge case study). For BelBonita I fixed the website chat routing so the AI chat agent collects visitor details before a person takes over.
If you'd rather have this set up for you, see my HubSpot AI agent and Help Desk service.
Questions
Do I need Service Hub to use HubSpot's customer agent?
No. A Professional or Enterprise subscription to Marketing, Sales, Service, Data, Content, Smart CRM or Revenue Hub works, with HubSpot Credits. The knowledge base tool, help desk, help desk SLAs and reply recommendations do need Service Hub Professional or Enterprise.
How many credits does the customer agent use?
As of October 2026, HubSpot's catalog lists 50 credits per resolved text conversation and 50 credits per minute for voice, which is in beta. Credits are used only when HubSpot counts a resolution, and previewing or testing the agent is free.
Can I delete the customer agent later?
No. Once created it can't be deleted, but you can edit or pause it. Turning it off under Account & Billing > Usage & Limits lets it finish open threads without taking new ones.