Choose your bot actions

Learn more about each of the actions you can use to build a bot conversation. You can also customize each bot action using conditional logic to create a more interactive experience for your website visitors.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Chatflows.
• Hover over the bot you want to modify and click Edit, or click Create chatflow to build a new bot.
• Click the plus icon + to add new actions to your bot.

• Select your action:
  • Send simple message
  • Ask a question
  • Offer email subscription
  • Set contact property value
  • Set company property value
  • Add to static list (Marketing Hub Starter, Legacy Basic, Professional, or Enterprise only)
  • Submit a ticket
  • Knowledge base lookup (Service Hub Professional and Enterprise only)
  • Send to a team member
  • Enroll in workflow (Professional or Enterprise only)
  • Trigger a webhook (Operations Hub Professional only)
  • Run a code snippet (Operations Hub Professional only)
  • Book a meeting
  • If/then branches

Send simple message

Use this action to send a simple message during your bot conversation. Use this action to say something to your visitor that does not require a response.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this bot message.
• Message: enter the content for your bot message. You can use personalization to pull in details from the contact record of a known visitor. You can also click the icons at the bottom of the message box to insert a link, image, file, or video.
• + Add message bubble: if you want multiple message bubbles to pop up as part of this bot message, you can add another bubble here.

Ask a question

Use this action to ask a question during your bot conversation and collect data to populate specific contact properties. You can select a frequently asked question or create a custom question.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this bot message.
• Message: enter the content for your bot message. You can use personalization to pull in details from the contact record of a known visitor. You can also click the icons at the bottom of the message box to insert a link, image, file, or video.
• + Add message bubble: if you want multiple message bubbles to pop up as part of this bot message, you can add another bubble here.
• Quick replies: add answers that your visitor can select as responses to your message prompt. To add quick replies, start typing your copy and press Enter to save each one.
• Disable free text input: use this option if you want to limit visitors to selecting among your pre-set options in Quick replies.
• Save to HubSpot property: click the dropdown menu and select a contact property. The visitor's response will be added as the property value on their contact record.

Please note: when using specific HubSpot properties to store a visitor's response, if the response is not formatted properly, the bot will not accept the response and will not proceed to the next action. This field validation applies date properties, as well as the Email, Phone Number, Mobile Phone Number, and Website URL properties.

• Skip this action if property already exists: use this checkbox to skip this action if the visitor's contact record already has this property filled out.
• Error message: enter an error message that will appear when the bot can't understand the visitor's response.

Offer email subscription

Use this action to capture a visitor's consent to communicate. If the visitor has already opted into the subscription type, the bot will skip this step.

• Action name (internal only): enter a nickname for this request.
• Message: enter content for the bot message. You can use personalization to pull in information from a known visitor's contact record. You can also click the icons at the bottom of the message box to insert a link, image, file, or video.
• + Add message bubble: if you want multiple message bubbles to pop up as part of this bot action, you can add another bubble here.
• Show legitimate interest privacy text: select the checkbox if you want to let visitors know what type of communication they're opting into and how you will communicate with them moving forward. The default language set in your account settings will display with this option selected.
• Subscription: click the dropdown menu and select the subscription types these contacts will be opting into.
• If user subscribes, show message: enter the text that will display if a visitor subscribes.
• If user doesn't subscribe, show message: enter the text that will display if the visitor does not subscribe.

Set contact property value

Use this action to set a contact property to a specific value based on the replies of your website visitor. If the visitor is a known contact, or if they submit their email address, the visitor’s response will be added as the property value on their contact record.

• Action name (internal only): enter a nickname for this contact property value action.
• Contact property: select any contact property from the dropdown menu.
• New property value: enter the value you want to populate on the contact record. You can customize how this populates based on the conditions set in the If/then branches tab.

Set company property value

Use this action to set a contact property to a specific value based on the replies of your website visitor.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this contact property value action.
• Company property: select any company property from the dropdown menu.
• New property value: enter the value you want to populate on the contact's associated company record. You can customize how this populates based on the conditions set in the If/then branches tab.

Add to static list (Marketing Hub Starter, Legacy Basic, Professional, or Enterprise only)

Use this action to add the contact your bot is chatting with to a static list. If a contact record does not exist for the visitor, this action will be skipped.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this list action.
• Static list: select an existing static list from the dropdown menu.

Submit a ticket

Use this action to create a new ticket for this contact. If an associated contact record for your website visitor does not exist, this action will be skipped.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this create ticket action.
• Ticket name: enter a name for the ticket.
• Ticket pipeline: use the dropdown menu to associate the ticket with a specific pipeline.
• Ticket status: use the dropdown menu to assign a status to the ticket.
• Ticket description: use the dropdown menu to indicate whether you want to set your own description for this ticket. You can select Prompt the visitor for ticket description to invite the visitor to provide a summary of the issue for the ticket description.
• Ticket priority: set the ticket priority as either High or Low.

Knowledge base lookup (Service Hub Professional and Enterprise only)

Use this action to surface a specific knowledge base article to your visitor, or prompt them to search your knowledge base to find the article they need. The search feature will look up articles by keyword matching on the article title, subtitle, body, category or subcategory, and tags. Restricted knowledge base content will appear if the visitor has logged in to access your HubSpot content or if they've been identified through the visitor identification API.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this knowledge base lookup action.
• Lookup type: based on how you want visitors to interact with your knowledge base, you have the following options:
  
  • Display specific article: select this option if you want to surface a specific article for your visitors at this point in your conversation.
    • Article to display: use the dropdown menu to select a specific article you've published on your knowledge base.
  • Search knowledge base: select this option to invite your website visitor to search your knowledge base.
    • Query prompt message: enter a bot message to prompt your website visitor to search your knowledge base. You can use personalization to pull in details from the contact record of a known visitor.
    • No results message: enter a bot message to return to your visitor if there are no results for their search query on your knowledge base. You can use personalization to pull in details from the contact record of a known visitor.
    

Send to team member

Hand off a conversation to a specific user or team based on their availability to chat. This action is only available to users with Account access permissions. If you have set up operating hours for your bot, the conversation will only be routed to an available team member during those hours.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this routing action.
• Automatically assign to: click the dropdown menu and select who incoming conversations should be routed to:
  • No one: the message will be sent to the Unassigned view in the inbox for your team members to triage.
  • Specific users and teams: route conversations to the users or teams selected. Select the users or team names from the Specific users and teams dropdown menu. 

Please note: you can only select users from the dropdown menu who are assigned to a paid Sales Hub or Service Hub seat. Learn more about the additional requirements for automatically routing conversations. 

• • Contact owner: route conversations to a contact's owner. The contact must have an owner assigned to their record and be tracked with a cookie. If the owner is offline, the message will be emailed to the visitor's owner. To route messages from unowned contacts to a default user, click the If there is no owner, assign to dropdown menu and select a user. The user you select must have an assigned Sales Hub or Service Hub paid seat.
• If team member is available, show: enter a specific message to display when your user(s) or team(s) are available.
• If team members are away or chat is outside business hours, show: enter a specific message to display if no one is available to chat.
• If team member is at max capacity, show: enter a message that will appear when the team member is at their configured capacity. 
• If unassigned, show: enter a specific message to display when the message is received but hasn't been assigned to a specific user yet.

Please note: before a conversation begins, the bot will check if any of the selected users in the Send to team member action are available. If there is a specified user selected and they are not available, the away message will appear instead.

Enroll in workflow (Professional or Enterprise only)

Please note: this action applies to users in a Professional or Enterprise account with access to workflows.

Use this action to enroll the contact you're chatting with in a specific workflow. If a contact record doesn't exist for the visitor you're chatting with, this action will be skipped.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this workflow action.
• Workflow: user the dropdown menu to choose which active workflow contacts should be enrolled in.

Trigger a webhook (Operations Hub Professional or Enterprise only)

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this action.
• Webhook URL: enter the endpoint URL for the webhook.
• Wait for webhook feedback: select the checkbox if you want to wait for the webhook to return information before moving to the next action.
• Error message: enter text for the error message.

Run a code snippet (Operations Hub Professional or Enterprise only)

Use this action to run a code snippet at a step in the bot conversation flow.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this action.
• Snippet description: enter a description of the code snippet.
• Runtime: the default template for Node.js 10.x is included in the code snippet editor. Click Open in full page editor to make edits in another window. Learn more about running code snippets in bots.

Book a meeting

Use this action to share a meetings link through a bot message.

• Action name (internal only): enter a name for this action.
• Meetings link: use the dropdown menu to select an existing meeting link, or create a new link.
• Successful booking message: enter a message to display when a visitor successfully books a meeting with your team. 

Any quick replies that you configure as part of a subsequent Ask a question action will appear automatically during the bot conversation, as long as the following are true:

• The meeting link used in the bot action does not include any custom fields other than first name, last name, and email.
• First name, last name, and email are collected before the meeting action is reached in the bot flow.
• The meeting link has times available in the near future.
• CAPTCHA is not turned on for the meeting link's booking form. 
• The meeting link's Data privacy switch is toggled off.

Please note: if you're using custom form fields, the bot cannot collect responses to the custom questions during the conversation and will instead redirect the visitor to the meeting booking page. If you want your visitor to book a meeting with you without leaving the chat window, learn more in this HubSpot Community post: Use the 'Book a meeting' bot action with custom fields.

If/then branches

Please note: free users and Starter users cannot add custom conditions to their bot.

Use if/then branches customize the flow of your bot's conversation. You can add conditions to tell a bot to skip to a specific action based on the visitor's response, a contact property value, or agent availability. Learn more about using if/then branches with bots.

Learn more about creating a chatflow that includes a bot.

Please note: you can't delete an action that is using an if/then branch. You must delete the if/then branch first, then delete the action.