CASE STUDY

Hubspot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

Group 4
Rohit Saxena 19A3HP671
Tarang Jain 19A1HP117
Sanjana Satapathy 19A1HP006
Muskan Nankani 19A1HP120
Mohit singh 19A3HP639
Saurav Das 19A3HP651
Sarthak bhatia 19A3HP641
Vivek Joshi 19A1HP081

Submitted to-
Prof. Rambalak Yadav
 SYNOPSIS
Hubspot, an inbound marketing SAAS solution provider, helped its B2B customers develop, host,
disseminate, and analyze digital content to plan and execute inbound marketing programs.

It had 3 wide categories of product solutions: Marketing Hub (for traffic growth and conversion of
visitors to customers); Sales Hub (for driving productivity and more deal closures with less effort); and
Customer Hub (connecting with customers on their terms and helping them succeed.) In 2017, Hubspot
acquired Motion AI, a software platform through which companies could design and employ chatbots to
interact with their customers. Following this, Hubspot started looking at ways to use chatbots for CRM.
They needed to assess the bot's performance in creating, nurturing, and managing relationships viz-a-viz
humans; and how human-like these bots should be.

By 2020, 90% of customer service support issues would be resolved by chatbots, as per predictions.
Using these bots, brands were engaging with their customers, keeping an always-on communication.
Service customization and streamlining were some of the benefits, in addition to research convenience.
People could engage in conversations with brands on platforms like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp,
etc.

Designing a conversational AI that would require anticipating conversational flow was a major challenge
in creating an effective chatbot. To build relationships with customers, brand-specific chatbot
personalities also needed to be created.

Achieving a seamless transition from familiarity of search to the conversational interface of chatbots
required the on-boarding Process to be simple and example-based, and the bot had to provide
compelling reasons to the users to return, and user experience had to be simplified using widgets and
other tools.

Hubspot prospective customers pass through various stages of the sales funnel. Depending upon the
activities at these stages (top, middle, or bottom), Hubspot had to decide where to use chatbots and if
they should use bots in the post-sales customer service process.
Q1) Should HubSpot replace human chat representatives with chatbots? Why or why not?

A1) Truly, HubSpot ought to supplant human talk delegates with chatbots. However, just for scheduled
daily basis, repeated periodic customer calls. Customers should realize the fact that they are speaking
with a bot and have the choice to associate with a live human agent with more passionate insight to
take care of more intricate issues.

This is a result of the accompanying factors:

1. Chatbots give quicker and practically prompt reactions to clients' necessities. This relieves them of the
pressure of holding up in a calling line or calling during those long business hours. They can have their
inquiries and issues settled whenever they require.

2. This assists with freeing up on the increased time spent on addressing essential inquiries via
telephone with clients. Chatbots help saves time and exertion, which can be utilized for more proactive
client service.

3. Chatbots are additionally more practical than employing more human chat delegates to give balanced
customized answers for a great many HubSpot's customers with shifting necessities. This gives
customization at scale.

4. Also, on the grounds that chatbots were conveyed inside messaging applications like Facebook
Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat, clients can directly converse with their potential issues and
complete their assignment without leaving their favored chat interface. There is no compelling reason to
visit the organization's site or download some other application on their cell phone. HubSpot's own
examination shows that 71% of respondents are happy to utilize messaging applications to get a happy
customer service experience (Exhibit 4).

Q2) Which activities in HubSpot's marketing and, selling Process would you turn over from humans to
bots? Why? In which phases of the funnel (Tofu, MoFu, Bofu) would bot do better(worse) than
human?

A2) Bots gave a quicker response to the queries of customers. They did not require to wait in long
queues to get the solution to their queries during business hours. Chatbots were integrated with
messaging apps like Whatsapp and Wechat, saving customers the hassle of visiting websites. Chatbots
can be used to make inquiries from a customer during an early stage of the buying process, assisting
humans in gathering information regarding the competitor & the customer in the sales process & also
during the post-sales service.

The marketing funnel of Hubspot started with a "stranger" attracted with the help of inbound marketing
content available on the website, then converted them to a "visitor" who was educated & tracked and
the converted to a "lead" who were identified & nurtured and then passed on to the sales team to close
the deal.

The chatbot can be integrated with all phases of the funnel, but Mofu will be an important phase for the
company. In this stage, customers are learning about the company and comparing them with
competitors. Chat reps could handle three conversations at one time, but that caused a noticeable delay
in response & also, each chat rep cost approx. $60000/yr to the company. The chatbot was available
24/7, had a faster response. Humans were only required when the questions got complex or advanced.
Prospect customers were ranked from 1(low) to 10 (high) & ratings were close to real-time. HubSpot
had a pool of 40% leads that needed chat reps' attention for passing them to the sales team. This saved
a lot of costs and time for the company.

Q3) How might the customer behavior change if the customer interacted with the bot versus the
human? How might this behavioral change affect the type of relationship formed with the company?

A3) The behavioral changes that occurred while customers interacted with bots versus humans can be
best expressed by the following instances and facts: -

 Bots provided quick responses to a customer's queries or needs without having them wait in a
call or a queue, thus enhancing service quality. This was a faster and more efficient way of
responding to the customers than using humanistic ways of calling or emailing. Tech-crunch
reported that customers were more in favor of using messaging apps like Facebook, WhatsApp,
and WeChat to interact and accomplish their tasks. So, we can establish that customers wanted
to save time and cut short, long waiting times that occur while interacting with humans.
 B2B Customer relationships were more complex and relational, and less transactional. Besides,
such customers were demanding; therefore, for such customers there was a requirement for a
qualified salesperson. So B2B customers would be much skeptical of the idea of using bots than
humans for business purposes.
 In the case of live chat, where buyers were empowered to get their questions answered in real-
time from a real person, the idea was not a great success in the long term. Increasing traffic and
internet penetration leads to website visits on a large scale, and trying to keep up with such
customer queries was daunting for the chat respondents and hence customers had to wait for a
long time. This, in turn, could be interpreted as a sheer contradiction on the company's part,
calling it a live chat and lead to customer agitation.
 According to consumer research, a greater number of people wanted to be attended by a
human agent who could answer complex questions and requests. In fact, a majority of them
admitted that they should have the option to transfer to a live agent. At the end of the day, bots
could not deliver an experience as similar to a multi-layered conversation that human beings
have. Hence the essence of establishing long-term relationships would still be absent according
to customers if they interact with a chatbot.
 Though humans are strange and unconscious in the ways that they communicate with others,
yet their ability to comprehend ambiguous information is way better than Artificial Intelligence
enabled bots. This makes humans understand and cater to complex requests and questions by
customers.
 According to Exhibit 4, consumer research shows that 71% of consumers are likely to use bots
because of customer assistance, yet most of them among those do it just because such
problems are solved quickly and correctly. We can assume that in case of straightforward
customer assistance, bots were helpful but not in complex situations.
  "Some situations not just require human understanding and problem-solving but a level of
compassion and empathy". This statement can be much expressed by the fact that customers
sometimes got frustrated with many of the bots with which they used to interact.

The effect of such behavioral changes that affect the type of relationship that a customer has with its
customers can be –

1. Lack of Credibility - Facebook reported that bots failed to answer a customer or solve their
problem 70% of the time. A similar example of a health care company suggests that bots could
not be trusted by customers. This could have led to a loss of credibility among the customers of
the companies.
2. Information flow and transparency - In this case, it is established by certain facts that bots are
more useful for B2C companies but not B2B. Hence B2B companies might still be unsure
whether to interact with a chatbot or not. This could hamper the transparency and information
flow for both parties.
3. Emotional Intelligence - Chatbots lacked a sense of compassion and empathy, which is very
important for customers in today's competitive world. Businesses are struggling to establish
long-term relationships with the customers; hence emotional intelligence is a must in such deals
and transactions. Humanistic interactions and live chats prove to be more efficient in this
regard.
4. Lack of trust - Also when a bot guesses wrong and serves content that the customer did not ask
for, it is more of an embarrassment to the company and taken as an offense to the customer.
This can agitate the customer, and he/she might lose trust in the brand and the company.

Q4) Was HubSpot acquisition of Motion AI a smart move for the company? How might it affect its
relationship with its own customers?

A4) HubSpot is a software provider for inbound marketing, sales, and customer relationship
management (CRM), while motion AI is a software platform that allows businesses to quickly build and
deploy chatbots to communicate with their customer. Therefore, the acquisition of motion AI was a
smart step for the company, as this acquisition contributed to the increase in profitability from B2B to
B2C.

Following are key points that highlight the effect of its relationship with its customers:

1. For its business to business (B2B) clients, HubSpot saw an excellent opportunity for Chatbots,
which could use them to automate many of their customer interactions that today were staffed
by humans.
2. Chatbots took the place of human workers, thereby stimulating a human conversational partner
so well that it was difficult to feel when one was talking with a computer.
3. Chatbots could allow a company to effectively nurture and manage one to one customized
customer relationship efficiently.
4. Bots provide customer needs with prompt answers, reducing the burden of standing in a call
queue, or needing to call during business hours. With customers, calling and emailing are
 dropping behind interest. Chatbots were deployed on messaging app networks, such as
messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, etc. 
5. The way people communicate with technology has been modified by the modern generation of
AI. Digital virtual assistants housed in a smartphone, desktop, or laptop such as Apple Siri and
Microsoft Cortana, for instance, paved the way for the contact between the person bot.
6. Customer interactions were completed by Chatbots at twice the pace and at less expense. By
sending a series of questions to a customer and then answering the customer with canned
answers prompted by simple if-then statements, Chatbots are programmed to prompt a
conversation. The demand for chatbots has reached up to $1 billion and is predicted to double
by 2020.

Q5) How would you assess the potential for chatbots for managing B2B and B2C customer
relationships in general. Under which conditions do they have the most and least potential?

A5) We could assess the potential for chatbots for managing B2B and B2C customer relationships in the
following ways-

a) Simplicity during the Onboarding Process- According to Dharmesh, the co-founder of HubSpot,
the chatbots should be simple and example-based. For instance, if a user asks, "What can the
chatbot do for him," then the answer should be given instantly with all the things that could be
done while using the software.
b) The retention rate of users for the software- Whenever users are engaged with the chatbots,
they are actually telling about their needs to the software by asking several questions. When
attention is being paid to the chats that have been made during these interactions, then the
product designers could easily create a roadmap keeping consumer's needs aligned. This would
make the users come back again and again to the software.
The software could also be used to re-engage the old dormant consumers by providing new
ways to interact with them.
c) Suggestion boxes provided- UI widgets, the suggestion boxes could actually smoothen the
customer interaction with the software if designed properly. Widgets can be used to convey
new uses to the consumer and also help in reducing the typing that consumers need to do to get
their final answer.

Conditions under which they have the most and the least potential are as follows-

MOST LEAST
 Post-sale – Chatbots can be utilized to  Bottom of the funnel- Since the stage is
keep in touch and nurture relationships tricky and salesperson are acquired for
with customers, to answer the doubts of purposes such as answering technical
the customers and thus retain them in questions, easy integration, negotiation
the long-term. of prices and other functions, chatbots
can lead to loss of clients at this stage.
 The bots can be used in the middle of the  The chatbots cannot be utilized as the
funnel to reach more and more first line of interaction between the
customers to ensure that there is no customers and Hubspot since the
delay in the ability to respond to answers must be sophisticated &
customers. customized to their needs.