News
The Gist
- HubSpot gets in ChatGPT mix. HubSpot has released two AI tools, ChatSpot.ai and Content Assistant.
- Marketing and sales angles. The new tools are intended to help marketing and sales teams with a more personalized process.
- HubSpot's chatbot differs from ChatGPT. It also integrates response data from HubSpot CRM and other inter-organizational data sources.
After admittedly spending "many late nights furiously coding,” HubSpot Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah is ready to share his company’s latest foray into generative AI with the alpha release of HubSpot’s ChatSpot.ai and a beta release of Content Assistant. Shah debuted the new AI tools — both powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT — in a video demo yesterday.
Content Assistant is aimed at facilitating marketing and sales teams with the ability to quickly produce and distribute various content types, including blog posts, content for landing pages, website pages, sales and marketing emails, as well as “knowledge-based articles” and marketing emails.
It's not a ChatGPT clone, he says. What makes ChatSpot.ai different, according to Shah, is that in addition to the vast stores of information provided by ChatGPT, HubSpot’s chatbot also draws response data from the HubSpot CRM and inter-organizational data sources. It then incorporates a variety of data from other programs and tech including DALL•E 2, Stable Diffusion, Google Workspace and keyword research — in order to provide results more specific to a company’s needs.
Here's How HubSpot's ChatSpot.ai Works
ChatSpot.ai is designed to provide a personalized experience for each user, enabling them to customize their communication preferences and optimize their workflow. Since Hubspot CRM contains all the analytics data around web visits, conversions, leads and customers within the CRM, users can request a monthly summary of web visits for the last year and even create a bar chart from the data. And with a query — “create a report of companies added in Q4, grouped by country” — the CRM is capable of coming up with a complete list on its own.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Apr
30
Supercharge Contact Center Efficiency with Generative AI
Learn practical strategies to reduce post-call documentation time by over 8 minutes.
Register
Conference
May
1
Qualtrics X4 Salt Lake City 2024
Register
Webinar
May
2
Unleash AI for Crisis Management: Transform Threats into Triumphs
Learn how Sprinklr Insights provides real-time insights on current events, trends, and brand crises to empower your team.
Register
Webinar
May
9
Driving Customer-Centricity in the Financial Services Industry
Discover how financial organizations are leveraging generative AI technologies.
Register
Conference
May
9
An Irish Roundtable in the Valley: The Economic Impact of AI on the World of Work Stanford 2024
Exploring the Impact of AI On the World of Work with Irish diaspora leaders and tech business champions from the North of Ireland
Register
Conference
May
13
Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo Conference London 2024
Register
But with the additional power of ChatGPT, the report can be updated with information found outside the CRM. For example, the user can ask to only include countries in South America, or to include each country’s population. While the CRM doesn't know the population of all these countries — or which are actually in South America — ChatGPT will. And while ChatGPT may not have access to internal organizational data, ChatSpot.ai does.
One of the most powerful (and useful things) about the chatbot, according to Shah, is that once you get information resulting from a prompt, you can do a lot of different things with it instantly: have the information sent to you in an email; create daily, weekly, or monthly updates on the topic with a simple prompt; create a Google sheet without downloading a CSV and uploading it to Google, and create a full report as a Google slide.
Related Article: Now HubSpot? Marketing, CRM Provider Cuts 500 Jobs
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Changed Everything
As both the founder and the chief technical officer of HubSpot, Shah said he was constantly asked if he’s tried out ChatGPT. And the first thought that always pops into his head is, “Do you even know me?”
A coder at heart, yes, of course he has tried ChatGPT — along with millions of other people. And he’s excited about it. But, according to Shah, he was (and is) even more excited than the average person, he says. That’s because it made possible something Shah said he’s been “obsessed with and passionate about forever,” and that is Chat UX — the ability to put a natural language chat interface on software.
Rather than building software with the “imperative approach” (a series of steps using clicks drags and swipes that eventually brings the user to the outcome they’re looking for), generative AI, like ChatGPT, allows users to take a “declarative approach,” one in which AI does the work and allows the user to “skip to the end” to receive the outcome they requested.
“So, we can just say as humans, here's the thing I want. AI does all the work, and we just get the outcome we were looking for,” Shah said.
Shah Admits Early Chatbot 'Only Sort of Worked'
In an early version of ChatSpot.ai, HubSpot launched GrowthBot's beta version in July 2016, branding it as a virtual assistant for marketing and sales personnel that provided quick access to data and routine marketing and sales tasks within a single message or command. However, there was just one small problem, according to Shah, who admitted in a post to LinkedIn that “it only sort of worked.”
“The A.I. technology I needed didn’t exist yet,” Shah said in a post this week announcing the new Chatbot. “It would be another six years before something came along. And that something was ChatGPT from OpenAI. And it changed everything.”
Shah explained that typically, when working with software, you have to convert your idea or inquiry into a series of clicks, drags, and drops to accomplish a task, something that can challenging for individuals. Why? Because first they must comprehend how to operate the software to determine the proper sequence of steps and then they must execute those steps.
“There is a better way. It’s called Chat UX. It’s using a natural language chat interface to use software. It’s a thing I’ve been excited about for almost 17 years,” Shah said. “And now, ChatGPT made it possible.”
Related Article: HubSpot Names New CEO
AI Offers Enhancement, Not Replacement
According to Andy Pitre, HubSpot EVP of product, AI is not going to replace marketing or CX teams, but it’s going to help them do their jobs better, giving users a starting point to create topics, blog outlines and overcome writer’s block. Although at least one report says ChatGPT has already replaced workers.
But, he said, it’s most powerful when combined with human ingenuity, judgment and perspective — ultimately, giving teams hours back in the day to focus on solving bigger, more complex problems for their customers
“ChatSpot and Content Assistant will further empower sales, marketing and customer service professionals with the tools they need to be both more productive and more effective in delivering on their goals,” Pitre said. “It’s clear that AI will help marketing and CX teams create content faster, ultimately saving both internal teams and their customer’s time. Longer term, we could see AI replacing some tasks — like auto-labeling conversations and suggesting answers or auto replying — which would free up marketers and CX to take on more impactful, strategic work. AI will likely change some of the ways CX teams interact with the software they use, making it easier to get information and content in and out of their software tools.”
Have a tip to share with our editorial team? Drop us a line:
