HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

Why HubSpot bought Motion AI?

The revenue of HubSpot increased by 49% to $271 million and the main business was coming
from the numerous small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers. HubSpot wanted to
used chatbots as a feature to engage the customers and convert them to users, and therefore
they bought Motion AI to ensure effective conversion of the customers.

What is the future market for chatbots?

A report from McKinsey & Company stated that companies spent around $20-30billion on AI in
2016. The market for the chatbots was also expected to grow exponentially. Another survey
indicated that in 2017 60% of the customers service issues can be resolved by chatbots which
was set to increases to 90% by 2020 which is also the result of significant cost cutting expected
for companies on deploying these AI assistants.

The research conducted by HubSpot indicated that about 63% customers were excessively
positive about chatting with businesses given that the line between the conversations of a
human and chatbot is diminishing with significant improvement in the machine learning
technology.

How chatbots can be leveraged in B2B?

B2B firms can leverage chatbots by deploying it instead of humans in the customer interaction
phase during acquisition and customer engagement thus resulting in an automated solution
which save costs but at the same time results in efficient one to one customized human like
conversations for customers.

The downside for chatbots include inaccuracies in reply when it comes to complex language
used by customers. Such inaccuracies can lead to poor customer service and losing important
leads or prospect customers. These errors are caused by lack of data that is available in the B2B
segment for training the chatbots that use natural language processing algorithms to find
patterns in customer data to provide accurate results.

HubSpot bought Motion AI in order to provide chatbot services along with other CRM services
which they believe will increase prospect conversion and customer satisfaction.

Can AI be used in chatbots to deliver human touch?

B2B relationships are defined to be more complex and relational and less of transactional. It
requires touch of high trained professionals. Automation is efficient but it led to loss of
relationship cost. Live chat also didn’t come handy and resulted in delayed responses. When
opinions were collected, they were more conflicting. Equal number of people wanted to use AI
based chatbot and similar same number of people wanted to talk to human. For complicated
troubleshooting, 75% believed chatbots are not enough. According to Facebook report, 70% of
chatbots failed to serve the needs of the customers. Despite of advancement in AI, most
chatbots still don’t perform as per the standards. Humans use ambiguous text and context also
differs. Chatbots are not able to understand and fulfill needs of the customers in these
scenarios. Due to lack of data points, B2B interactions are prone to errors. Whereas in B2C, we
have lot of data and hence it is useful in such scenarios.

HubSpot is working towards making chatbot interaction more of human interaction type.
HubSpot is in a dilemma of whether to advise customers to build human like conversation app
or non-human functional UI app to get things done

How HubSpot is using chatbots?

HubSpot is already using chatbots for multiple business processes such as taking inquiries from
customers, providing sales people with the required data about customers and competitors.
Growth bot (internal conversational chatbot) was used to answer questions related to
customers. Using this bot multiple lessons were learnt like onboarding process should be simple
and example based. Bot should be useful for clients to return. UI widgets should be simple.

At HubSpot, they were excited to implement it for marketers and sales people. They were
finding ways in which the chatbot can be integrated with some step-in sales funnel. Before
launching it for the B2B, they are trying internally on how one can leverage chatbots and
increase efficiency, sales. Company was looking into the possibility of providing post sale
customer service using chatbots. They are still wondering if it can help in building customer
relationship. Nelson was optimistic but also remained cautious. In the long run, maintaining
personal relationship with clients is important.