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Website chat agent remodel for a mid-size auction software company on HubSpot: separating bidders, prospects and expansion buyers
The Concierge sits in front of an existing HubSpot Help Desk and support agent, sorts every website chat into bidder support, customer support, new auctioneer prospect or existing-customer expansion, and books qualified sales conversations with the right rep. It fixes a chat setup that currently treats every visitor as a support ticket, so auctioneer pipeline and upsell meetings stop leaking while the CRM stays clean.
| ROLE | FOUNDER / LEADERSHIP | PLATFORM | HUBSPOT |
|---|---|---|---|
| INDUSTRY | B2B SOFTWARE / SAAS | ||
| DRAWN BY | HACKING DEMAND | ISSUED | OCTOBER 27, 2026 |
What The Concierge does
A 51 to 200 person auction software company runs HubSpot with Help Desk and a support agent already answering chat. The trouble is that one chat entry point serves very different people: bidders who cannot log in to place a bid, auctioneer customers with setup questions, auction houses evaluating a platform switch, and existing customers asking about add-ons like online payments, live streaming or extra seats. Today most of these land in the support queue, sales-intent conversations get answered as tickets, and bidder chats create junk contacts that pollute Marketing Hub lists. The Concierge owns the first thirty seconds of every website chat on marketing and pricing pages: it identifies who the visitor is, keeps the existing support agent for support, qualifies auctioneer prospects and expansion buyers, answers pre-sales product questions from approved sources, books meetings with the correct new-business or account rep, and writes clean, correctly typed records into HubSpot. Leadership gets more meetings and pipeline from both new auctioneers and the installed base without rebuilding the support setup that already works.
Built on HubSpot
The company already runs HubSpot with Help Desk and a support agent, so the right move is to stay inside HubSpot rather than add a second chat vendor. A HubSpot Breeze agent handles the sales-side chat, reads the same CRM, knowledge base and ticket history, and writes records natively, which keeps the CRM clean and lets Marketing Hub use the captured fields immediately. HubSpot falls short in a few places, so the plan adds Chili Piper for segment and territory routing with instant booking, Warmly to recognize returning auction houses, and n8n for the nightly usage-data sync and deduplication checks that native workflows handle awkwardly. Because the team wants it maintained for them, keeping most of the logic in HubSpot means fewer moving parts to keep working.
What starts it
- A visitor opens chat on a pricing, features, comparison, or demo page (marketing site, not the bidder app or help center)
- A known customer contact views pricing, add-on, or upgrade pages twice within a week, prompting a proactive chat offer
- The existing support agent detects buying intent in a support chat (new seats, payments module, multi-location, contract renewal) and hands the conversation over
- An identified target account (auction house or auction company matching ICP) returns to the site after a prior demo or no-show
- A trial or self-serve auctioneer account hits a usage milestone (first auction published, lot limit approached) and visits the site
What it reads
- HubSpot CRM contacts, companies and deals, including a cleaned lifecycle stage and a new contact type property (bidder, customer user, prospect, partner)
- HubSpot Help Desk ticket history and the existing support agent's knowledge base, reused for product facts, not duplicated
- Approved pre-sales knowledge: feature pages, pricing and packaging sheet, add-on catalog, integration list, and competitor-switch FAQ maintained by marketing
- Product usage data synced to HubSpot company records (auctions run, lots listed, active seats, plan tier, trial status) via a nightly sync
- Website visitor identification from Warmly to recognize returning target accounts before they type
- Rep territories and ownership rules (new business by auction segment and region, account managers by customer book)
How it works, step by step
- Diagnose and split the current chat setupAudit the last few months of chat transcripts and tickets to see where sales-intent chats were handled as support, where bidders created contacts, and which questions the support agent answered poorly. Keep the support agent and Help Desk routing as is. Remove the single catch-all chat widget from marketing pages and replace it with the Concierge there, leaving the support agent on the help center and inside the product.
- Identify the visitor in one questionThe Concierge opens with a single routing question (I'm bidding in an auction, I run auctions on the platform, I'm evaluating auction software, something else) and cross-checks against HubSpot cookie and visitor identification. Bidders go straight to bidder help articles or the auctioneer's own support contact, with no contact record created. Customer support issues pass to the existing support agent with the transcript attached.
- Answer pre-sales questions from approved sourcesFor prospects and customers, the agent answers questions about features, online versus live versus hybrid auctions, payments, integrations and migration from other platforms using only the approved knowledge set. Pricing answers stay at the level published on the pricing page; anything custom, such as buyer's premium handling or multi-location contracts, becomes a reason to book a call rather than a guess.
- Qualify by segment and motionProspects get three or four short questions: auction type and volume per year, current platform, team size, and timing. Small auctioneers below the sales threshold are pointed to the self-serve trial with a follow-up nurture in Marketing Hub. Auction houses and multi-auctioneer firms are scored as sales-led. Existing customers are checked against plan tier and usage so expansion questions route to their account manager, not to new business.
- Book the meeting with the right repQualified prospects book through Chili Piper inside the chat, routed by segment and region round robin. Expansion conversations book directly onto the owning account manager's calendar. If no slot fits, the agent offers a callback request and creates a HubSpot task with a same-day due date.
- Write clean records into HubSpotEvery non-bidder conversation updates or creates a contact with contact type, lifecycle stage, auction segment, current platform and a short conversation summary. Expansion chats create an upsell deal on the existing company in the account management pipeline; new prospects create a deal only after a meeting is booked. Deduplication runs against company domain before any new company is created, and an n8n workflow flags conflicts for review rather than overwriting.
- Feed Marketing Hub and report weeklyCaptured segment and interest fields feed Marketing Hub lists for nurture by auction type and add-on interest. A weekly summary to leadership shows chats by visitor type, meetings booked by source (new versus expansion), unanswered questions, and handoffs, so the knowledge set and routing rules get tuned every week.
When a person takes over
- Expansion intent from an existing customer goes to the owning account manager, who sees the usage snapshot and transcript before the call, because contract and pricing changes on live accounts need a person who knows the history.
- Enterprise or multi-location auction houses asking about custom contracts, data migration from a legacy platform, or security reviews go to a senior seller or the founder, since these deals are large and the answers are not standard.
- Any chat where the visitor is an upset customer mid-auction (bidding outage, payment failure during a live sale) skips qualification entirely and goes to the support team's urgent queue with the existing support agent alerting a human immediately.
- Questions the agent cannot answer from approved sources are logged and routed to the product marketing owner weekly so the knowledge set is fixed, rather than the agent improvising.
Rules it follows
- Never create HubSpot contacts or marketing-eligible records for bidders; they are the customers' customers and must not enter sales lists or Marketing Hub email sends.
- Never pitch upgrades or add-ons to a customer contact who has an open high-priority ticket; resolve the support issue first and suppress sales routing until the ticket is closed.
- Quote only published pricing and packaging; custom terms, buyer's premium or payment processing rates, and discounts always become a booked call.
- Answer only from the approved knowledge set and the support knowledge base, and say plainly when something is unknown instead of guessing about features or integrations.
- Respect consent: capture marketing opt-in explicitly in chat and honor existing cookie and subscription preferences before adding anyone to nurture.
How you know it works
- Meetings booked from website chat per month, split into new auctioneer prospects and existing-customer expansion
- Pipeline created from chat-sourced meetings, by segment (independent auctioneer, auction house, multi-location)
- Share of sales-intent chats that previously landed in support and now reach a rep within the same day
- Percentage of chat-created contacts with complete contact type, segment and lifecycle fields (and bidder contacts created, target zero)
- Trial starts from chat for self-serve auctioneers and their conversion to paid
From pilot to live
- Phase 1: Diagnose and clean underneathReview transcripts and tickets, add the contact type property, backfill and archive existing bidder contacts out of marketing lists, fix lifecycle stages, and agree routing rules and territories with sales and account management. Build the approved pre-sales knowledge set from existing pages and the support knowledge base.
- Phase 2: Pilot on high-intent pagesLaunch the Concierge on pricing, demo and comparison pages only, with the support agent unchanged elsewhere. Review every transcript daily for two weeks, tune the routing question and qualification thresholds, and confirm Chili Piper routing and HubSpot records are landing correctly.
- Phase 3: Full site and expansion playsExtend to all marketing pages, turn on proactive offers for customers browsing add-ons and for target accounts identified by Warmly, connect usage milestones as triggers, and move to a monthly maintenance cycle: knowledge updates on each release, routing changes as the team changes, and a monthly performance review with leadership.
Tools that fit
HubSpot
CRM and marketing software
Chili Piper
Demand conversion platform
Warmly
Reveal site visitors and buying signals
n8n
Workflow automation platform
Databox
Dashboards and AI analytics
Some tool links are partner links. Hacking Demand may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This blueprint is a version of The Concierge (website chat agent) ↗
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Scope this agent ↗ Get your own blueprint ↗Good questions.
Straight answers.
Should we replace the support agent we already have?
No. It is doing its job; the problem is that it is also the only thing prospects and customers with buying intent can reach. Keep it on the help center and in the product, put the Concierge on marketing pages, and let the two hand conversations to each other with the transcript attached. You only rebuild what is actually causing lost meetings.
Lots of our chat traffic is bidders who are not our customers. How do we stop them clogging the CRM and sales queue?
The first chat question separates bidders from auctioneers, and bidders are sent to bidder help or the auctioneer running their sale without a contact being created. During cleanup, existing bidder records are tagged and removed from marketing lists so your Marketing Hub sends and reporting reflect real auctioneers and buyers of the software.
How does it tell the difference between a small auctioneer who should just start a trial and an auction house that needs a sales call?
It asks about auctions per year, current platform and team size, and checks any existing usage or trial data in HubSpot. Below the threshold you set, it points to the self-serve trial and enrolls the contact in a nurture; above it, or for multi-location firms and platform switches, it books a rep. Existing customers are matched to their plan and usage so upgrade conversations go to their account manager, not to new business.
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