HubSpot Service Hub Overview with Justin Graci

Hey, Hub Ed Community, it's your boy, George B. Thomas, and I'm super excited. Today we're going to have a conversation with Justin Gracie about the HubSpot service hub. And we asked some great questions. Without further ado so that you can get the education you need. Let's get in to the good stuff. So, Justin, first of all, excited to have you here. Excited to have this conversation about the HubSpot Service Hub. I always like to start at the very beginning of what I feel is the conversation. Awareness, consideration, decision. We're trying to get people to do that buyer's journey. And so if you meet somebody and you have to for the first time, explain what in the world is the HubSpot service hub, what is your answer to that?

Put it in the simplest terms. Service Hub is customer service software that helps you deepen customer relationships and drive efficiency. That's like the quickest, driest, like, way to position it. But like, so if you're thinking about similar, other alternatives on the market, such as, like industry leaders like Zendesk and smaller players like Fresh Desk, it offers a lot of the same tools that service reps and leaders need that are in those platforms to build these relationships, respond to tickets, you know, all the usual stuff. This is where it gets interesting. It's the real value of Service Hub is that it's part of this broader CRM platform, meaning that you're using, if you're using the whole platform, it's connected to all the different parts of your organization, your sales team, your marketing team, so that you're able to manage that entire experience for that customer, not just when they're having an issue, but throughout the whole life cycle. So that's really the differentiating piece that sets Service Hub apart from the, I think the competition. But at the end of the day, it is customer service software.

I love this and I love the fact that you mentioned the word platform, because HubSpot really has kind of grown up to be this place. Whether it's integration, CRM, cms, service, sales, marketing, operations, you have all of it at your fingertips to make your business better. Let's go ahead and drill back in though, on the micro, because we're talking about the HubSpot Service Hub today. And when you think about the people who might be watching this or listening to it, we all have problems, right? 99 problems. But the Service Hub doesn't have to be one of them. So when you think about problems that the Service Hub helps solve, where does your mind go with that?

Yeah, and I will start by saying like Service Hub has come a long way since it first was released years back. We've kind of narrowed it down to a few areas that we've been drilling into recently, which is Service Hub solves agent productivity and burnout. So if you're dealing with clunky systems, disconnected systems, things like that, you're going to burn out, you're going to get frustrated, you're not going to be as efficient as you can be if you don't have access to the right data across all your orgs. That's going to be an issue because it's an easy to use help desk with all of this powerful automation and reporting built in. Again, back to that platform story, allowing your team to ramp up faster than maybe on an alternative platform. That's honestly what we're solving for is that productivity and burnout piece. And then there's a few other ones I would say that kind of fall into that a little bit too. There's the siloed cobbled systems that we always talk about. In that case you might be missing out on revenue opportunities. I think there's like we have a few stats that we like to throw around, but 72% of consumers expect agents to know about their previous engagements that they've had. Obviously. Right. HubSpot's able to connect customer service to the front office to provide more insights and more opportunity for action so that you can actually see see when there's an upsell opportunity, when there's a save opportunity that for that customer that's not happy. So again we're solving for that missed revenue op. And then finally the last one that we always talk about this is, you know, HubSpot's big on it but authenticity. 89% of consumers are willing to switch business due to a poor experience that they had with that competitor. So again that's something else that we're trying to solve is making sure that customers have good experiences with your business.

Yeah, it has really come down to a level or life that we live of it. It's all about the. Which almost leans into the next question, but there may be some things past experience as well. Why is it important for companies? And by the way, historically we know, hey, we've always focused on sales, we've always focused on marketing. What is maybe the, you know, the littlest child in the room, maybe service is that good. Probably not. But back to the question, why is it important for companies to focus on service and more importantly the HubSpot service hub as a tool or Might I even say a set of tools for them to use?

Yeah, I would agree. I think service in general has been underinvested in by the majority of companies out there and you're starting to see more and more companies doing it well and actually winning because of it. So it's become kind of like what you see on your LinkedIn feed all the time now. It's the new hot topic that customer expectations just continue to increase every day. I think a lot of this was also driven from the pandemic that we all went through and still kind of dealing with, where our behaviors and our expectations have also changed with that. So we saw this picking up Steam years ago with new players. I know Halligan, former CEO at HubSpot, he used to talk about the experience disruptor. But these new players like Netflix taking down Cable Carvana, taking on dealerships, Dollar Shave Club was one of his other examples. Taking on the billion dollar Goliath of Gillette and ultimately they were winning because of experience. So clearly it does matter and experience is dependent on service and the customer relationship. So we're seeing a rapid increase in these expectations in the B2B space now, similar to the B2C space. So overall like the faster that you can get ahead of that change, it's already happening and so it's not like something that's coming but the better positioned you'll be to win. Service Hub ultimately makes, I think it easier to, to bend into that and to actually take advantage and have that competitive differentiator in the service space because it makes a lot of sense when it's connected in this platform seamlessly, you know what's going on with that customer across the whole lifetime value of them. And you don't have to just have the whole platform to achieve all of these results either. So like don't think that that's the only way to make this happen. It's still a great purchase at the end of the day as a standalone hub or with a couple of the hubs because your team's just going to find it more enjoyable and easier to use. That's what HubSpot's been known as, is like easy to use, intuitive software. And that's really what we offer. And the service tools are just getting more and more impressive every month and every year. For me, Service Hub is becoming a no brainer now.

Yeah, I have to agree. And it's interesting because again we go back to that platform conversation and might I say hub plus one, like is a thing where we really like to Talk about maybe it's marketing and service or sales and service or operations and service because then you can really start to unlock some very magical things when you start to think about this. Now here's the thing. People have been on with us for a little bit of a journey during this interview and the true question might come down in their brain of like, well, how do I know if it's a right fit for me and that is really where I want to go is who is the HubSpot Service Hub a good fit for as far as company perspective and maybe even to dovetail or an addition into this is have you ever seen anyone that's not a good fit for the HubSpot Service Hub?

I think overall with HubSpot's suite of products, you know, we are positioned and targeting, you know, scaling companies and scaling businesses. So as you're looking to grow like HubSpot's a great platform for that in general, no matter what product line you're using, whether it's service hub, marketing, sales, because each time that you're growing, you're not outgrowing your software, you're staying on the same platform. So we've become flexible enough where we have different tiered pricing models and different features you can unlock for your different stages of growth. You don't have to rip and replace and put in a new product as you get to a certain growth stage. So that's I think one thing worth throwing out there. In terms of Service Hub, we're really targeting and honestly finding some good success in companies that are in the SMB to lower mid market range. Who are B2B companies like Atlassian for example. The B2B company or B2B2C is one that we've been looking at in the software, tech, education, consumer product space and financial industry. This is another vertical that we really look at and thrive in. So that's usually the range we look at. And then when we are thinking about non fit companies for Service Hub, you know, I'd be the first to agree that you know, if you are Nike or like Apple, a massive enterprise company, it might not be the perfect fit today if you're in the larger enterprise space that you know is over 500 a thousand employees who have already, you know, built home built systems, tons of integrations and custom work that's going to be a heavy lift to really rip and replace and for Service Hub to meet your needs. Our prime area in the market and customer is really in that like small business from like, you know, solopreneur all the way up into like the 500 employee spot. And we're starting to see more and more traction in the 200 to 500 employee size company.

Yeah, I've been part of the HubSpot ecosystem long enough to actually capture one little word that you said in there, which is the word yet meaning give them a year or two people. Who knows, it might be a totally different conversation as we kind of move down the road. People are like, oh, check I'm a good fit. This sounds amazing.

Yep.

We need to focus on service. They're pulling out their wallet, Justin. And then they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait. What the heck? What does this thing cost? So when we're just looking, because I know the whole HubSpot pricing could be a real matrix. Let's keep it simple. When we're Talking about the HubSpot Service Hub, how can somebody get started? How can they upgrade? What are the different pricing packages that they might be looking at when they get into this?

So our pricing page is pretty transparent. So HubSpot.com pricing I think is what you would go to. The cool thing with it is that you can get started for free. So we have the freemium model at HubSpot. So and the tools that you get for free are no joke either. So you know that comes with a free CRM to manage your contacts. It comes with a whole list of sales tools, marketing tools and the service tools all at the free layer. Again, if you're just looking to play around, get used to it, that is a good introduction to it. And then as you go up in the pricing tiers, our starter package is $45 a month. Then you go up to professional at $450 a month, then all the way up to $1200 a month for the Enterprise edition. And then there's, you know, additional cost for if you want additional seats for depending how many people you have in your org, that sort of thing. So that fluctuates the cost. We do and I encourage a lot of people to look at this is to explore the CRM suite bundle. So again you can choose like the starter suite, the pro suite, the enterprise suite and you can actually get the whole bundle of products. So marketing hub, sales hub, service hub, CMS Operations hub, all under that pricing for a pretty competitive price, I would say so lot you can work with and there is different bundles you can build. So it's really plug and play.

Yeah. And trust me, if you're sitting here with Excel spreadsheets or post it Notes, it's a bargain at twice the price. I'm just going to throw that out there because the efficiency and the streamlining that will happen in your business is like night and day. And again, remember, we're tying back to it's all about experience. It's giving service and success the tools that they need. Which speaking of, I want to ask the question, how does the HubSpot service hub work? And I'm using air quotes here, but meaning what tools are there? Because we call it a tool, right? The service hub. What tools are inside of it that are there to help enable the team's success?

I kind of laughed when you, when you said that with like the quotations around work is like honestly a lot of the way it works is pretty impressive and you know, kudos to the product team for all the work they put into it to actually make it work. But first things first. The, you know, I said this a few times already, but being part of that connected platform enables Service Hub to be seamless and easy to use in general. So if you're familiar with the marketing tools or the sales tools, Service Hub tools are not going to be very different to you. It's going to look familiar, feel familiar. It's going to have the same processes and flows. So that's going to lead to higher or faster ramp adoption pace. So if you're looking at alternatives on the market, that's going to be a differentiator and how it works. So that's the first thing I would say. Second, we've got Conversations Inbox, which is a huge bonus and another differentiator, I think. So beyond just having a CRM as your single source of truth, you get an activity feed with every single interaction that prospect or in this case your customer is having with your website, your marketing, your sales, your service tickets so you understand the pains that they're going through and the issues you're having so you can provide that empathy and when you're having that outreach to them. So that's another way that it works is that you're just like able to build the experience all around the customer versus just guessing and leaving them frustrated. But I think you were asking about some of the features too. So some of like the, my favorite features, we came out with Customer Portal recently, almost a year ago now, at last inbound. So that allows you to build personalized secure login portals where customers can actually have a view of their tickets and you can actually do a few other pretty impressive things with Customer Portal too. But again, having that personalized login experience to see what your experience looks like with that business all in one place. SLAs we rolled out recently in service hub, allowing that's huge for like upmarket clients, of course, so that they could set those service level agreements so that you're not missing or frustrating the customer throughout their process. And then, you know, beyond like the general stuff that we have, like ticket pipelines and features that you would expect in any other service solution, you also get feedback surveys, which you can then use now in live chat and within your chat bots on your website, you can use feedback surveys and emails and landing pages and a whole lot more so that you're generating that feedback loop to improve all of your touch points. Conversation intelligence is another one worth throwing out there. So you've seen stuff like gong is CI essentially. So HubSpot's now built that within our own platform so that your CS team can gain an understanding of the customer experience that they're having with your sales rep before they get to you or any other engagements. So basically for those who don't know conversation intelligence, that's call recording and transcription. So as your sales reps are having calls with your customers or future customers, it's all being transcribed, tracked, you can pull out key terms that were highlighted in that call and you can do a lot of cool intelligence with it. And then the last one I'll say is channel switching, which was like, we've been waiting for it for a while. But basically the gist of it is wherever the customer wants to have a conversation with their service rep, they can do so. And the service rep can actually toggle between different channels and carry over the same conversation that they were having so that they're not missing any steps. So if you start the engagement between a service rep and a customer on email, then you bring it over to like chat on the website because you closed out your email, then you went back to their website, you can reopen that chat and quickly do that from the service rep's perspective by just toggling with a button.

Yeah, I just used that feature earlier today and I was like, thank you, God, this is amazing. And I don't know about everybody who's watching this or listening, but again, as you were kind of listing the things out, I was like, the word that keeps coming to my mind is robust. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I want everybody to call back a section before this when I said bargain at twice the price. It is a very robust tool set that you get for not a whole lot of money. That again is saving you time and money across the team that you actually have at your company. I mean it's a mathematical like duh, like let's do this now. One of the things I like to do on these interviews, Justin, is kind of paint what the future looks like. So I'm curious for those that are watching this and they're like, yeah, we need to implement Service Hub by HubSpot. It's making sense, it's in our budget, we're a good fit. Paint a picture of what the end result or success might look like once They've injected the HubSpot Service Hub into their company.

This might sound a little bit cliche, but like it is true and I'll show you in a second. But like the end result with Service Hub is happier customers, more revenue through those upsell and cross sell and renewal opportunities. Because you have again that center, that single source of truth of that customer. You see all of their interactions. No matter if it was just you, the service rep having that interaction, it doesn't stop there. You get to see all of the customers interactions across your website, your marketing channels, your sales channels and that just leads to better outcomes and honestly, just optimizing where you put your time and energy as a rep. I say happier customers, it sounds cliche, but we actually have been pulling a lot of customer data lately to really showcase what that success looks like and what customers are seeing for that. So we've seen response time being 8.34% shorter on average for each additional feature that you activate. So the more you're using the product and the more tools you're using, you're seeing a better response time with your customers. Service Hub customers who activate four key features have a 44% faster ticket response time than customers who activate just one feature feature. That's like a huge jump, right? And then HubSpot Service Hub Pro and Enterprise customers see a 10% or more increase in their ticket close rate after 12 months of using the software compared to what they were doing before. We're starting to pull more data like that to really showcase the results that customers can achieve. But at the end of the day it is happier customers and more revenue.

I love this. And what's amazing, in a little under 20 minutes we've taken the viewers, the listeners from what the heck is HubSpot service hub to this is what your future success could look like. But I'm not done yet. I actually have one more question before I give you the opportunity to if people want to connect or if they want to learn more about the service hub and all that good stuff that you can give us viewers. You know I'm all about value, Justin. You know I'm all about giving value to the community. So my one last question is what are some words of wisdom pertaining to service hub or you know, the HubSpot service hub tool? Heck, maybe life in general. Whichever direction you want to go. What are some words of wisdom that you would want to share with the audience?

Yeah, I won't go too off tangent with this because I have a lot of life advice for people, but I won't do that. Now is the time to solve for service experience and not just the sales experience and your marketing campaigns and optimizing those. Like now is the time to optimize your service experience or else you're going to fall behind and you're going to fail against the competition who are already doing these things and thinking about them. It's not something that's just like a nice to have anymore. It's like a must have at this point the way that buyers are behaving, customers expect more from us and we actually have to deliver. So that is one word of advice and that this is now becoming a competitive differentiator for your business and not just something to sleep on. I said it before but you know, service launched back in, I believe it was like 2018. Now it's come a long way since it originally launched. So another piece of advice would just be to like take a look at it, grab a demo, talk to a partner like yourself, get out there and check it out because there's been a lot of cool things that have rolled out in the past few years and especially in the past six to 12 months more. So, so give that a look. And off that I would say like another bit of advice is just check out our partner ecosystem. I do have to give credit to you and like the rest of the partners out there if you're looking to be successful faster on the platform. We have an ecosystem of product experts and who deliver, you know, services that outsize the amount of results that you would be able to see alone. So if you're a larger organization trying to figure it out or you're a smaller organization, you're not sure where to get started, work with a partner and they'll help you get there.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of smart cookies in the ecosystem. Without a doubt, I'm there too. But I mean there's a lot of smart cookies in the ecosystem.

I learn every day from you.

I appreciate it if people want to reach out, if they want to ask questions, just connect. Or the other side of this kind of two roads. Learn more about the service hub. Where do you want to send them.

For connecting with me? You know I'm on Twitter. I'm not posting every day, but I I do check it so you can reach me at justengracy G R A C I is my handle and then my LinkedIn is also just Justin Gracie. You'll see me with the orange background in the picture. Connect with me there. Happy to chat. Just make sure you give me a DM that says who you are and what you want to talk about. So I know you're not a salesperson. Just trying to sell me something. Let's have a conversation. And yeah, there's I'd say the community and HubSpot HubSpot community is another great place to go. Learn more, connect with other people in the ecosystem, users, power users. They're posting a ton of content and education in there that will help you be successful, whether it's on the HubSpot platform or just with service in general. It's not all HubSpot specific, so hop on in there.

What a great interview with Justin Gracie from HubSpot. And listen, if you have questions about the HubSpot Service Hub, make sure you reach out. Head over to GeorgeB Thomas.com if you're looking for a demo for the service hub just so you can see if it'll fix the pain points that you have. We got you covered over there as well. We do free demos without the sales pitch. That's right. We are here to serve with the demos, not sell. As you move forward to the next exciting adventure in your day, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and we'll see you in the next Hub Ad Helper expert interview.