HubSpot Updates: Shopify Data, Help Desk, Deal Insights

Good morning, HubSpot Nation! Welcome to Wake Up with Customer Platform, your unofficial HubSpot morning show where we help you discover the platform value you already own. I'm Chris Carroll, joined by my co-hosts today, Madeline Donovan and George B. Thomas, as we make sure you're not sleeping on HubSpot's its true capabilities. If you're joining live, drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building in HubSpot today. Uh, happy HubSpot Hump Day, uh, March 26th, 2025. How are you guys doing today?

Doing good. I just want to say I took it seriously on Wednesdays we wear orange.

Yeah, George missed the reminder clearly. He was wearing orange last week.

I missed the memo.

On his first appearance, but we are definitely going to make it a thing. Shout out to Jeff Graham, my good friend who many months ago was trying to find traction in the ecosystem and suggested that. And I want to run with it. So short slate today. Uh, we'll dive in. Um, e-commerce customer overview CRM card for Shopify data sync. A lot of words there. Uh, what is it? For Shopify data sync integration users, a new CRM middle panel card is available offering a unified view of key metrics like total orders, average order value, and product views, a sales graph with filters, and an AI insights summary. Hmm.

Okay, why does it matter? Until now, as a Shopify customer syncing data into HubSpot, you've lacked a unified view of key metrics. I feel this personally. This has meant manually constructing reports and switching between order, cart, and contact records, leading to inefficiencies and delayed insights. The new CRM card eliminates these pain points by providing a comprehensive unified view of your data directly within the contact record. Okay. The visual sales graph and customizable filters allow you to quickly identify trends and patterns in customer purchasing behavior Providing instant customer insight. Okay, this is a lot of, this is a lot of words for something describing a visual sales graph. So I'm curious.

Well, the, the interesting thing to me is it's a lot of words, but there's a keyword missing. Uh, I'm happy that it's missing. Nowhere in here do we see the word deals. Um, it's interesting that we're headed into like, uh, or having a conversation this morning around this idea of orders. Also, they keep getting the Shopify integration better and better and better, and it makes me almost want to find a reason why I need to use Shopify, but I don't think I'm gonna do that, but it makes me want to do that.

Yeah, it's, um, it's needed because, uh, they're gonna try their best to sunset, uh, the old Shopify integration, which this is not referring to, and a lot of people are still on, and it's connected to deals. So when you hear the word orders, it's a different world. And I'll just say last year they tried to sunset QuickBooks, the old QuickBooks integration before a bunch of people were ready. And that was extended by like 6 months. So I've got some exciting content planned. Stefan, Loncar, who I've done a Let's Build Ecommerce show with before. We're going to start a short series on Shopify specifically to try and help people get comfortable with that move because it is— I feel strongly, obviously, that it is the right move. We're not managing sales processes when orders are just coming in from Shopify, so let's not clutter up our deals. And yeah, so really excited to see this progress. And of course, anytime I see progress related to this specific integration, I know that means progress for the orders object as well. So excited about that. Number 2, save a payment method on file for subscriptions. Just kidding, you've been able to do it for a while, so maybe this is— I was gonna say, I think that's been there, but yeah, maybe it's finally out of beta. Um, uh, wow, if you didn't know you could do that, you can save payment methods in HubSpot now.

So George, I have to know, is that a sound effect or are you just doing that? It's very consistent.

Sound effect. I wish I could like be a ventriloquist and do that without moving my lips. Wow.

Like, okay, cool.

Just had to know.

Yeah, he's a professional through and through. Um, number 3: knowledge sources sidebar card in help desk. What is it? This change introduces a new Knowledge Sources sidebar card, which can be added to the Help Desk sidebar. The Knowledge Sources sidebar card allows users to perform a keyword search to find related sources, resources without leaving the workspace. If enabled, provides AI-generated recommendations for which help content might be relevant based on the context of the ticket. Huh.

Hmm. So why does it matter? It can be difficult for support. Well, first of all, because it makes your life easy. I don't even want to read the dang thing anyway. Uh, why does it matter? It can be difficult for support agents to find relevant resources such as knowledge base articles or public-facing website content while troubleshooting support tickets within the knowledge source sidebar card. Support agents can quickly find the right help, the right help, help content. I would say helpful content, whatever, without leaving help desk, making it faster and easier to troubleshoot customer issues. Can we please, by all that is holy, get this card in front of sales too?

Yeah.

Like, why is this just support? Anyway, I digress.

Yeah, I haven't. Do we have anything? Else yet in HubSpot where it's pulling knowledge base articles like this? I don't think so.

I mean, unless— thingy, right? The chat.

Yeah, like, like for customers or, or for like the customer portal, but I haven't seen it for users, and that's like what you need it for the most almost.

Well, and two, it says website content. Listen, I've been hacking HubSpot snippets as a sales enablement tool for years. For years. Like, but this right here, if you just get rid of the word support and website and all the stuff, if you go with a they ask, you answer, like sales strategy.

It's coming, folks. It's coming. But one tool at a time.

I wanna know, can guinea pigs eat Monstera?

Oh, wait, what? That's the, oh, the breeze suggestion. Apparently, I mean, we like our pet analogies in our HubSpot example land. So this must mean that we're able to look at the pets custom object that we always talk about here. So Either way, like, this sidebar, um, is about to explode in value throughout the portal, uh, and I do think it's right to introduce it, um, kind of use case by use case based on the people using it, which for me makes a lot of sense in the workspaces. So, but what we've seen, George, uh, is that often something like this. Now I'm not so sure because there's not— it's knowledge sources and that's contained in like Service Hub and things like that. But often when a sale— if something happens in the XYZ workspace, it will often come to the other workspaces like sales, help desk, and customer success.

I mean, listen, there are organizations sitting on a metric butt-tons of blog articles and website pages. And like, and just to be able to surface that quickly and be like, here's the top 3 articles you should get to this human because 70% of people who read these articles actually purchase. Like, as a sales guy, I would, I'd be all over it anyway.

Yeah. And I just want to highlight, I see you, Scott. Uh, I don't want to take the rest of the show to respond to this comment. So I will stick around to the, stick around to the end and, uh, I will make sure there's time permitting to respond to that comment.

5 hours later, Chris.

Number 4, uh, deal insights customization. Okay, this is what I'm excited about. I just saw some stuff this morning related to insights.

Uh-oh.

Users can now customize deal insights. Okay, this is not what I saw this morning, but it's still cool, uh, to reflect the metrics that are most important to them and their business. Why does it matter, Madeline?

Well, currently the data well on the deals index page provides a set of fixed metrics. While these give you a quick overview, we understand your business's needs are unique. With this new feature, the data well— is that like a phrase?

I, I think that's a HubSpot phrase.

Yeah, I guess so.

The data well can be tailored to show the metrics that are most important to your business. This allows you to see the data you need right when you need it, allowing you to make faster, more informed decisions.

See, I like this. I like this. I'm trying to figure out how I can put a dad— bad dad joke of like the man or the woman at the well, but I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. But I do like this because this is just a micro way that now you can wrap HubSpot around your business. Like, I'm huge into customization. And so again, we earlier we talked about like not talking about deals and talking about orders. So like, imagine a world where like you're still trying to report on revenue, but it isn't kind of the things that are in the current data. Well, wow. Anyway, like, so I like this. I like this.

Yeah, agreed. I know so many people just hide this section because it, you know, doesn't apply to them.

Listen, I'm always hiding it on my laptop.

Yeah.

Dream real estate, just saying.

Yeah, yeah. The last time I used it was to see if I could, uh, eclipse— which I did, uh, the total open deal amount, uh, based on the old Shopify integration, because all your abandoned cart stuff goes in there and it's like into the trillions in some, uh, some portals. Um, yeah, but otherwise Yeah, um, that's why we need the new integration, by the way, because we don't want a stage called abandoned cart stage. Oh, we now we have a cart object for that, and it's not going to mess with our revenue, uh, forecasting numbers like it has been.

So see, he's trying to tiptoe into that conversation. Yeah, at a different angle.

Can't resist. Um, either way, customization of all this stuff Uh, is, is on the horizon, and it's good to see this as a starting point because it sucks when you got to train HubSpot, or like, you can't like, uh, argue with the users where they're just immediately like, no, get that out of here, like, oh, get that off my screen. Like, it just erodes the trust in HubSpot whether we like it or not. So good to see that. Number 5, adding Learn More assistance to help desk. I'm intrigued. I mean, what is it? With the new Learn More feature on the help desk list view and in the help desk settings, customers will be able to access contextual knowledge-based content and Academy videos. This visible, this visible but unobtrusive pattern enables users to more easily access on-demand help when needed and learn more about the help desk.

Oh my, why does this matter? Uh, currently in the help desk workspace and in help desk settings, customers lack the ability to get contextual help HubSpot, or Weave, made it easier to learn more about core help desk features and set up where our customers need and expect it. Listen, listen, the help desk is becoming a beast, um, in a good way. I'm saying in a good way. Like, I've been watching this over the last, like, several months, maybe 6 months, maybe even a year, of, like, help desk and what they're adding and what they're Somebody is on a mission over there at HubSpot to make this like the world's best help desk thing. And so I love that they're doing things. When I see HubSpot Academy and Learn More Assistance, because they realize like we got to keep you educated to get the best out of the best thing we're building or one of the better things that we're building. This is huge.

Yeah, and I think this is another thing we'll start seeing all over the portal. I remember when the data quality, like, data management area came out and, like, they made this checklist of things that you could do, and I'm just like, where are the resources? Like, you got Academy lessons that could actually teach people how to do this stuff instead of just getting like a checklist done, like make a custom object. Yeah, it's kind of a big decision to make.

Uh, so knowledge base articles themselves are huge too. That's like a core part of my training for any company that I work with, and it only makes sense to have it right there.

Might I make one suggestion?

HubSpot.

HubSpot, I'm gonna make one suggestion. We might want to hire some more humans so that the things that we're linking to are always up to date. Yeah, because you all have created a monster that we're actually doing a show to help people keep up to date with with the updates. And if I click on the little button and I go to a video, let's just say out of the blue, on forecasting and goals, and I see forecasting and goals from about a year and a half ago, I'm gonna get confused.

So we might want to hire some more people or, uh, or contract some people too. I'm sure there's some people outside of the org that would be interested.

I mean, I might know a couple people.

Yeah, right there with you, man. That's probably why they don't add it into the portal like I'm asking to. I get it, but the responsibility still lies with Big Orange in keeping that stuff up to date. Number 6. User-based ticket capacity. Uh, it's a help desk kind of day. Limits for all open tickets, medium impact. Okay. With this release, service managers can individually limit the number of open tickets that are automatically assigned to their support agents, allowing more flexibility while also reducing agent overwhelm. Agents in help desk can also see when they are at capacity and be aware of other users' capacity when reassigning a ticket. Hmm.

Support agents can become easily overwhelmed when they have too many open tickets assigned to them, and more senior agents can take a larger load than new agents with less experience. So it's important that— this is a very run-on sentence— so it's important that service managers can set the ticket capacity limits on individual users relevant to the size of the workload that that user can handle.

Is this Enterprise? Who gets this? Dang on it.

Enterprise.

I couldn't find it. I went to multiple portals and I couldn't find the update, so I just wanted to call that out.

I could have just clicked here. I guess.

Hey, well, yeah, interesting that you—

oh, now I'm confused. App is not for external apps. It's okay. Anyways, uh, yeah, I like reading through these. Uh, to your point earlier, George, like, if you can draw a lot of insight from how the team that builds these products thinking about it and start to address it with your team. Let's say you're the admin, you're the one that is probably reading these updates. If you can understand that the team made it possible to easily compare, then you can kind of plan for, okay, How do I help my own team understand that it's not like a contest or like this is why we're doing it, it's not to make anybody feel bad about the number of tickets they have? Because there's lots of nuance behind how to actually onboard and get people to adopt these products. So yeah. So that's our list today for today. So I got 3 minutes here. Uh, let's— orders should be for external systems.

Here we go.

Uh, if the goal of the organization is to have a unified customer view in HubSpot, then shouldn't all of our customer-facing teams be working out of HubSpot? If the answer is yes, because it makes it infinitely easier to, uh, communicate internally and externally, and HubSpot's the communication and relationship management platform, then why wouldn't we create the order in HubSpot and then send it to the external system instead? I think that's a paradigm shift that we're going to see. I'm going to push like hell to see it because every customer team hates working out of all these external systems. And if we can help leaders understand the value of just switching the sync, like we're already integrating the systems, but letting the ERPs of the world decide where the orders should be just because that's where they've always been, I don't think is the best plan for, for most people. So I'll just, uh, I'll leave it there. I'm open to any feedback from this team on if I should be thinking about that differently.

I, I— brother, this is your jam.

Unified customer view. That's it. Like, yeah, we get back to that.

I fully realize that there are some people that hear the words coming out your mouth and they're like, Thank you, baby Jesus. And there are other people that hear the words coming out your mouth and they're like, I'm just saying.

Yeah, that's, uh, that's fair, I guess. Uh, but as HubSpot builds out, and the reason we're here every day, um, it's just like there's been so many— at the end of the day, there's been people that have figured out ways to use deal pipelines in just the most magnificent ways, uh, because they just— hey, this is staging gate process, I can, I can use pipelines for anything, any process of my business. Well, then, then what you— what can't you do is report on close, uh, close one percentages and, and revenue and forecasting and all the things your team is asking you to do because you've got all this data from operations and post-sales in your deals. So I'd say that's reason number 87 to do this. But we're going to see more, and that's the thing, like orders are going to keep showing up in your HubSpot portals. So at the very least, you can, you can understand why they're there and maybe think about your processes to understand why you might want want to use them. But the only thing we can't do yet is just create an order from a create order button. But we can import orders and we can get the true post-sales picture from, for our customers, at least the data in HubSpot, so our salespeople and everybody else serving them can see them. So I think that's where we'll wrap. For today. Uh, so thanks for listening to my TED Talk on orders. Uh, and remember folks, you probably own the solution you're looking for in HubSpot. I think today it's probably help desk. Uh, sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Join us tomorrow morning as we continue exploring what's new in HubSpot. Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments and let us know what capabilities you want to wake up to next. Until then, I'm Chris Carroll. I'm George B. Thomas.

I'm Madeline Donovan.

And George B. Thomas. And this has been Wake Up with Customer Platform. Now go build something amazing. Have a great day, everybody. Ah!