HubSpot conversations: managing shared customer communications
Understand when to use the HubSpot Conversations Inbox or Help Desk and how to manage shared email, chat, messaging and support channels.
HubSpot provides shared communication workspaces that bring customer messages into the CRM.
Teams can use the Conversations Inbox to manage shared email, live chat, forms, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Service teams with Service Hub Professional or Enterprise can use Help Desk to manage customer communications as tickets across a wider range of support channels.
Choosing the appropriate workspace and establishing clear ownership, routing and response processes helps prevent messages from being missed.
Conversations Inbox or Help Desk?
The Conversations Inbox and Help Desk support different operational needs.
Conversations Inbox
The Conversations Inbox provides a shared location where teams can view, assign and respond to incoming customer messages.
It can be suitable for:
- General sales enquiries
- Marketing enquiries
- Shared business email
- Website live chat
- Forms that require a direct response
- Facebook Messenger
The Conversations Inbox is available across HubSpot plans, although the number of inboxes and the available routing and automation features depend on your subscription.
Help Desk
Help Desk is designed for structured customer support and ticket management. It is available with Service Hub Professional and Enterprise.
Help Desk can connect channels including:
- Team email
- Live chat
- Forms
- Calling
- Facebook Messenger
- Custom channels
Incoming messages can create tickets that move through a defined support process.
Help Desk can also support features such as ticket views, routing, working hours, service-level agreements and capacity management. Some advanced capabilities require an assigned Service Seat.
For accounts created after 1 April 2024, channels connected to the Conversations Inbox cannot create tickets. Organisations that need incoming communications to create and manage support tickets should use Help Desk.
HubSpot guides:
Overview of the Conversations Inbox
Set up Help Desk
Plan your communication structure
Before connecting channels, decide how different enquiries should be managed.
Consider whether your organisation needs separate workspaces or teams for:
- Sales
- Customer support
- Marketing
- Finance or billing
- Partnerships
- Regional teams
- Different brands
Avoid creating an inbox for every possible enquiry type. Too many separate workspaces can make ownership, cover and reporting harder to manage.
For each channel, document:
- Its purpose
- The responsible team
- Expected response times
- Assignment rules
- Cover during absence
- Escalation routes
- When a conversation should become a ticket
- How closed conversations or tickets should be reviewed
Connected team email
A shared email address such as sales@, enquiries@ or support@ can be connected to HubSpot.
New messages sent to that address can appear in the relevant workspace, where authorised users can:
- Read the message
- Reply from the shared address
- Assign it to a user or team
- Add internal comments
- Associate it with CRM records
- Review the conversation history
Use shared addresses for team-owned processes rather than connecting one person’s mailbox as the team’s permanent communication channel.
Before connecting an address, confirm:
- Who owns and administers the mailbox
- Whether forwarding or direct connection is appropriate
- Which users should have access
- How duplicate replies will be prevented
- Whether existing forwarding or automation rules will conflict
- What should happen when an employee leaves
Forms as communication channels
A HubSpot form can be connected to the Conversations Inbox or Help Desk where submissions require a managed response.
This can be useful for:
- General enquiries
- Support requests
- Complaints
- Service requests
- Other structured customer questions
In Help Desk, an eligible form submission can create a ticket.
Not every form needs to create a conversation or ticket. Newsletter registrations, content downloads and other marketing conversions may be better handled through CRM properties, segments and workflows.
Use the communication workspace only where a person or team needs to review and respond to the submission.
Live chat
Live chat allows website visitors to communicate with your team through a chat widget.
A live-chat channel can be configured with settings such as:
- Welcome messages
- Availability
- Assigned users and teams
- Target website pages
- Data collection
- Language
- Consent options
- Offline behaviour
Live chat should reflect the team’s genuine ability to respond. Do not promise an immediate response if the channel is not monitored consistently.
Define what should happen when nobody is available, such as:
- Collecting the visitor’s email address
- Creating a ticket
- Displaying an offline message
- Offering another contact method
- Setting an expected response time
HubSpot guide:
Create a live chat
Chatbots and automated chat
Rule-based bots can guide visitors through an automated conversation before involving a team member.
Depending on the subscription and configuration, a bot may help to:
- Ask qualification questions
- Collect contact information
- Route an enquiry
- Share knowledge-base content
- Book a meeting
- Create a ticket
- Transfer the visitor to an available user
Automation should have a clear purpose and a straightforward route to human support where appropriate.
Review bots regularly to ensure:
- Questions and answers remain accurate
- Routing reflects the current team structure
- Links and resources still work
- The bot handles unexpected answers appropriately
- Visitors are not trapped in repetitive steps
- Collected data is still required
More advanced AI-powered customer support features should be reviewed separately from rule-based chatbots, including their subscription, content-source and governance requirements.
Eligible Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise and Service Hub Professional or Enterprise accounts can connect a WhatsApp Business Account to HubSpot.
New WhatsApp messages can appear as threads in the Conversations Inbox. WhatsApp can also be connected as a Help Desk channel for support processes.
The connection requires an appropriate WhatsApp Business Account, Meta Business access and control of the phone number being connected.
Important considerations include:
- Only new messages are synchronised after connection.
- Historical conversations are not imported.
- The connected number’s behaviour outside HubSpot can change.
- Customer-initiated sessions have a limited messaging window.
- Business-initiated messages may require approved templates.
- Meta’s messaging limits, terms and charges may apply.
- Phone-number matching is used to associate messages with CRM contacts.
Confirm the intended operating model before connecting an existing business number.
HubSpot guide:
Connect a WhatsApp channel to the Conversations Inbox
Facebook Messenger
A Facebook Page can be connected as a communication channel so incoming Messenger messages can be managed in HubSpot.
Depending on the subscription and workspace, messages can be routed through the Conversations Inbox or Help Desk.
The user establishing the connection needs appropriate access to the Facebook Page. Meta’s own platform policies and messaging restrictions continue to apply.
Review:
- Who administers the Facebook Page
- Which HubSpot users should respond
- Expected response times
- Bot and automation behaviour
- What happens if the connection expires
- How messages are associated with CRM contacts
HubSpot guide:
Connect channels to the Conversations Inbox
Calling
HubSpot’s calling tools are separate from the standard Conversations Inbox.
Depending on your subscription, seat, country and calling configuration, users may be able to make or receive calls using HubSpot and record them against CRM records.
Calling activity can include:
- Call direction and duration
- Call outcome
- Notes
- Record associations
- Recordings and transcripts where available and enabled
Service Hub Professional and Enterprise accounts can also configure a calling channel in Help Desk so incoming support calls can be managed through tickets.
Your organisation is responsible for understanding and following applicable requirements for call recording, monitoring, consent and retention.
HubSpot guide:
Make calls in the HubSpot browser
Assignment and routing
Clear assignment prevents multiple users responding to the same enquiry or assuming somebody else is handling it.
Depending on your subscription and workspace, assignment may be:
- Manual
- Directed to a specific user or team
- Distributed among available users
- Based on ticket or conversation criteria
- Based on agent skills in eligible Help Desk accounts
Automation should include a fallback for situations where:
- No user matches the routing rule
- The assigned user is unavailable
- A team reaches capacity
- The enquiry is received outside working hours
- Information required for routing is missing
A routed message still requires operational ownership. Regularly review unassigned, open and overdue conversations or tickets.
Internal collaboration
Users can add internal comments and reassign conversations or tickets without including those internal notes in the customer-facing reply.
Use internal comments for relevant operational context, but do not store inappropriate, excessive or sensitive information simply because the comment is not customer-facing.
Teams should agree how to:
- Request assistance
- Escalate an issue
- Transfer ownership
- Record decisions
- Close a conversation
- Reopen work when the customer replies
CRM records and conversation history
When HubSpot can identify the person, messages can be associated with the relevant contact and other CRM records.
This gives users access to information such as:
- Previous conversations
- Contact details
- Associated companies
- Deals
- Tickets
- Other CRM activity
Automatic matching is not always possible. Unknown visitors, shared email addresses and duplicate phone numbers may require manual review.
Do not merge or associate records without checking that they represent the same person or organisation.
Permissions and access
Access to inboxes, Help Desk and individual channels should be limited to users who need it.
Review:
- Inbox and Help Desk membership
- Communication and ticket permissions
- Service Seat assignments
- Channel administration
- Super Admin access
- Departed or inactive users
- External partner access
Connecting a channel can give HubSpot access to customer messages from another platform. The connection should therefore be approved by an appropriate account owner or administrator.
Privacy, consent and retention
Customer communications can contain personal, confidential or sensitive information.
Your organisation should decide:
- Which channels are approved
- What information may be collected
- How long communications and recordings are retained
- Who can access them
- How data-subject requests are handled
- Whether recording or monitoring requires consent
- How third-party platform terms affect the process
HubSpot provides technical communication and access controls. Your organisation remains responsible for its privacy, retention and legal decisions. Forbidden does not provide legal advice.
Reporting and regular review
Use available reporting to review measures such as:
- Conversation or ticket volume
- Time to first response
- Time to close
- Unassigned work
- Individual and team activity
- Bot performance
- Channel demand
- SLA performance in eligible Help Desk accounts
Metrics should be interpreted alongside staffing levels, enquiry complexity and the purpose of each channel.
Review connected channels, routing rules, bots and user access whenever the team or service process changes.
What can Forbidden help with?
Forbidden can help you:
- Decide when to use the Conversations Inbox or Help Desk
- Design inbox, Help Desk and channel structures
- Connect supported email, chat, form, WhatsApp and Messenger channels
- Configure assignment, routing and availability
- Design chatflows and rule-based bots
- Configure ticket creation and pipelines
- Review access, permissions and Service Seats
- Test channel and record-association behaviour
- Create reporting and governance processes
- Train users who manage customer communications
Your organisation remains responsible for channel approval, staffing, response commitments, customer-message content, privacy decisions and compliance with external platform rules.
Further information