A 10-minute guide to writing guidelines that actually make
HubSpot's Customer Agent smarter — not just more verbose.
Customer Success + SA Teams
~10 minutes
❌ "If asked about refunds, say: Refunds are processed within 3–5 business days."
❌ "For billing questions, respond with the pricing page link."
❌ Copy-paste the FAQ into Guidelines.
✅ "We prioritize speed for first-time issues, but escalate if the same customer contacts us twice in 7 days."
✅ The reason behind the answer, not just the answer itself.
Giving an AI direct answers is like giving a new hire a script — it breaks the moment something unexpected happens.
Contacts, Companies, Tickets, Deals, Conversation History — the "who is this person?" layer
Knowledge Base articles · Website pages · Internal documents — the "what do I know?" layer
Gmail · Slack · Google Docs · Teams — the "what else can I check?" layer
Guidelines sit above all three layers. They tell the agent how to use what it finds — not what to say.
⚠️ Mixing them up is the #1 reason Customer Agents give outdated, robotic, or irrelevant answers.
"If the contact's Lifecycle Stage is Customer and they have more than 2 open tickets, always prioritize speed over completeness and offer to connect them with a human agent."
💡 CRM data makes Guidelines personalized. Without clean CRM properties, the agent treats every customer the same.
Ask: "Could a new hire act on this article alone?"
If No → fix the KB first. The agent will be confused too.
Outdated pricing pages, old product names, or conflicting info will be surfaced as-is.
What's indexed matters.
Granularity varies wildly. The agent reads these literally.
Standardize format before uploading.
🎯 Your Guideline can say "prefer KB articles over website content for pricing questions" — but only if the KB is actually trustworthy. Source quality = answer quality.
Slack channels with too much internal noise — the agent can't filter context vs. chatter
Google Docs with version history confusion — the agent reads the current state only
Email threads that contain sensitive internal discussion not meant for customers
For external sources, the most important Guideline is:
"What should the agent not look at?"
💡 Connect only what's clean, current, and customer-safe. Use Guidelines to set priority order when sources conflict.
"If the customer asks about refunds, tell them refunds take 3–5 business days."
"For pricing, send the link to the pricing page."
"Always say thank you at the end."
"We value speed over perfection for first-contact issues. If uncertain, offer to connect with a human rather than guessing."
"Escalate when: same customer, same issue, 2nd contact within 7 days — regardless of severity."
Answer-based Guidelines expire. Thinking-based Guidelines scale with every new scenario.
The OS — how it thinks, what it prioritizes, when it escalates
The database — what it knows, verified, current, well-structured
The context — who it's talking to, and why that changes the response