Value-First AI Daily - Jan 12, 2026

[00:00] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning HubSpot Nation. It is time to wake up customer platform with your number one unofficial HubSpot updates morning show where we help you discover the platform value you already own. I'm Chris Carolan, joined by my co-host, Casey Hawkins and George B. Thomas. We're here every weekday morning to make sure you're not sleeping on HubSpot's true capabilities. If you're joining live drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building in HubSpot today. Happy Monday, January 12, 2026. How are we doing?

George B. Thomas: Doing good, Happy Monday.

Casey Hawkins: Happy Monday. This is I think our official regular return. I was Chris is back in his office. I had a cold last week. I just, I feel like now the new year starts.

George B. Thomas: Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's yeah, let's do it.

Chris Carolan: Okay. Um, yeah, updates are back. That's, that's for sure. So we'll dive in even though I didn't go through all 30, all, all three pages, uh, last week. Um, the new to you got, got wiped. So we're going to be working from the all page today. Um, and trying to skip the ones that we went through on Friday along the way. Starting, uh, but starting with delete or mark notifications as read on mobile is in development. Forward looking statement at the front. Uh, some screenshots we haven't seen before. Uh, yeah, notification management. What is it? HubSpot mobile users, uh, after this is developed, we'll be able to manage their mobile notifications in the notification center more efficiently by selecting one or multiple notifications to either mark as read or delete them in bulk.

Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Staying on top of notifications is crucial for mobile sales reps who rely on timely updates to move deals forward. With this update reps gain greater control over their notification center, allowing them to quickly clear clutter and focus on the alerts that matter most. More control means more efficiency and less distractions while on the go.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, one thing to note, this feature will be available to all hubs and tiers both on iOS and Android. However, you're going to want to make sure that you download the latest version of the HubSpot mobile app for uh from the Apple Store or Google Play Store. Again, once this is developed and we say that it's live or you hear that it's live, it, it is going to be an app update that you'll need to make or latest version.

Chris Carolan: Indeed. Uh, next on the list, we've got sunsetting the process guides private beta with a deprioritized label in there. Rolling it back, process guides is being sunset on January 30th. Team says, thank you for the interest in process guides and a special thanks to our beta testers for taking the time to explore something new with us. We've spent the past few months reviewing the feedback on the beta has performed and we've made the decision to end the beta. As a result, we'll be retiring the beta on January 30th. If you've created process guides, they will continue to function as usable as usual until January 30th. And you'll have time to wrap up anything you've been testing. We will not approve new customers into the beta. Uh, I'd say if you have created some process guides and are sad about this, uh, maybe check out knowledge, um, uh, the knowledge vaults and, and assistance in Breeze. Yeah. I can probably get you, uh, pretty close to what you're trying to accomplish with those process guides as far as enabling your team with access to, uh, process knowledge.

George B. Thomas: Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

Chris Carolan: That's probably your best bet. Um, number three, introducing buying groups for Service Hub.

George B. Thomas: Okay.

Chris Carolan: Oh, oh man, we've got to manage buyers after closed one. How about that. Oh, look at the Oh yeah. And we got a screenshot. Uh, related to our chart chart Hub friends and what they brought in. So that is like you see the word, see the phrase buying group. Um, that relates to the acquisition of org chart Hub last year. Uh, uh, thanks to Daniel Karen, who's one of the first people that spoke up about unboxing, uh, hubspot. uh, and were across the last week. Um, now I'm even more excited about doing this. Uh, But what is it? Uh introducing buying groups for Service Hub. Calling all customer success teams who manage strategic accounts, this one is for you. Renewals and expansion depend on knowing exactly who holds influence, who champions your solution and how those relationships evolve after they hand off from sales. Buying groups brings critical relationship intelligence directly into HubSpot, giving customer success teams a shared working visual of the key stakeholders which moves with your customer's journey. Input your buying group card onto company's contacts and deals today. Short loom video here if you're going to click on the update and see it showing how to input the buying group cards.

Casey Hawkins: This is a power update. There's gifts, there's a loom, there's Yeah, it's uh it's amazing.

Casey Hawkins: Why does this matter? When working with large strategic accounts, you can never just rely on relationships with just one or two people, you need to be multi-threaded across the account. That's why top HubSpot customers map out the buying groups and each person's role throughout the customer journey. It helps them see the whole picture during sales to CS handoff, who's in the group, who's calling the shots and who's going to be um influential going forward. Reduce churn by identifying missing connections, champions who have moved on or weak relationships before they become roadblocks and you lose the account. And identify expansion. The first deal is never the last in a strategic account. Buying groups help establish a shared working document to identify key contacts for expansion opportunities. Very nice.

George B. Thomas: Very, very nice.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, our unified views continue to get easier. Uh, although you do need uh Sales Hub enterprise or Service Hub enterprise to use this one. Um, makes sense for the amount of insight and, and work involved. Uh, and also the scale of your organization if you're if you're having to to manage, uh, this kind of scale on the customer side of the wall, but super cool. Um, see, we've got improved experience to test your customer agent on email. Uh, we hit that on Friday. Get in there and test your customer agents. Um, super easy now. Visualize custom and app events on contact and company records. Uh, we did see that one last on Friday.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, I think we can bounce to page two because at the bottom of my page, it's new colors available. We talked about that. You talked about 76 plus new conditional scoring. I don't think is uh what we cover. I think we start there.

Chris Carolan: Yes. Uh Yep. Let's go. Here we go. Uh so basically about the middle of your page, Duke. Yeah, and then down a little, yep. Conditional scoring with quote and for lead scores. What is it? You can now create conditional scoring rules using and that award points only when multiple criteria are met. Check out this quick video demo to learn more. Uh, two types of conditional scoring, got cross property criteria uh, or fit scoring. A contact or company only receives points when they meet all the property criteria. Example, add 15 points when a contact's job title is CEO and role is decision maker and industry is tech.

George B. Thomas: Very micro.

Chris Carolan: Uh, second type is event specific criteria or engagement scoring. A contact or company only receives points when the action they take meets all the criteria. Example, add 10 points only for a contact that clicked link in email if email name is new email and URL is hubspot.com and location state is California.

Casey Hawkins: Why does this matter? Uh, previously lead scoring was only supported, lead scoring only supported single criteria. Criterion rules? What? Why are words?

Chris Carolan: Criterion rules? Yeah. That's a word.

Casey Hawkins: I'm doing fine. Thanks, Hubspot.

Casey Hawkins: While you would use segment list memberships or workflow enrollment as workaround for conditional logic, those approach, added friction and required you to leave the lead scoring app. Now you can create conditional scoring rules natively within with that within lead scoring. This lets you capture compound qualifications for fit, job title and industry and contextual signals for engagement, specific link clicks in a specific email resulting in more accurate lead prioritization. This was my number one ask out of lead scoring, um, from the jump. Um, I've said numerous times at nauseum that like I felt like this was the biggest limitation of the new lead scoring app was there was no and criteria. Um, they gave some very like specific examples. Um, but there are way less specific examples. Um, I mean, I can think of like when I try to find IT job titles, I, if I say job title contains IT, um, that is a lot of things because those letters IT are in a lot of things. So a lot of times I'll layer things. I'll say things like contains IT and manager or something like that. Um, so that gets me a little bit more narrow. Um, the amount of lead scores that I've built since the new lead scoring app have come out has come out, um, is a lot. And I don't think I have any that aren't using one of those workarounds for workflows and or the list criteria because there was this missing from the, um, functionality. So I'm very, very, very, very, very excited. Um, one limitation to call out right now is you can say and for fit, you can say and for engagement. You cannot say and fit and engagement. So I cannot say you are a CEO who filled out this form. I can and you filled out this form. Um, right now we would still need our a list, uh, or workflows probably what you're going to want if you're using an engagement at this.

George B. Thomas: At the end of the day, this is a good, um, we're heading in the right direction. Make sure you hit that join beta and I would suggest that you come and watch the video demo and, uh, read the how does it work as well to get a little bit deeper for sure.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, very clear, lots of screenshots. Videos linked twice, so they definitely want you to watch it. I was like seeing the marketers when they then when they create the product updates, uh, you can tell the difference. Um, huge updates. Uh, context and timing, folks.

Casey Hawkins: If you don't already follow me, I will make a video on this in the not so distant future as well.

George B. Thomas: In other words, Casey's saying follow me. Yeah. Follow, follow Casey. There'll be a video coming.

Chris Carolan: Uh, in private beta, we've got create contact segments based on percentage of video watched. What is it? You can now build segments based on how much of a video a contact has watched. The new filter allows you to segment contacts using the highest percentage of a video they've viewed even across multiple plays.

Casey Hawkins: Why does this matter? Segmenting your audience by engagement level helps you deliver more relevant messaging. This feature gives you more control over targeting by using real video consumption data, not just generic view events. For example, you can create a list of contacts who watch more than 75% of a product demo. Perfect for identifying highly interested leads or ready to buy prospects. I've done this with integrations before, excited to see this with HubSpot's video tool, also hard for me to go from lead scoring to this without seeing the lead scoring, um, how you can lead score based on this too.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Please hit that beta. By the way, it's funny the direction they went in. I'm going to go in a different direction. You could also be like, I need to see people who have haven't watched a certain percentage of the thing because I need to remind them to watch the thing. So like this, this I love. I'm so glad that we're heading into a deeper world of data around video consumption and just video in general. So like, yes, let's, let's keep heading in this direction.

Chris Carolan: Let's go. This one's been a long time coming. Uh And yes, sir.

Chris Carolan: We've got conditional scoring with and for health scores as well. Nice. Uh we should talk at some point is when do we get to one score? I think this is pretty much the same. I don't know if you want to I mean I I think we could probably don't have to read through it. It's the it's the same. It's in the health score. Yeah. It's important for all the same reasons. Right. And like so then going back to the buying groups, right? On both sides of the We need to understand the humans that are working with throughout the entire process. HubSpot's giving the tools to do that. Um so, so use them. Quote, custom properties is now live.

George B. Thomas: Nice.

Chris Carolan: What is it? You can now manage quote properties directly in data management just like you do for contacts, companies and deals and the 18 other native objects that has. This includes Wait, there's more than four?

George B. Thomas: I'm just kidding.

Chris Carolan: This includes creating custom properties on the quote object. These properties can be leveraged to personalize your quotes or to match your business workflows in a familiar centralized interface.

Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Previously quotes did not directly support their own custom properties. Now, you can tailor your quotes by inserting custom quote properties as personalization tokens, add custom properties to enrich quote workflows or reporting, create roll up or sync properties on the quote from associated objects like deals, contacts or companies. This simplifies quoting, improves data consistency and enables richer automation and reporting.

George B. Thomas: I mean that third one. That third one might be a baller move if you really pay attention to the the idea of roll up and sync properties. Anyway, I'll leave that lay there.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, I mean this update like all, all like simplify, improve data, enable automation and reporting, basically what you're paying Hubspot to do. Uh, so if you're quoting, like start to take advantage of this. Um, just make sure you you've mapped your process out so you can uh, like so you can make properties that actually move the needle inside and outside the org.

George B. Thomas: Yep.

Chris Carolan: Persist reply editor tab selection in help desk. Public beta. What is it? With this update the help desk reply editor will stay on the tab that the user selects as they navigate between tickets, saving time and clicks.

Casey Hawkins: Why does this matter? Speed is crucial is a crucial part of any support rep's workflow and it's important that their tools are responsive and intuitive. Needing to manually click back to the notes tab every time they pull up a new ticket is frustrating and time consuming. This update saves support teams precise seconds removing a click by persisting the user's tab selection within the reply editor of help desk. For reps who prefer to always start a ticket by leaving a note, this update with this update, they now just need to select the note tab once and every new ticket they navigate to will show notes tab instead of the reply editor.

George B. Thomas: Very cool, very granular. Do you remember the day when Service Hub just felt like the red-headed stepchild of uh, you know, HubSpot and not, well, I should say orange paired stepchild. Anyway, um man, they're they're really just kicking butt and taking names when it comes to Help desk, Service Hub, um good job, HubSpot. Good job.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, and if you don't believe us, uh, tomorrow on the admin suck, the uh team supporting help desk. Uh, this says it perfectly, Help desk has been available in Service Hub for a while now, but still some customers are hesitant to start using it. Uh, this team's going to help you with that tomorrow on the admin's hug, 10 o'clock Central Time. Check that out. Uh, I mean, you don't get access to product managers like that in another, other places, so uh, please take advantage, um, and show them your support at the same time. Send high dollar invoices with partial payments enabled. What is it? Checkout now displays payment method limits for invoices with partial payments enabled, defaulting the payment amount to the maximum allowed per method and showing an error if the entered amount exceeds the limit.

Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? The customer problem. Merchants issuing large invoices are frustrated when payment methods limits prevent them from creating or collecting payments on a single invoice. This change helps merchants maintain a single invoice while allowing buyers to pay in multiple installments within permitted payment method limits, reducing confusion and failed payments.

George B. Thomas: Hmm.

Chris Carolan: Uh yeah, I like it. I want to talk to Chad.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, I think I know all the words, but I'm, I'm trying to figure out like why and when this matters and if it's like a credit card limitation of the funds that can be paid or if it's a So my prior life was a bookkeeper at a pool construction company in St. Louis. Sometimes we would have customers, yeah, they would pay on one credit card and like one invoice, but they would pay on two credit cards because limit.

George B. Thomas: Interesting. Okay, very cool. Multiple angles.

Chris Carolan: I remember Chad talking about an episode of HubHeroes about this flexibility of invoicing still needed to be solved for. So I'm curious if this is what he was talking about. At least it's part of probably heading in the right direction for sure.

Chris Carolan: Yes, indeed. Uh, and where we'll end on today, we've got data agent, web research for contacts. What is it? Data agent can now browse the web to research contacts in your CRM and answer questions about them. That's very cool.

Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? You can now quickly gather up-to-date information about your contacts without leaving HubSpot. This helps you prepare for meetings with the latest context about a contact's activities, identify new conversation starters based on recent publications or news mentions, understand a contact's career progression as it tailors to your outreach. I'm just like imagining like a bad news article coming out about somebody the morning of your Well, and can I just take this out of sales and marketing for a second and can I take this into the world of content. Man, if you are a podcaster doing interview podcasts and you wanted to research the person that you're interviewing before you actually do the interview so that you can come to the table and look like you know about them, their book, their whatever. Like this would be dope just from a content interview research system too. Like it don't always have to be about sales and marketing, ladies and gentlemen, like dang gone, this is cool.

Chris Carolan: Yes. Manage your relationships with other humans. Uh if you treat Hubspot like that, wow, you can get a lot of power. Remember folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in HubSpot. Sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Join us tomorrow morning live at 7:30 a.m. Central or catch us anytime. Spotify and Apple Music and the profoundly blog. Uh 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 Carolan.

Casey Hawkins: I'm Casey Hawkins and in Eastern time. Man, and I messed it up.

George B. Thomas: Yeah, I was going there too. And Chris is back in Central Time. We get to hear that again. Uh, and I'm George B. Thomas, ladies and gentlemen.

Chris Carolan: And this has been wake up customer platform. Now go build something amazing. Have a great day everybody.