When I joined HubSpot, I stepped into a rare position. I had already spent years as a customer, learning how to build systems creatively with the tools I had access to. Then, I joined the company with the responsibility of modernizing a long-standing customer reference system that had served many teams well but was now struggling to meet new expectations, complexity, and scale.
By: Krystie Caraballo, HubSpot
Seeing both sides changed how I approached this work. Advocacy is often misunderstood. It can be seen as simple or administrative because so much of its complexity lives behind the scenes. But once you look closely, you realize it requires nuance, discernment, finesse, and emotional intelligence at every step.
My goal was not to replace any of that. It was to create a system that supported it.
If you have ever tried to build trust at scale, you likely know firsthand how challenging the work can be. So, consider this a look inside what we rebuilt at HubSpot, how we approached it, and how you can apply the same principles without needing an engineer or a separate platform. And speaking as someone who is very much not an engineer — only a marketer armed with a MacBook and grit — if I can build this, you can too.
If there has been one theme throughout this journey, it is that AI is not the threat to fear. Inconsistency is. AI did not remove the human parts of this work. It clarified where they matter most.
The Quiet Work Behind Every Win
- Every organization relies on work that is often invisible but deeply impactful:
- The coordinator who sees a potential mismatch before it becomes a problem.
- The specialist who remembers a customer’s context that no system fully captures.
- The rep who adds one extra sentence that changes the quality of a match.
Advocacy teams live here every day. They build credibility, connection, and proof in ways that are easy to underestimate when the process is scattered or opaque. As both a former customer and now a HubSpotter, I saw just how often the work was undervalued, not intentionally but because its complexity was hidden.
The goal of this rebuild was to make that work visible, respected, and supported so that people had the structure they needed to excel.
AI did not replace people. It supported them.
As we redesigned the reference process, one thing became very clear: the system had grown more complicated over time. This wasn’t because the work was flawed. The people who were trying to help were filling gaps manually.
The old process required 18 disconnected steps. After the rebuild, it became a connected sequence of five clear phases.
The most surprising outcome was how well AI paired with human judgment. It did not eliminate the need for nuance or relationship context. It supported it.
- HubSpot Workflows handled predictable routing.
- Slack made communication immediate and visible.
- AI copilots helped validate fit and reduced manual triage.
This gave people more time to focus on the parts only humans can do: storytelling, empathy, nuance, and partnership.
Read the full article:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/building-customer-trust-ai
By: Krystie Caraballo
Publication Date: 2025-12-19