Custom Channels API

Omnichannel customer service ensures that you meet your customers where and when they need you, while providing a seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints. Your team can resolve issues across various channels with a unified, centralized view of all past customer interactions, ensuring that every engagement feels connected and personalized.

Difference Between Omnichannel and Multichannel:

• Multichannel customer service involves engaging with customers on multiple channels (like email, phone, social media), but these channels often operate independently, leading to fragmented experiences.
• Omnichannel customer service, on the other hand, integrates these channels into a single, cohesive system, allowing for a fluid and consistent customer experience, regardless of the channel the customer chooses to use.

Custom Channels API can be applied to any reactive, team-based customer support across different channels. It unifies all customer support channels in one place with our new API.

Example Channels:

• Regional/International: LINE, WeChat, Kakao
• Social DMs: Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct
• Niche/Industry Vertical Messaging: Real estate, property management, Yelp, Slack
• Custom Integrations: Connect your custom-built customer/support center directly into HubSpot’s Help Desk using this API.

Conversations API: This API is also in public beta, which enables developers to export, update, and manage the conversation data on existing channels already connected to a customer’s portal.

Custom Channels API: This API allows developers to add entirely new, custom messaging channels to HubSpot, from popular platforms like WeChat or LINE to industry-specific or proprietary tools. It focuses on enabling real-time, two-way messaging across these channels, expanding Service Hub’s communication options.

Suppose you're an app partner with a Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional or higher account. In that case, you can leverage HubSpot's Custom Channels API to integrate an external messaging service with HubSpot's inbox or help desk features. This integration allows you to create custom channels that bridge your external service and HubSpot, offering a seamless experience for users.

Steps to Get Started

1. Create a Public App:

• In your HubSpot Developer account, Sales, or Service Hub Professional or higher account, create a public app and request the following scopes:
  • conversations.custom_channels.read, conversations.custom_channels.write, conversations.read.
• Save your App ID, Client ID, and Client Secret.

2. Register Your Custom Channel:

• Use your Developer API Key and App ID to register the custom channel with a POST request: POST https://api.hubapi.com/conversations/v3/custom-channels?hapikey={YOUR_DEVELOPER_API_KEY}&appId={appId}

• Provide details like the channel name, webhook URL, and capabilities in the request body.

3. Connect Channel Accounts:

• To connect external messaging accounts to HubSpot, use the POST /conversations/v3/custom-channels/{channelId}/channel-accounts endpoint with the inbox ID and account details.

4. Handle Messages:

• Incoming messages: Publish them to HubSpot using POST /conversations/v3/custom-channels/{channelId}/messages.
• Outgoing messages: HubSpot will send a POST request to your webhook URL, which you’ll need to handle in your service.

5. Manage Channel Events:

• HubSpot will notify your webhook URL for events like OUTGOING_CHANNEL_MESSAGE_CREATED or account updates.

By following these steps and referring to our API documentation, you can create a custom channel app that extends HubSpot's capabilities and offers additional value to users through the App Marketplace.