As an executive, I’ve brought HubSpot in at least three times in my career. I was also a Kuno customer, twice over. I brought them in, then expanded the engagement once they proved their value in one area, and they feature my testimonial on their site. I’m partnering with Kuno today, so I read this list as a buyer first.
When I was CGO, I wanted an AI SDR working inside HubSpot. The point was to free my sellers to build deeper relationships with prospects and customers, and to sell more, faster, with real value for the person on the other end. HubSpot gave me a strong start. I tried to build and run it myself and couldn’t get it where my team needed it. It used a lot of tokens, it wasn’t personalized to each prospect, it didn’t hold our messaging from one touch to the next and it didn’t connect what came back to the account. Only a handful could go out at a time. That could be the DIY gap for other teams too, and it’s where a partner who knows HubSpot well can optimize and offset.
So I built the rest myself. It followed a documented selling methodology, researched each prospect and account, logged activity to the CRM on its own and pulled account overviews together from the CRM, our internal data and public sources.
Where I used it mattered as much as what I built. I kept it on high-volume touches and left the relationship work with people. And I held it to the same standard as the team: how much more got done, how well and what it did to the number.
That’s how I found the gaps. When I compared the agent’s touches to the humans’ side by side, I found work it wasn’t finishing that everyone assumed was handled. No dashboard was going to show me that. I moved those tasks back to people and tracked what the agent cost to run against what it produced, so I could see the return instead of assuming it.
I also scored each seller before the AI went live and tracked them month over month against how they used it. I wanted to know whether the team got better or only got busier.
From the executive chair, this is where agents like these can reach the business:
- Revenue. More touches that are researched and personal to each prospect, without adding headcount, with the relationship work left to people.
- Operations. Work that waits on one person, like reviewing form submissions, routing requests or catching duplicates, runs on its own and gets done accurately.
- The team. Reps get a score explained and a follow-up drafted in their own voice, not another system to learn. Their time goes back to the conversations only they can have.
What makes me comfortable as the executive is visibility. I can see what each agent does, what it touches and what it costs, and the outcome is measured against a number we agree on before the build starts.
The build is where the cost hides. I built mine with internal time and resources that could have gone to the business, and an executive’s hours cost the company far more than a partner’s. A partner who builds it takes on the build, so your people stay on selling, serving and running the company while you get the agent at a much lower cost.
HubSpot is the right home for this work. The records, the workflows and the people already live there. A partner who knows HubSpot well can optimize for the gaps I ran into on my own, and the agents Kuno built work with that data where it sits.
An agent is worth building when it gets more done, accurately and personally, and you can see what it’s doing and what it produces. Measurable outcomes are the point. Everything else is activity.
Here are five that Kuno built inside HubSpot. For each one: why it was built, what it does for the people using it and why it matters.
A note on the numbers before we start. Kuno built these for its own team and for clients, and most don’t yet have a measured before-and-after. When a starting number exists, I use it. When it doesn’t, I say so and name what gets measured from here. Spend nobody can prove is the first thing cut, and the same goes for an agent.
1. Client Health Agent
Why Kuno built it. Kuno built this one for itself first. “While minimal, our churn pattern is predictable,” says Kuno Solutions Architecture Director Matt Nagel. Accounts tend to leave after the same early signals: the primary advocate disengages or departs, client-side leadership changes and meeting attendance drops. Account leads can see those signs months before a cancellation, but Kuno had no consistent, structured way to capture them, compare accounts or act while there was still time. The goal was an early warning system that catches the accounts it can still save, before it’s too late to save them.
What it does. Each quarter, the system reminds account leads to complete a short survey about their client. An agent turns the answers into a health score and tier, with risk flags and next steps. Every assessment is saved as a permanent record on the company page, so the trend is visible over time. On demand, a second agent rolls up an account’s full history into one summary, so anyone picking up the relationship gets the story in seconds.
Why it matters. Client trouble is easiest to act on early, and it’s the kind of thing that gets missed when everyone is busy. This turns “how is this account really doing” into a routine every account gets, every quarter.
The build. 12 to 15 hours, start to finish.
2. Score Explainer Agent
Why Kuno built it. Kuno rebuilt this client’s lead scoring from the ground up. A better score doesn’t help if the sales team doesn’t understand it, so they gave reps a way to ask.
What it does. The agent lives on the contact record and runs when a rep asks. In plain language it explains why the contact has their score, lays out a timeline of recent activity, suggests next steps based on urgency and drafts a follow-up email in the client’s voice. It only reads and drafts. It never sends anything or edits a record, and it never shows reps internal score values or property names.
Why it matters. The rep decides what goes out, so a team that’s wary of new tech was comfortable using it from day one. That’s what lets lead scoring become part of the daily routine instead of a number nobody trusts.
3. SDR Vetting Agent
Why Kuno built it. Every website form submission used to wait on one person to review it.
What it does. The agent reads each submission the moment it comes in, categorizes the request and routes it to the right queue.
Why it matters. Nobody is the bottleneck anymore, and every lead gets looked at. It worked well enough in its first phase that the client is already expanding the categories.
4. Lunch & Learn Routing Agent
Why Kuno built it. Partner requests for lunch-and-learn sessions arrived by email and had to be read, logged and handed off by hand.
What it does. Built with Breeze, the agent reads each inbound email, pulls the key details into contact properties and triggers workflows that send the request to the right rep by region.
Why it matters. Sorting that took manual effort now runs around the clock, and each request reaches the right rep faster.
5. De-duping and Matching Agent
Why Kuno built it. A global communications group had new records flowing into HubSpot from a connected platform every day, and each one was a chance for a duplicate to slip in.
What it does. When a record is created, the agent triggers automatically and searches for the most likely company matches by name. It links the top candidates, each with a confidence rating, and someone on the team confirms the right one. It stays in an advisory role and never creates, merges or overwrites a record.
Why it matters. Duplicates get caught at the point of entry, so reporting and forecasting stay accurate. It also gives every agent added later data the team can trust.
What they have in common
Held against the standard I set out above, here is where these five stand.
- More done. The SDR Vetting Agent reviews every form submission. The Lunch & Learn Routing Agent runs around the clock. The Client Health Agent covers every account, every quarter. Nobody has to find the time.
- Accurately. Kuno checks the data an agent relies on before building. Where accuracy is hardest, as with matching records, the agent suggests with a confidence rating and a person confirms.
- Personally. The Score Explainer works from the contact record and drafts follow-ups in the client’s own voice, so the work reads like their team wrote it.
- Visibly. Every Client Health assessment is saved as a permanent record. These agents read and draft, route and flag, and none acts on its own where it counts. You can see what each one did.
- Verifiably. Here is what is on the record and what isn’t. The Client Health Agent took 12 to 15 hours to build, and the SDR Vetting client is already expanding its categories after the first phase. Most of these don’t have a before-and-after number yet, and I’d rather say so than invent one. Until there is one, it’s activity I can describe, not a result I can claim.
If you have a process your team runs by hand, you may want to bring Kuno the job. They’ll help you figure out whether an agent is the right fit, what it would take to build and what you’d measure. And if you work with HubSpot customers who are ready to put agents to work, this is a partner that builds them inside the platform.
Wondering if you should hire, buy or partner? Read The Proof Gate, the Kuno-sponsored independent brief on how to prove an investment before you make it.
Deanna Ransom
