You're having a conversation with your AI assistant, maybe cruising through some research on a prospect or brainstorming new account strategies. Then you decide to update the appropriate record in your customer relationship manager (CRM). You could click out of your browser to open your CRM and make those updates—but context-switching interrupts your flow and might cause you to lose whatever thought streak you were on.
Zapier MCP is the perfect solution for those moments. It's a tool that lets you connect your AI apps with the rest of your tech stack, so you can perform more than 30,000 actions on the spot without ever leaving your AI chat interface. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to connect ChatGPT with Zapier MCP to push updates to your CRM, using HubSpot as an example.
How to update HubSpot with Zapier MCP
In this tutorial, I'm using ChatGPT—but you can also build a Zapier MCP-powered AI assistant with other platforms, like Claude and Cursor.
Note: ChatGPT only supports MCP tools in developer mode. Read about developer mode on the OpenAI site.
Step 1: Set up your Zapier MCP server in ChatGPT
1. Log in to Zapier and head to the Zapier MCP dashboard.
2. Click +New MCP Server and choose ChatGPT as the client. You can give your server a name or just go with the default suggestion. Then click Create MCP Server.
3. At the top of the window, click Connect. After reading the message about developer mode, click I Understand to reveal the instructions for connecting ChatGPT. Then click Copy URL.
4. Follow the instructions outlined on the Connect tab. (In this process, you'll paste that integration URL you just copied.)
Step 2: Enable the necessary HubSpot actions
1. After you connect Zapier MCP, return to the Configure tab in the Zapier MCP dashboard. Click + Add tool.
2. Search for and enable the HubSpot: Find Contact action (or whatever tool and action you want to be able to call from ChatGPT).
3. Connect your HubSpot (or other CRM app) account when prompted. Click Add tool.
4. Repeat this process for the HubSpot: Update Contact action.
Note: Make sure you enable both the search and write actions. Your AI tool needs to find the contact you want to update before making the change.
Step 3: Trigger the Google Sheets action in ChatGPT
1. Create a new chat in ChatGPT.
2. Prompt the agent with instructions (for example, "Find the contact X and update it with the following information….")
3. The AI will process the message and call the Find Contact and Update Contact actions via MCP.
4. Check your HubSpot account to confirm the actions worked.
Learn more about setting up and using Zapier MCP in our feature guide.
Want to run workflows in the background? Try Zapier Agents.
Connecting Zapier MCP to ChatGPT or Claude is great for conducting one-off actions in either AI tool. But if you want work to happen in the background, or you need to carry out more complex, multi-step workflows, there's also Zapier Agents.
With Agents, you can build plug-and-play AI assistants with a simple and beginner-friendly interface, making it easy for anyone at your org to leverage AI in their workflows—no matter their technical expertise.
