Zoho SalesIQ Review

Zoho SalesIQ is a chatbot platform that you can use to create chatbots on your website, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

But should you use it to create your chatbots?

Let’s find out!

User Interface

When you log in at Zoho SalesIQ for the first time, you see a real-time overview of all the visitors currently on your website:

On the left-hand side, you have a menu with all the different options, such as a Chats overview, Visitors overview, Reports (analytics in Zoho SalesIQ) and Resources (such as Canned Replies, FAQ’s and Articles).

With Zoho SalesIQ, you can create two types of chatbots:

• Answer bot, this is a chatbot that can recognize the intent of the user and automatically reply with default answers or helpdesk articles
• Zobot, this is a chatbot that consists of a custom flow

When creating an Answer bot, you can only determine with what kind of resources you want to reply with:

And what the chatbot should do if it can’t find an answer to a question:

This can be helpful if you just want to get started with chatbots, but if want to create a more advanced chatbot with a custom flow, you need to create a Zobot.

When creating a Zobot, you can use the Visual Flow Builder in SalesIQ:

Here, each chatbot has its own flow that consists of multiple elements. When clicking on an element, you can change it:

And then you can immediately test those changes by using the “Test this out” feature in the Flow Builder:

What I really like about this feature, is that Zoho SalesIQ also shows where you currently are in the flow by making the flow green.

So in general, the flow builder is really easy to use and it’s also easy to set up your chatbot.

But there are also some small drawbacks of the interface of Zoho SalesIQ.

For example, every first message of a chatbot should begin with a welcome message, even if you want to use another element.

Also, if you want to create larger chatbots (let’s say: automatically reply to 50+ questions), the flow of your chatbot can become huge and it could be hard to have a good overview of your chatbot.

• Visual Flow Builder

  Create chatbot dialogs with a visual flow builder.
• Test chatbot

  Is it possible to test the chatbot before putting your new flows or changes live?
• Interface easy to use?

  Is the chatbot platform easy-to-use?
• Easy to setup a chatbot?

  Is it easy to set up your chatbot with this chatbot platform?

Chatbot elements

Zoho SalesIQ provides the most important elements to create a good chatbot, such as:

• Asking for user input (and saving it in a custom field)
• Showing buttons that the user can click on
• And validating user info (email, phone and date)

Furthermore, Zoho SalesIQ also provides a calendar element that you can use to schedule meetings through slots:

And they also provide an element to share the location of the contact:

It must be said that these elements work for the website channel, and are not working in the same way on other channels.

• Delays

  Use delays between messages in your chatbot
• Images

  Can you send images via your chatbot?
• Video

  Can you send video via your chatbot?
• Audio

  Can you send audio via your chatbot?
• Attachments

  Can you send attachments via your chatbot?
• Gallery (Horizontal list)

  Show a gallery of cards inside your chatbot. A card consists of an image, title, subtitle and button.
• Vertical list

  Show a vertical list of items inside your chatbot
• Emojis

  Can you use emojis inside your chatbot?
• Persistent Menu

  Can you add a persistent menu to your chatbot?
• Quick Replies

  Can you add quick replies to your chatbot where users can click on?
• Buttons

  Can you add buttons to your chatbot where users can click on?
• Free text input

  Can chatbot users freely type text to your chatbot whenever they want to?
• Location sharing

  Can users share their location inside the chatbot?
• Email validation

  When a chatbot user gives their email, can the platform validate it's a correct email address?
• Phone number validation

  When a chatbot user gives their phone number, can the platform validate it's a correct phone number?
• Date validation

  When a chatbot user gives a date, can the platform validate it's a correct date?

Users

Within Zoho SalesIQ, you can see all your contacts in one overview:

Within this overview, you can see all the contact information, custom fields and tags of that contact.

Each visitor on your website that talks to your chatbot becomes a lead, and when they leave any contact information (such as their email address) they will become a contact.

And when someone gives their contact information, Zoho SalesIQ automatically tries to find the company linked to that contact:

This is a really useful feature, especially for companies that operate in the B2B market.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to create user segments based on custom fields and tags.

• Custom fields

  Store information from your chatbot users inside fields. For example, you can ask for someone's email and store it inside the "email" custom field.
• Tags

  Add tags to users in your chatbot flows to organize and categorize contacts.
• User segments

  Can you create user segments based on custom fields and tags?

Messages

With Zoho SalesIQ, it is not possible to send broadcasts or sequences to your contacts.

Meanwhile, it is possible to personalize your conversations by using conditions.

Also, it is possible to create a chatbot in multiple languages, but it’s not easy to translate it. If you want to create a chatbot in multiple languages with Zoho SalesIQ, you need to duplicate your chatbot flows and manually translate them.

• Broadcasts

  Send a message to all or a part of your chatbot users at a specific date and time
• Sequences

  Send messages on a pre-defined schedule with a certain time interval between those messages
• Conditions

  Make checks in your chatbot flow based on if-then logic. For example, if the user has not given their email, ask for their email.
• Multiple languages

  Is it possible to create a chatbot in multiple languages?
• Easy to translate

  Can you translate text to other languages without using a third-party platform and without creating duplicate flows?

AI & NLP

With Zoho SalesIQ, you can automatically recognize keywords and understand the intent of the user, by using their FAQs feature.

Here, you set up the phrases you want to automatically reply to and reply with an answer:

Likewise, you can also reply to small talk of the user and connect an answer to a helpdesk article.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to reply with a chatbot flow, but only with a default answer or helpdesk article. In my opinion, this is drawback, because this limits how you can have a conversation with your customers.

Furthermore, you can also detect entities in Zoho SalesIQ, which are called Business Terms in Zoho SalesIQ. By using Business terms, you can learn Zoho SalesIQ to understand that two words have the same meaning. For example, you can learn it that a “Phone call” is the same as an “Audio call”:

Unfortunately, you cannot use entities to send different answers for an intent. For example, someone has a question about physical stores. Then if that person says “What are the opening times”, it would be great if you could reply with “For which physical store do you want this?” and if they say “What are the opening times of store X”, you automatically reply with the specific opening times. But, this is not possible with Zoho SalesIQ.

Moreover, you can also create a chatbot by connecting Zoho SalesIQ to Dialogflow. Then you can just use the intents and answers you define in Dialogflow. However, it is not possible to detect the intent of the user with Dialogflow and repond with a flow inside Zoho SalesIQ.

• Keywords

  Trigger chatbot flow based on certain words or phrases a user says to the chatbot.
• Intents

  Trigger a chatbot flow by understanding the intent of the user.
• Entities

  Capture specific information from sentences. For example, if a user says "veggie pizza", the chatbot can understand it's not a regular pizza, but a veggie pizza.
• Dialogflow integration

  Does the chatbot platform provide a direct integration with Google's AI Platform?

Channels

With Zoho SalesIQ, you can create a chatbot on 4 channels:

• Website
• Facebook Messenger
• Instagram
• WhatsApp

• Website

  Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
• Facebook

  Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
• Instagram

  Can you publish your chatbot on Instagram?
• Whatsapp

  Can you publish your chatbot on WhatsApp?
• Telegram

  Can you publish your chatbot on Telegram?
• SMS

  Can you publish your chatbot on SMS?
• Slack

  Can you publish your chatbot on Slack?
• Skype

  Can you publish your chatbot on Skype?
• Email

  Can you publish your chatbot on email?

Integrations

Zoho SalesIQ has a built-in live chat, that allows you to hand over the conversation from the chatbot to a support agent and manually resolve any problem your contacts might have:

Also, you can set up specific routing rules to determine what type of user should be assigned to what department or specific live chat agent:

Moreover, Zoho SalesIQ also provides over 40+ direct integrations with other applications, such as:

• All Zoho platforms (Zoho Bookings, Zoho Campaign, Zoho CRM, etc)
• Google Analytics
• Salesforce
• ActiveCampaign
• Zendesk

And much more!

Unfortunately, they don’t provide any direct integrations with Make (formerly known as Integromat), Zapier or Google Sheets.

On the other hand, it is possible to connect to other applications using webhooks.

• Livechat

  Direct integration with live chat, either via a built-in live chat functionality or a third-party live chat platform.
• Zapier

  Direct integration with Zapier, one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
• Make (formerly Integromat)

  Direct integration with Make (formerly Integromat), one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
• Google Sheets

  Direct integration with Google Sheets, to store or retrieve data from sheets.
• Webhooks

  Can you call an API inside your chatbot flow to send or get data from other applications?

Marketing

The marketing possibilities of Zoho SalesIQ are mostly focused on websites.

You can create your own website widget and determine the branding and colors of your widget:

Also, when setting up your chatbot, you can determine on which pages it should appear and for which website visitors:

Unfortunately, on all other channels, there are no marketing possibilities. For example, it is not possible to automatically reply to Facebook/Instagram comments and send WhatsApp message templates.

• Facebook website widget

  Embed your chatbot as a Facebook Widget on your website.
• Native website widget

  Embed your chatbot as a native widget (your own branding & colors) on your website.
• Landing pages

  Can you create a simple landing page to drive users to your chatbot?
• Facebook Ads

  Start a conversation with your chatbot when someone clicks on a Facebook Ad
• One-Time Notification

  Send one-time notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
• Facebook comments auto-reply

  Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Facebook Posts
• Button creator

  Add a button to your website to drive users to your chatbot
• Custom URLs for your chatbot

  Generate a simple URL that can be shared anywhere to send users to your chatbot

Pricing

Zoho SalesIQ comes with a free plan, that gives you access to its live chat and 100 chat sessions per month.

If you want to create a chatbot and want more features, you need to go with their Basic plan. This plan costs €10 per operator and comes with 50K visitors, 1000 chat sessions, 1 chatbot (a Zobot, not an Answer Bot), proactive triggers, chat routing and the website channel.

The next plan costs €17 per operator and comes with 100K visitors, unlimited chat sessions, 5 chatbots (Zobots, not Answer Bots), all channels and real-time reporting.

Lastly, they also have the Enterprise plan, which costs €25 per operator and comes with 200K visitors, chat translation (for live chat), 10 chatbots (Zobots) and an Answer Bot.

On each plan, they give a 15-day free trial and they even provide a 30-day money-back guarantee.

• Free trial

  Does the chatbot platform provide a free trial?
• Free plan

  Does the chatbot platform provide a free plan?
• Price per month

  What is the lowest price per month for creating a chatbot on this platform?
  10
• Monthly pricing available?

  Is it possible to pay monthly?
• Money back guarantee

  Is there a money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the platform?

Analytics

Zoho SalesIQ provides a basic analytics dashboard that shows you the number of visitors, average visit duration, number of views, average pages per visit and average time on a page:

Likewise, they also provide analytics on the devices of visitors, the countries they are coming from and their sources.

Moreover, they also provide an overview of the questions that could not be answered by your chatbot:

• Dashboard

  Dashboard that provides general analytics of your chatbot.
• User input

  Get the input from users that your chatbot didn't understand.
• Sent messages

  The number of messages that were sent by your chatbot.
• Open rate

  The percentage of chatbot users that opened a message inside your chatbot.
• Click rate

  The percentage of chatbot users that click on a button inside your chatbot.
• Conversion rate

  The percentage of users that converted through your chatbot. For example, the percentage of users that gave their email address
• Fall back rate

  The percentage of interactions where the chatbot did not know an answer to a question.
• Custom dashboards/reports

  Can you create your own dashboard or reports?

eCommerce

You can connect Zoho SalesIQ to Zoho Checkout, which allows you to collect payments within the live chat of Zoho SalesIQ.

Unfortunately, you cannot collect payments inside the chatbot using Zoho Checkout, only in the live chat.

• Payments

  Collect payments inside your chatbot
• Shopify

  Direct integration with Shopify to get products, order information and cart data.
• WooCommerce

  Direct integration with WooCommerce to get products, order information and cart data.
• Buy directly within the chatbot

  Ability for chatbot users to buy products or services directly from a chatbot
• Cart abandonment

  Trigger messages in the chatbot when a user abandons their cart on a website or inside the chatbot

Templates & Cloning

Zoho SalesIQ doesn’t provide any pre-built templates that you can use to get started.

Likewise, it’s not possible to create your own templates and share these with others.

On the other hand, it is possible to duplicate your chatbots. But it is not possible to duplicate your chatbot elements.

• Templates

  How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
  0
• Make template

  Can you make templates yourself?
• Share template

  Can you share self-created templates with others?
• Duplicate chatbot flows

  Is it possible to duplicate chatbot flows, so you can easily reuse them?
• Duplicate chatbot elements

  Is it possible to duplicate chatbot elements, so you can easily reuse them?

Optimization

Unfortunately, Zoho SalesIQ doesn’t provide any optimization (such as A/B testing).

• A/B Testing

  Can you optimize your chatbot flows by performing A/B tests?

Support

Zoho SalesIQ has extensive documentation and a complete video course on how you can use their platform.

Moreover, they provide customer support via email.

• Tutorials

  Does the chatbot platform provide tutorials on how to use its platform?
• Documentation

  Does the chatbot platform provide documentation on how to use its platform?
• Customer support

  Does the chatbot platform provide customer support?

Conclusion

So, should you buy Zoho SalesIQ to create your chatbots?

Yes, if you want to create a chatbot on a website, I recommend trying out Zoho SalesIQ.

It has a visual flow builder, you can ask for user input and store it inside custom fields, you can personalize the conversation by using conditions, you can understand the intent of the user, has built-in live chat, you can publish a chatbot on 4 channels, they provide a native website widget and all of this for a pretty low price.

But there are also some drawbacks of Zoho SalesIQ:

• Every first message of a chatbot is by default a regular message (no buttons or questions)
• When creating larger chatbots, it could be hard to have a good overview of all your flows
• It is not possible to understand the intent of the user and reply with a chatbot flow
• No marketing possibilities on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp