Why I chose Zoho SalesIQ over Dialogflow Messenger for my website bot

This article discusses things that you CANNOT do using the Dialogflow Messenger integration.

Recently, someone sent me this message:

Im trying to use this option to enhance dialogflow. Especially like change widgeticon, chatbot height and width. Im trying to find out there is any option for peer to peer communication within the system and also auto admin notification when user start to chat via dialog flow.

If you want to accomplish such tasks, you probably need to use a live chat + bot hybrid deployment on your website.

And while Zoho SalesIQ is not free, you will see that it is one of the best options for integrating a live chat + bot hybrid in your website.

This article also supposes that you are using SalesIQ as part of Zoho One. If you are using Zoho SalesIQ without enrolling in Zoho One, you are probably not getting the most out of your SalesIQ subscription anyway. Besides, depending on how you select the options, the Zoho One bundle price might come out cheaper than paying for a subset of Zoho apps!

You can integrate your Zoho SalesIQ chat widget with your Dialogflow ES chatbot with a single click by using Zoho’s built-in integration.

So adding a SalesIQ chatbot to your website is not any more complex than adding a Dialogflow Messenger bot.

Here is a list of things which are easy to do in Zoho SalesIQ but hard or not possible in Dialogflow Messenger integration. Of course, the Dialogflow Messenger is a free integration while Zoho SalesIQ is paid. So this article is only relevant for those who are willing to pay for these features.

My website chatbot

At the moment, you see a website chatbot on the bottom right of my website.

Note: these are demo bots, and it is possible I might have changed or removed it by the time you read this article

The bot asks the user about the Dialogflow bot they are building and provides recommendations for various tools they can use to speed up the process.

Typing delay

A lot of people ask if it is possible to add a typing delay in Dialogflow Messenger. You can do some weird things like add a small delay in your webhook code and force this delay. There are at least two problems with this approach: you have added more points of failure (what if the webhook code goes down or has some error), and you cannot really produce the typing effect that you see in regular chat software.

Adding the typing delay is just a simple configuration setting in Zoho SalesIQ, and you can also specify the number of seconds for the delay. While I don’t use a typing delay in my bot, you can see that it is very easy to add it in SalesIQ.

Automatic reprompt after a certain amount of user inactivity

If the user stops interacting with your chatbot (and this happens often, for a lot of reasons), you might want the bot to reprompt the user and nudge them to continue the conversation.

This is very hard to implement in Dialogflow Messenger, and even if you do, your solution will probably not be very robust as it would rely entirely on client side JavaScript.

On the other hand, this is also a configuration setting in SalesIQ.

Automatically close the chat if user does not respond for a while

If the user abandons the chat, you might not be able to complete all the business logic unless you have a way to force the chat to end after a certain amount of inactivity.

Again, this is very challenging to implement in Dialogflow Messenger. And once again, this is just another configuration setting in Zoho SalesIQ.

Automatic email notification when chat completes

SalesIQ automatically sends you an email notification (to the user of the corresponding SalesIQ account) when the chat completes. As you can see, we first need a way to end the chat before this happens. This is where the End Chat feature is handy.

SalesIQ also automatically ends the chat after a certain period of inactivity if you don't enable the "End the conversation" feature, but it takes quite a long time to do it.

Chat transcript in email notification

You get a transcript of the chat in the automatic email notification. So you don’t even have to leave your email client to be able to read the chat logs for your bot.

Human handoff

SalesIQ not only allows handoff to a live agent, it is also really simple to add this into the SalesIQ live chat widget. Essentially, you just turn on a setting as you create your chatbot, and by default the bot will prompt if the user wants to connect to a live agent after every single reply.

This is what it looks like for the visitor.

This is a simple and effective way to allow the user to choose to speak to an agent if the bot isn’t able to answer their question.

And if you want to do the handoff only for specific situations (e.g. two fallback intents in a row), SalesIQ provides a specific response type which allows you to do this.

Conversation history across browser session

The Dialogflow Messenger integration does not allow the visitor to preserve the conversation history across an entire session. When the user navigates to a different page on your website, they will restart the entire conversation and won’t be able to see their previous messages.

Zoho SalesIQ first started out as live chat software – so as you might expect, it allows the user to persist their conversation not just across pages, but even across visits (cookies need to be enabled on the user’s browser).

Tip: this is actually a major advantage of Zoho SalesIQ. A lot of my website visitors continue the chat in a new window. This means you have automatically increased visitor engagement on your website without any additional effort on your part.

Autosave user information to CRM

Often, you would like to collect the user’s information and store it in a CRM of some kind. You need to build this yourself if you are using Dialogflow Messenger.

Since Zoho also has a CRM product (in fact, it is their flagship offering), user details get automatically synced with the CRM the moment they begin the conversation.

You don’t have to code any additional logic to make this work. You can use the built in “Input Cards” like Name and Email to automatically save the user information to CRM.

In other words, if your Dialogflow bot needs to send JSON payload which looks like this and the information will be auto-saved to your Zoho CRM if/when the user provides it.

{
  "platform": "ZOHOSALESIQ",
  "action": "reply",
  "replies": ["Enter your name"],
  "input" : {
	"type":"name",
	"placeholder" : "Enter your name", 
	"value" : "Patricia",
	"error" : ["Enter a valid name"]
	}
}

{
  "platform": "ZOHOSALESIQ",
  "action": "reply",
  "replies": ["Enter your email"],
  "input" : {
        "type":"email",
        "placeholder" : "Enter the email address", 
        "value" : "zillium.pboyle@zylker.com",
        "error" :["Enter a valid email address"]
    }
}

View conversation logs

While the History feature in Dialogflow is adequate, you will find that being able to see the full conversation as it happened is much easier in SalesIQ when compared with Dialogflow Messenger. Besides, you can see both bot and live agent responses inside the same window.

Form input with client side validation

A reader sent me this question:

I wanted to know about creating a form how you asked in Email and also how to get attachment option in Dialogflow messenger

In SalesIQ, you can ask for an email address and validate it client side before it is even sent to the server.

This isn’t possible in Dialogflow Messenger.

Disable text input for button choices

Sometimes when you want the user to select from one of two or more buttons, it helps to block user input.

If you need to add freeform input, you can always have a button called “Other” and collect the free form input in the next conversation turn.

This isn’t possible in Dialogflow Messenger. In contrast, this feature is already built in to Zoho SalesIQ.

Disable user input after conversation is complete

I got this question on YouTube:

Hello, how could I block the input where the user writes. I want to block it when my menu exits but I can’t access that html element to set disabled=true to block it. Can you help me???

Again, this isn’t possible in Dialogflow Messenger.

In the case of Zoho SalesIQ, you get to actually END the conversation, after which the text input gets disabled automatically.

File uploads

This is also not possible in Dialogflow Messenger.

In SalesIQ, this option is already included out of the box. Note: however, handling a file attachment inside your bot is quite tricky. If you plan to do that, your code will naturally become more complex.

Live chat features

When you use a live chat system to create your chatbot, you also get all the features of the live chat integration.

• For example, you can have audio calls with your website visitors and even help them with remote assistance
• You can get a notification when someone lands on your website, or on a specific page
• You can automatically get an email of the transcript when visitor ends the chat

You cannot get such features (which are simple, standard options in live chat tools) if you use the Dialogflow Messenger integration.

About this website

BotFlo1 was created by Aravind Mohanoor as a website which provided training and tools for non-programmers who were2 building Dialogflow chatbots.

This website has now expanded into other topics in Natural Language Processing, including the recent Large Language Models (GPT etc.) with a special focus on helping non-programmers identify and use the right tool for their specific NLP task. 

For example, when not to use GPT

1 BotFlo was previously called MiningBusinessData. That is why you see that name in many videos

2 And still are building Dialogflow chatbots. Dialogflow ES first evolved into Dialogflow CX, and Dialogflow CX itself evolved to add Generative AI features in mid-2023