The expected size of the conversational AI market is $1.3B by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24%.1Zoho SalesIQ, as an all-in-one chat and analytics platform, stands out with a variety of features they offer. Zoho’s goal in utilizing conversational AI is to provide engagement tools that communicate with each site visitor in each phase of customer lifecycle.
There are various alternatives to Zoho SalesIQ in the market that can compensate for the inadequacies. In this article, we will take an in-depth look at SalesIQ with its features, pros and cons to give you an idea of its place in this market.
Zoho SalesIQ Overview
SalesIQ is a part of Zoho corporation, an Indian multinational technology firm specializing in the creation of computer software and web-based business tools. In 2022, the company announced a 38% percent growth compared to the previous year and has exceeded 80 million users.2 SalesIQ offers customer engagement tools to enhance interactions with visitors throughout their journey on a website.
Which sectors can benefit from Zoho SalesIQ?
Including visitor tracking, contact management, analytics and more, SalesIQ offers 15+ features in 8+ areas. Some of them are:
Key Features & Capabilities
Real-time visitor tracking: Through visitor tracking features, businesses can get a grip on page views, location, and referral sources. This can help businesses to detect patterns and personalize the buyer journey.
Nudge leads: Trigger conversations based on a wide range of parameters such as pages visited, country, or a certain activity on the website like a payment failure.
Built-in audio assist: SalesIQ offers built-in audio calling, screen share, and voice notes within the chat window. This can help enhance the customer queries.
Single portal for multiple channels: SalesIQ can be used across multiple channels—such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram—through a single dashboard.
Auto-pilot customer support: Businesses can build no-code chatbots through SalesIQ.
Multiple language support: SalesIQ is available in 28+ languages, including Japanese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Danish, Hindi, and Chinese.
Plug-and-play integration with 30+ apps: SalesIQ can be seamlessly integrated with other Zoho products, such as Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk, and third-party tools like Clearbit, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Leadberry, and Haptik, allowing businesses to easily access and analyze customer data from a single platform.
How does Zoho itself benefit from SalesIQ?
SalesIQ integrates with most of the Zoho products. We added 3 products to this section both to give you an idea of the integration and to show the internal functionality of the product.3
Zoho One, primarily designed as a business operating system, centralizes all business processes under a single platform, streamlining communication, collaboration, management, transfer, and integration of business data. The number of chats they get around per month is 1600. They commonly use SalesIQ’s chat routing feature to efficiently route customers to the respective teams: product or admin support.
Zoho Desk, a customer service platform, offers features such as omnichannel ticketing, self-service options, automation, AI, analytics, and various marketplace integrations. Zoho Desk utilizes SalesIQ, handling approximately 4000 chats per month to provide customer support.
Check out our vendor deep dive on Zoho Desk and its alternatives.
Zoho CRM and Bigin, Zoho CRM is an end-to-end sales solution for businesses, aimed at optimizing sales processes, driving growth, and fostering lasting relationships. Zoho CRM’s website features three departments, each handling its own chats. Thus they utilize SalesIQ’s routing feature to route chats from various regions efficiently to the right departmental representatives.
Solutions by Industry
In this section, we will show how SalesIQ creates solutions in which industries through case studies.
Mahindra & Mahindra Limited
Mahindra & Mahindra Limited is an automobile manufacturing company based in India.4
Challenges: Before SalesIQ, the company used another software and in its channels, an agent had to answer all customer queries. The marketing, strategy, and sales teams asked for chatbot and widget integration.
Solution & Outcome: SalesIQ simplified the process for visitors to interact with the chat widget and ask basic questions to the chatbot. When needed, agents can quickly join the conversation, review previous chat history, and respond accordingly. Company was also able to set business to inform visitors when agents are available online. The bots operate based on webpage content, allowing agents to begin live chats with a respective context.
Additionally, visitor tracking shows agents the pages customers visited before starting a chat. This leads to better conversation preparation. SalesIQ also offered integration with Salesforce. The company emphasized that free trial was enough to choose, and implementation was easy. The company has seen an increase in digital sales revenue
Clements Realtors
Clements Realtors, is a real-estate company based on Texas.5
Challenges: Previous chatbots used by Clements Realtors failed to offer their agents who were busy in the real estate field and couldn’t simultaneously manage website live chats. The company required a system that could track website visitors and aid prospects and clients without needing their staff to be constantly available. Thus, the company sought a solution to immediately assist prospects with information on property loans, banks, and title deeds.
Solution & Outcome: The company implemented a visitor tracking feature that provides a real-time overview of website visitors, arranged into four concentric rings based on selected criteria, placing the most promising prospects in the innermost rings and less engaged visitors in the outer rings. This feature also offers detailed information on each visitor, including their name, location, actions, and time spent on the site.
They also utilized Zoho SalesIQ’s codeless bot builder for its easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. Their bot, Zanny, operates autonomously using prebuilt flow blocks, requiring no human intervention.
FundsIndia
FundsIndia is a financial service firm specializing in mutual funds, stocks, corporate fixed deposits, and NPS.6
Challenges: Managing four different product offerings complicated FundsIndia’s process due to varying customer groups, with some subscribed to multiple products. Manually connecting customers with advisors was a time-consuming identification process.
Solution & Outcome: When a customer starts a live chat, SalesIQ’s bot checks their email in the CRM, retrieves their advisor’s details, and instantly connects them. This automation has saved FundsIndia about 35-40% of their support agents’ time (Figure 1).
Company claims to have responded to the emails 2-3 days previously, but, with SalesIQ, they respond in under 4 minutes.
FundsIndia also uses SalesIQ’s live chat for customer onboarding. Their chat lists the product options, letting visitors indicate whether they are existing or new customers. This selection directs them to the onboarding team, turning them into leads and potentially future investors.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Bob Moore, Co-Founder and CEO at Crossbeam
Chef Bharath
Chef Bharath is a one-stop B2B startup portal for the Indian Culinary Industry.7
Challenges: Chef Bharath was in search of a strong communication solution for their media business. Their team wanted to have a ‘Contact Us’ button on the website for smooth communication.
Solution & Outcome: Through SalesIQ, their team gained valuable insights into the visitors, including their location and the areas of the website they frequented most. This information helped them tailor their content to meet visitor interests. As visitors engaged with Chef Bharath’s content and sought further information, they connected with live agents through SalesIQ’s live chat widget. SalesIQ converted these chat conversations into emails, which could then be shared with advertisers to refine their strategies.