What if your bot could tell the difference? Between a visitor who just needs a quick answer, someone actively comparing options, and a frustrated customer one click away from leaving?
Most bots can't. They deliver the same response to everyone, missing the nuance that separates a casual question from an urgent problem or a buying signal.
But here's what's possible now: With AI that understands sentiment, intent, and context, your bot can actually recognize what each customer needs in real-time. Upset customers get immediate attention. Ready-to-buy visitors get routed to sales reps. Explorers get guided through their options without friction.
Enter Criteria router + AI filters
If you’re using SalesIQ’s
Criteria router card in the Codeless bot builder, you already know the potential of routing chats based on conditions you define. Now, we’ve made it smarter with AI Filters - Sentiment, Intent, and Topic.
- Sentiment: Understands the tone of the visitor (positive, negative, neutral). You can split the conversation based on the sentiment. Example: If a visitor sounds frustrated, their sentiment is marked negative, you can route them directly to experienced agents.
- Intent: Detects the purpose of the conversation (like cancellation, purchase, or scheduling). You can mention the intent and split the chat that matches your intent. Example: If someone says, “I’m not happy with my order”, the intent could be cancellation, you can trigger a survey or escalation.
- Topic: Here you can define topics like, iPhone in ecommerce, 2bhk flat in Chicago for real estate, basically nouns. If the bot finds these topics, it will route accordingly.
Webinar alert: Want to see more examples and deep-dive into use cases? Check out our AI-Powered engagement with SalesIQ webinar, where we covered all the new AI-based solutions in SalesIQ, including Criteria Router and AI Filters.

AI Filters are multilingual and are available only on the Enterprise plan.
Let’s look at a few use cases across industries:
1. E-commerce: A customer types, “My package arrived broken. I want a refund.”
- Sentiment: Negative
- Intent: Cancellation/Return
Route this chat straight to your experienced support agents, skipping the bot’s small talk.
2. Real Estate: A visitor says, “Looking for a flat in Chicago near the lake.”
- Topic: Flat, Chicago
- Intent: Search
Instantly connect them with the right sales rep covering that location, instead of bouncing them around.
3. IT / Tech Support: Someone writes, “The app keeps crashing whenever I try to upload a file.”
- Sentiment: Negative
- Intent: Technical Issue
- Topic : App
Route to your technical app support team, not the general help queue.
Implementation tips:
1. Use context variables: AI filters works only with bot context variables. Make sure to:
- Use the text input card to capture customer messages
- Enable "Save in bot context"
- Give a variable name
- Use the same in your Criteria router card
2. Prioritize your rules: When multiple rules match, the first one wins. Structure your rules by priority: Example:
- Rule 1: Sentiment: Negative + Intent: Cancellation
- Rule 2: Sentiment: Negative + Topic: App issues
If a customer says "The app is crashing again, I want to cancel," both rules technically match, but Rule 1 triggers because it's listed first.
Get started today
AI Filters are live in your Criteria Router.
With this, your bot is no longer just a gatekeeper, it’s a smart filter. It understands urgency, emotion, and intent, and directs conversations to the right place, faster. That means happier customers, less frustration, and more chances to convert.
Set up your rules, test a few conversations, and watch how much smoother your chat flow becomes and let us know if how it works.
Recent Topics
Zoho Backstage - PCI Compliance / Web Security
I have a couple of questions related to Backstage and payment processing.... 1. my purchasing division is not giving approval to use Backstage yet because of some security issues. In order for us to take payments via a payment gateway like Authorize.net
Zoho Tables August 2025 Update: Faster and Smoother
We’ve been working behind the scenes to make Zoho Tables faster, lighter, and more reliable. Here are the highlights: Faster Response Times Optimised the way responses are generated. Reduced memory consumption by 20–25%, leading to smoother performance
Video Upload from app says "unsupported aspect ratio" but is verified to be correct.
I and my social media person are experiencing a problem where Social will not accept video uploads to Instagram. The error we receive is "unsupported aspect ratio" but looking directly at the file in question we see that the width and ratio both match
Disposable Email Addresses
Dear zMail Team, Can you also bring out a few disposable email addresses for each accounts? That way occasional registrations and imminent spam from them can be largely solved right? ---- Deepak Vasudevan http://thamizhththendral.blogspot.com/
Zoho sheet - Zoho expense
I want to schedule to create an expense using Zoho Sheet and flow. That is the EMI that I pay on a particular date to the bank and should be itemised, like principal and interest on the loan. Can someone help me in this regard??
Ability to configure a schedule/shift for each user and/or crew in Zoho FSM
Hello, In our team of Field Agents, we have different shifts. Some field agent always work from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM while others work the evening shift like 4:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Sometime shift are on weekdays only or on weekend. It would be great to be
Free webinar: Streamlining customer service paperwork with the Zoho Sign extension for Zoho Desk
Hello Everyone! Have you been wondering about bridging the gap between digitised customer service and business paperwork? Join our free webinar to learn how you can do this by connecting Zoho Sign, our digital signature app, with Zoho Desk, our online
Zoho Books | Product updates | July 2025
Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From plan-based trials to the option to mark PDF templates as inactive, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Introducing Plan Based Trials in Zoho
Mail Search should allow grouping by conversation like Gmail.
Having switched from gmail I have found the search function hard to use. Mostly because mail is not grouped by conversation in search. If I search for a word when looking for a conversation had with someone then sometimes 10 emails will come up from the
Improve Zoho Learn updated article notifications
I noticed today while updating an article, that the notification users get says "[User Name] has published article [Article Name]..." My feedback to the product team is that it would be really helpful for an end user, if the system notification differentiated
Safari Support
Safari, the world's second largest browser, zoho desk does not officially or fully support. That needs to change.
Can I get images from an "Image Upload" field in a webhook?
I want to send images from 2 "image upload" fields via a webhook. Is this possible?
Ticket closure notification - all contacts cc'd on email thread
Hello, If a client sends an email to our service desk and cc's in other people that work at the same company - so that they are in the loop of the service request. When the we close the ticket, only the ticket owner (person who emailed us - which created
Inactive account cleanup policy for Zoho Sign
Zoho Sign reserves the right to delete accounts that are license free and inactive for more than 120 days. The account deletion will be initiated only after the user receives prior email notice about possible data deletion and how to backup the data.
Missde API documentation for Sales Receipt
Hi! I noticed that the Sales Receipt endpoint is not currently listed in your API documentation (https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/introduction/). Could you please provide any available temporary documentation for this endpoint, along with a detailed
Multi-currency in Zoho CRM Forecast and Reports
As a company we have branches in 4 different countries with as many different currencies. Our Sales Teams would like to work with their local currency as much as possible. The Forecast module using only 1 currency is practically usable only by the sales
How to select from pricebook when creating a salesorder or quote
I am creating a sales order and when selecting the Products I do not see any where to select from pricebooks. How do i associate this to my orders?
Proposal for Creating a Unique "Address" Entity in Zoho FSM
The "Address" entity is one of the most critical components for a service-oriented company. While homeowners may change and servicing companies may vary, the address itself remains constant. This constancy is essential for subsequent services, as it provides
I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023
I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023.
System default SLA descriptions can't be modified
The system default SLAs have identical descriptions for all SLA levels, but their settings differ. However, I am facing an issue where I cannot modify these descriptions and save the changes. The content of the description box can be edited but the changes
Customising Help Center
Hi I don't think it is possible to add custom pages to help center? We'd like to use this as a customer portal with support tickets, FAQ/Guides, Billing and contracts. Is there any plans to add a feature like this or an alternative way to do it other
Replies sometimes creating separate ticket
Sometimes when a customer responds to an email coming from Zoho Desk, instead of adding a reply to the original ticket, a separate ticket is created. This happens even though the response subject line contained the ticket number, and the person responding
Ticket Approvals - External Users
The ticket approval option - we need to be able to select external users (Contacts) for approvals. Sometimes we are working with an end user and their boss needs to approve a purchase. For example, working with a cashier on a broken cash register and
Force Users to Ask Answer Bot a question... First
End users will always skip talking to a bot. It would be nice if Zoho adopted the standard and forced users to first ask a question to answer bot (or zia in some fashion) and then pass to the agent if it wasn't answered. Options to force the user to speak
View Answer Bot conversations?
We are trialing Zia and are experimenting with Answer Bot on our knowledge base. So far so good! Management asks me if it is possible to view Answer Bot conversations, the purpose being to look over its shoulder and confirm that it is working as des
Mass Email an Account
It would be nice to mass email an account stating there is an outage at their business or something specific to an account is needed to be mass communicated. Even if it makes a ticket for every Email Out to every contact in the Account. Think: the customer
Multiple Topics assigned to a single Campaign
Hello, is it possible to assign multiple Topics to a single Campaign? We frequently write a content to our subscribers that spans multiple Topics and we would like to send it to all Contacts that are subscribed to at least one of the Topics. But it looks
Zoho Projects Fonts and Accessibility missing
I cannot find any more the tab where I can change the font in Zoho Project. I also checked the knowledgebase and there they have accessibility tab which I am completely missing. Is there some setup I am missing or is it a problem with our account?
Zoho Books Custom Widgets Deprecation Error
I created a simple sample widget with zet and published it using sigma Both in the Sandbox and Production the Widgets are showing this error
Problems with PDF files in notebook
I'm evaluating Zoho Notebook as an alternative to Evernote and imported my Evernote account to Zoho Notebook. First issue is that notes in Evernote that comprise a PDF are turned into a 'group' with a single note page (that has the text from the Evernote
API (v3) Tasks sorting issue
We are using the v3 API for Projects. When we gat all tasks, per page of 100 tasks, we get the task info alright. But when we try to sort based on DESC(last_modified_time) we don't get the correct sort order. It is roughly sorted by the last_modified_time,
Assemblies make my stock go negative
I am sure this is just the way that we are using this feature, but we use assemblies, a lot. The issue for us is the way that the relive inventory and the fact that it makes our composite item stock go negative. I have added flows to auto assemble and
User Activity Reports
I'd like to get data related to user activity. For example, Login and logout times, emails sent/received, new records created , etc. Is that currently available. I just can't seem to find anything . Thanks, Dave
Help: Populate “Contact Owner” details into Customer custom fields (for email templates) in Zoho Books
We want to send invoices on behalf of our sales agents, and include the agent’s name, email, and phone in the email body using placeholders. Plan is to copy the Customer Owner details into three Customer custom fields, so they can be used as placeholders
Undocumented Books API error message - 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error
This code sometimes throws this error 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error What does it mean? result = zoho.books.updateRecord("salesorders",organization.get("organization_id"),salesorder_id,sales_
Partial payments for retainer invoices
When a customer does not pay the entire retainer invoice there is no way to apply a partial payment. PLEASE add this function.
Making Tags Mandatory
When creating an expense, is it possible to make the Tags field mandatory? I see the option in settings to make other fields mandatory, like Merchant, Description, Customer, etc, but nothing about Tags. Thanks! Kevin
Mass Update not trigger workflows
Hi, I have performed a mass update of all records in a custom module using a custom view. I have a dummy checkbox on my module that I turn on or off - hoping to trigger all the new workflows that have been created for that module. However, no workflows
Multi-Select lookup field has reached its maximum??
Hi there, I want to create a multi-select lookup field in a module but I can't select the model I want the relationship to be with from the list. From the help page on this I see that you can only create a max of 2 relationships per module? Is that true?
Generating CRM reports based on date moved in staged history
Hi everyone, I'm trying to generate CRM reports of jobs (I think these are called usually deals) based on when they were moved to a particular stage, ie all jobs that were moved to Proposal/Quote in the previous financial year. I can see from other similar
Next Page