Imagine walking into your favourite coffee shop, and before you even place your order, the waiter asks, "Would you like your usual?" That small gesture makes you feel recognized and valued, strengthening your connection with the place. Now, what if your chatbot could create that same personalized experience for your visitors?
With the Criteria Router card, you can dynamically tailor your chatbot’s behaviour based on visitor attributes, without writing a single line of code. Adjust the bot’s flow based on factors like visitor type, CRM details, lead score, or real-time responses to create smarter, more relevant interactions that make every conversation meaningful.
Say "Welcome back" to returning visitors
Instead of using a common greeting, your bot can identify returning visitors and greet them accordingly:
For new visitors: "Good morning! Welcome to Zylker 👋"
For returning visitors: "Good morning! Welcome back, <visitor name> 👋"
By personalizing interactions, you create a near human experience, increasing engagement and customer satisfaction.
How can your business benefit from this?
- Enhance Customer Experience: Personalization makes interactions feel natural and engaging.
- Prioritize VIP Customers & Leads: Ensure high-value visitors get the best support.
- Optimize ChatGPT Assistant Usage: Control access to premium AI responses, reducing unnecessary API calls.
Use cases for the Criteria Router
1. Prioritizing High-Value Leads
Use Lead Score, CRM Tags, or Visitor Stage to route/transfer potentials directly to experienced sales reps, increasing conversion rates.
2. VIP Customer Support
Identify VIP customers via CRM data or tags and route/transfer their requests to senior support reps for immediate resolution.
3. Recognizing & Greeting Returning Visitors
Detect returning visitors using Visitor type and customize greetings accordingly.
Pro Tip: Use "Good %smart.timenow%" context variable to personalize greetings further based on the time of day (Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night). =4. Contextual Support Based on Page Visits
Customize chatbot behaviour based on the visitor's current page. For example, visitors on the support or about page can receive an enhanced support experience, including AI-powered assistance or ticket creation.
5. Campaign-Based Chatbot Flows
If visitors land on your website via a specific marketing campaign, tailor chatbot responses to align with that campaign, ensuring a seamless experience.

6. Flow Customization Based on Visitor Input
When using the Input Card to capture visitor responses, you can split the bot flow based on their answer. For example, if you collect feedback via a Ratings Card, store the visitor's response in a bot context variable. Then, use the Criteria Router to customize the bot's response based on the rating received. High ratings can trigger a request for a testimonial, while low ratings can prompt an immediate support escalation, ensuring a proactive customer experience.'
ChatGPT Assistant Pro Tip:
We know that the ChatGPT Assistant is a paid service that charges per API call. To manage its usage effectively, you can use the Criteria Router.
Instead of enabling it for all visitors, analyze the most common inquiries you get for your business, whether sales or support-related. If most are support queries, provide the assistant's expertise only for existing customers for enhanced support. For sales-related queries, get the visitor's requirement and create a support ticket in the desk or schedule an appointment instead, ensuring optimized usage and cost management.
Testing the Criteria Router
To test the Criteria Router, click on Test Your Bot, then select Edit Visitor Info below the bot's display picture and fill in the details based on the card you're testing. For example, if you want to test whether the bot flow changes when a visitor lands on the Contact Us page, search for Landing Page and enter your Contact Us page URL. Then, restart the bot flow to see if the bot responds accordingly.
You can use this method to test different use cases and visitor personas, ensuring your bot behaves as expected in various scenarios.
FAQs
1. Can I add multiple rules to the Criteria Router?
Yes, you can combine multiple rules using AND & OR conditions to fine-tune chatbot behaviour.
2. Can I track which flow is used most often?
Yes! Use Flow Stats to track and analyze chatbot interactions.
3. Can I create different bot flows based on visitor location?
Absolutely! Use the Country/Region filter to customize responses for different geographic locations.
4. Can I differentiate between WhatsApp and website visitors?
Yes! Use the Channel filter to create distinct chatbot experiences for website, WhatsApp, and other platforms.
Recent Topics
Manage control over Microsoft Office 365 integrations with profile-based sync permissions
Greetings all, Previously, all users in Zoho CRM had access to enable Microsoft integrations (Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks) in their accounts, regardless of their profile type. Users with administrator profiles can now manage profile-based permissions
How to Track and Manage Schedule Changes in Zoho Projects
Keeping projects on track requires meticulous planning. However, unforeseen circumstances can cause changes to schedules, leading to delays. It becomes important to capture the reason for such changes to avoid them in the future. Zoho Projects acknowledges
Is there a notification API when a new note is addeding
Trying to push to Cliq, or email notification when there's a new note added in module. How to implement this?
Zoho Sheet - Desktop App or Offline
Since Zoho Docs is now available as a desktop app and offline, when is a realistic ETA for Sheet to have the same functionality?I am surprised this was not laucned at the same time as Docs.
Collaborate Feature doesn't work
Hello Team. It seems that the collaborate section is broken? I can post something but it all appears in "Discussions". In there is no way how I would mark something as Draft, Approval, post or any of the other filter categories? Also if I draft a post
Edit Permission during and after approval?
When a record is sent for approval Can a user request for edit permission from the approver? We don't want to give edit permissions for all the records under approval Only on a case-by-case basis How can we achieve this?
Zoho web and mobile application not workingn
Both zoho forms web and mobile application aren't working. I have checked my network connections and they are fine.
Introducing the revamped What's New page
Hello everyone! We're happy to announce that Zoho Campaigns' What's New page has undergone a complete revamp. We've bid the old page adieu after a long time and have introduced a new, sleeker-looking page. Without further ado, let's dive into the main
Prevent stripping of custom CSS when creating an email template?
Anyone have a workaround for this? Zoho really needs to hire new designers - templates are terrible. A custom template has been created, but every time we try to use it, it strips out all the CSS from the head. IE, we'll define the styles right in the <head> (simple example below) and everything gets stripped (initially, it saves fine, but when you browse away and come back to the template, all the custom css is removed). <style type="text/css"> .footerContent a{display:block !important;} </style>
Bulk Moving Images into Folders in the Library
I can't seem to select multiple images to move into a folder in order to clean up my image library and organize it. Instead, I have to move each individual image into the folder and sometimes it takes MULTIPLE tries to get it to go in there. Am I missing
Latest updates in Zoho Meeting | Breakout rooms and End to end encryption
Hello everyone, We’re excited to share a few updates for Zoho Meeting. Here's what we've been working on lately: Introducing Breakout Rooms for enhanced collaboration in your online meetings and End-to-end encryption to ensure that the data is encrypted
Systematic SPF alignment issues with Zoho subdomains
Analysis Period: August 19 - September 1, 2025 PROBLEM SUMMARY Multiple Zoho services are causing systematic SPF authentication failures in DMARC reports from major email providers (Google, Microsoft, Zoho). While emails are successfully delivered due
Accidentally deleted a meeting recording -- can it be recovered?
Hi, I accidentally deleted the recording for a meeting I had today. Is there a way I can recover it?
To Zoho customers and partners: how do you use Linked Workspaces?
Hello, I'm exploring how we can set up and use Linked Workspaces and would like to hear from customers and partners about your use cases and experience with them. I have a Zoho ticket open, because my workspace creation fails. In the meantime, how is
How to access email templates using Desk API?
Trying to send an email to the customer associated to the ticket for an after hours notification and can't find the API endpoint to grab the email template. Found an example stating it should be: "https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/emailtemplates/" + templateID;
How to render either thumbnail_url or preview_url or preview_data_url
I get 401 Unauthorised when using these urls in the <img> tag src attribute. Guide me on how to use them!
Update Portal User Name using Deluge?
Hey everyone. I have a basic intake form that gathers some general information. Our team then has a consultation with the person. If the person wants to move forward, the team pushes a CRM button that adds the user to a creator portal. That process is
Zoho Bookings No Sync with Outlook
Zoho Bookings appointments are showing on my Outlook Calendar but Outlook events are not showing on Zoho Bookings. How do I fix this?
Unable to retrieve Contact_Name field contents using Web API in javascript function
Hello, I've added a field in the Purchase Order form to select and associate a Sales Order (Orden_de_venta, lookup field). I've also created a client script to complete some fields from the Sales Order (and the Quote), when the user specifies the related
Updating Woocommerce Variation Products Prices Via Zoho CRM
I can update product prices with this flow: But I can't update variant products. I got a code from Zoho for this, but I couldn't get it to work. It needs to find the product in the CRM from the SKU field and update the variation with the price there.
Emails Disappearing From Inbox
I am experiencing the unnerving problem of having some of the messages in my inbox just disappear. It seems to happen to messages that have been in there for longer than a certain amount of time (not sure how long exactly). They are usually messages that I have flagged and know I need to act on, but have not gotten around to doing so yet. I leave them in my inbox so I will see them and be reminded that I still need to do something about them, but at least twice now I have opened my inbox and found
Power of Automation :: Automatic removal of project users once the project status is changed.
A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and
Customizing Form Questions per Recipient Group in Zoho Campaigns/Forms
Hello everyone, I would like to ask if it’s possible in Zoho Campaigns or Zoho Forms to send out a campaign where the form questions can be customized based on the group of recipients. Use case example: I have prepared 20 questionnaire questions. For
Automatic category assignment
Hi, I’d like to ask if there is a way to automatically assign an expense category based on the recognized Merchant. What would be the simplest way to set up automatic category assignment? Alternatively, is there an option to first choose the category
Zoho Books - France
L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité
Every time an event is updated, all participants receive an update email. How can I deactivate this?
Every time an event is updated in Zoho CRM (e.g. change description, link to Lead) every participant of this meeting gets an update email. Another customer noticed this problem years ago in the Japanese community: https://help.zoho.com/portal/ja/community/topic/any-time-an-event-is-updated-on-zohocrm-calendar-it-sends-multiple-invites-to-the-participants-how-do-i-stop-that-from-happening
Having Trouble Opening The Candidate Portal
Recently am having trouble opening the Candidate Portal. It keeps loading but cannot display any widgets. Tried Safari, Chrome and Edge. Non of them work. Please solve the problem ASAP.
Forms - Notification When Response Submitted
How do I set it up to generate an email notification when a response (class request) is submitted?
how to use validation rules in subform
Is it possible to use validation rules for subforms? I tried the following code: entityMap = crmAPIRequest.toMap().get("record"); sum = 0; direct_billing = entityMap.get("direct_billing_details"); response = Map(); for each i in direct_billing { if(i.get("type")
Notes Issues
Been having issues with Notes in the CRM. Yesterday it wasn't showing the notes, but it got resolved after a few minutes., Now I have been having a hard time saving notes the whole day. Notes can't be saved by the save button. it's grayed out or not grayed
How to disable user entry on Answer Bot in Zobot
Hi, I have an Answer Bot in my Zobot, here is the configuration: I only want the user to choose 1 of the 4 the options I have provided: When no answer found, user chooses 'I'll rephrase the question' or 'Ask a different question When answer is found,
More admin control over user profiles
It's important for our company, and I'm sure many others, to keep our users inline with our branding and professional appearance. It would be useful for administrators to have more control over profile aspects such as: Profile image User names Email signatures
Please Make Zoho CRM Cadences Flexible: Allow Inserting and Reordering Follow-Up Steps
Sales processes are not static. We test, learn, and adapt as customers respond differently than expected. Right now, Zoho Cadences do not support inserting a new step between existing follow-ups or changing the type of an existing primary step. If I realize
Changing the Default Search Criteria for Finding Duplicates
Hey everyone, is it possible to adjust the default search criteria for finding and merging duplicate records? Right now, CRM uses some (in my opinion nonsensical) fields as search criteria for duplicate records which do nothing except dilute the results.
Clear Tag & Linking Between Quotes and Sales Orders
Hi Zoho Team, In Zoho Books, when a quote is converted into a sales order, it would be extremely useful to have: A clear tag/indicator on the quote showing that it has been converted into a sales order. A direct link in the sales order back to the originating
Zoho Books Sandbox environment
Hello. Is there a free sandbox environment for the developers using Zoho Books API? I am working on the Zoho Books add-on and currently not ready to buy a premium service - maybe later when my add-on will start to bring money. Right now I just need a
Add Direct Ticket Link to Zoho Help Center Portal in Email Replies
Hi Zoho Support Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to request a small but valuable improvement to enhance the usability of the Zoho Help Center portal (https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/myarea). Currently, when someone from Zoho replies to a support
[Webinar] Deluge Learning Series - AI-Powered Automation using Zoho Deluge and Gemini
We’re excited to invite you to an exclusive 1-hour webinar where we’ll demonstrate how to bring the power of Google’s Gemini AI into your Zoho ecosystem using Deluge scripting. Whether you're looking to automate data extraction from PDFs or dynamically
Connecting Zoho Inventory to ShipStation
we are looking for someone to help connect via API shipStation with Zoho inventory. Any ideas? Thanks. Uri
Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?
Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user
Next Page