Remove the mandatory Name Card buttons (or at least make them optional)

Please remove the mandatory Name Card buttons (or at least make them optional)

A recent change to the Name Card in Zoho SalesIQ (currently affecting WhatsApp) introduced mandatory buttons before a visitor can provide their name.

I believe this change makes the user experience significantly worse and should either be removed or made optional.

How it worked before

Bot: What is your name?
Visitor: Ram

Simple, natural, and exactly how people communicate.

How it works now

Bot: What is your name?
Visitor: Ram
Bot: Invalid input.
Bot: What is your name?
Visitor: Realizes they need to click the button.
Bot: Please provide your first name.
Visitor: Ram

The conversation becomes longer, less intuitive, and much more frustrating.

Instead of making bots feel more human, this change does the exact opposite. It forces visitors through unnecessary steps for one of the most basic interactions in any chatbot.

There are also several practical issues:

The behavior is inconsistent. The buttons exist on WhatsApp but not on the web widget, forcing bot builders to maintain different conversation flows depending on the channel.
Every additional bot message increases conversation length. With Meta's WhatsApp pricing model charging per message, these unnecessary interactions can also increase messaging costs.

I believe the product should support one of these approaches:

Best option: Make the Name Card buttons optional so customers can choose whether to use them.
Accept both button clicks and typed names as valid input, allowing visitors to interact naturally.
Ensure identical behavior across WhatsApp and the web widget.

Bots should reduce friction—not introduce it.

Is anyone else affected by this change? I would really appreciate if the Product team could consider making this behavior optional so existing bots can continue providing a smooth, natural user experience.

Ram