Hi everyone,

I am a long time Zoho user and can usually figure out how to set up integrations, workflows etc... in different Zoho apps. Of course I am usually watching a video, wading through help docs and occasionally getting help via chat, call or email, but in the end it winds up being DIY and that is great.

However, I now find myself with the struggle when expecting the same for building a Zobot. I have asked for chat help, I have watched some hour long videos and probably have attempted to build my own bot 20, 30 or maybe even more times. The result is always the same, frustration and deleting the lame attempt which really never even came close to being a working bot.

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? Am I somehow making this more complicated than what it is?

I will give a bit of background on what I am trying to do and other details and then maybe someone can help me see the light. 

We are based in Costa Rica (so Zobot needs to be built in Spanish). We offer English classes to companies and professionals at their office, home or on line. We are currently expanding the offering to other Latin American countries. Our courses are not usually purchased on a whim as theses are personalized classes many one on one. We would just want to create a good user experience by possibly offering blog posts to read that give tips on improving English, perhaps offer a coupon and ideally capturing lead information to nurture the lead.

I am not fluent in deluge by any means so that kind of takes that off the table.

Zia apparently does not work in any other language except for English, so the AI option is crossed off the list.

I know nothing about Dialogflow or Watson so please tell me how does a small business owner build a working Zobot?
I reached out to my local Zoho partner and they asked me no details about what I wanted to do and said it would be about 10 hours of work. That sounded like a bit much to me. It seems like they just threw a number to get the quote sent and of course said it could be more hours than the 10 depending on what I wanted to do.

I have built a chat bot for my Facebook page using an app called Mobile Monkey and that is definitely way more user friendly that the options I have in SalesIQ.

The problem is that a chat bot is a virtual spokesperson for your business and like any other spokesperson you may want to change the message that they are sending. Hence my reluctance to contract someone to do something and when I need to make changes I am stuck going back and adding more hours onto my bill just to have my spokesperson say something a bit different.

I really would like to know if anyone who is not a developer has had success building a bot and how you did it. 

Thank you,

George