SalesIQ is a fire hose. Plug it directly into Leads and your AEs will spend Monday deleting “checking pricing” one-liners from Indonesia. The fix is not turning chat off, it is putting a qualification gate between the chat and the CRM.
The default behavior is wrong for B2B
Out of the box, the SalesIQ-CRM integration creates a Lead the moment a visitor types an email. That includes competitors, students, and the bot that filled in [email protected]. Switch the default to “Create Lead only after operator marks chat as qualified.” The setting lives under SalesIQ Settings, Integrations, Zoho CRM, Conversation Sync. Disable Auto-create.
Identity stitching beats new-lead spam
Before creating anything, search by email and visitor cookie. SalesIQ stores a UVID in $visitor.uvid. Stamp that on the Lead and Contact custom field SalesIQ_UVID__c so a returning visitor lands in the same record.
existing = zoho.crm.searchRecords("Leads", "(Email:equals:" + visitor.email + ")");
if(existing.size() > 0)
{
recId = existing.get(0).get("id");
zoho.crm.updateRecord("Leads", recId, {"SalesIQ_Last_Chat":zoho.currentTime});
}
else
{
newLead = {"Email":visitor.email,"Last_Name":visitor.name,"Lead_Source":"SalesIQ","SalesIQ_UVID":visitor.uvid};
zoho.crm.createRecord("Leads", newLead);
}
Route by intent, not by availability
Build a SalesIQ trigger that reads the page URL. /pricing visitors hit the AE pod. /docs visitors hit support. /careers gets auto-closed with a Greenhouse link. Round-robin inside the pod using the Operator Group, never to a single human.
Capture the transcript on the record
The Lead detail page should show the actual chat, not a “view in SalesIQ” link nobody clicks. Push the transcript into a long-text field on creation:
transcript = zoho.salesiq.conversations.getTranscript(chatId);
zoho.crm.updateRecord("Leads", recId, {"Chat_Transcript":transcript.toString()});
Bot handoff rules that do not embarrass you
Zia answerbot should hand off the moment intent is “talk to human”, “demo”, or “pricing for >50 seats”. Anything else, let it answer. Set a 90-second timeout: if the visitor types and bot has no answer, pop the operator queue. Do not let bots loop on “I am not sure I understand.”
Measure chat-sourced pipeline weekly
Build a CRM report: Opportunities where Lead_Source = SalesIQ, grouped by Created month, with Stage and Amount. If chat is below 8% of new pipeline after 60 days, kill a trigger or move the chat widget. Do not leave it humming as theater.
What to do this week: turn off auto-create-lead, add the UVID stitching script, and pull a 30-day chat-sourced pipeline report so you know if the channel is earning its seat.