zoho-crm-guide
The Zoho CRM integration lets your Velaro bot look up contacts, leads, and deals in Zoho CRM during live conversations and automatically creates or updates records based on chat activity.
What the Zoho CRM Integration Does
Once connected, Velaro can search Zoho CRM for contacts, leads, and deals in real time. Your bot can retrieve customer details, create new leads from chat conversations, log notes and activities, and surface deal information — all without a human agent opening Zoho CRM manually. When an inbound call arrives, Velaro performs a screen pop that shows the matching contact from Zoho CRM.
How to Connect
1. Go to Settings → Integrations → Zoho CRM.
2. Click Connect with Zoho.
3. Sign in to your Zoho account and click Accept to authorize Velaro.
4. Velaro will confirm the connection and display your Zoho organization name.
The OAuth authorization is per-user. The connecting user's Zoho permissions determine which CRM modules Velaro can access. If you need access to all modules, connect with a Zoho admin account.
What the AI Bot Can Do
| Action | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Search contacts | Finds Zoho CRM contacts by name, email address, or phone number |
| Get contact details | Returns full contact record including company, title, phone, email, and owner |
| Create lead | Creates a new lead in Zoho CRM from information collected in chat |
| Update contact fields | Updates specific fields on an existing contact (e.g., phone number, email) |
| Create note | Adds a note to a contact or lead record with conversation context |
| Create activity | Logs a call or task on a CRM record |
| Search deals | Finds open or closed deals by contact name, deal name, or stage |
| Get deal details | Returns deal amount, stage, close date, and assigned owner |
Screen Pop on Inbound Calls
When an inbound call arrives, Velaro searches Zoho CRM using the caller's phone number. If a matching contact is found, a screen pop banner appears for the agent showing the contact's name, company, and a link to the full CRM record. This happens automatically — no workflow setup is required.
Common Use Cases
Qualify leads from chat
Your bot collects name, email, company, and interest level, then creates a lead in Zoho CRM automatically. The lead is assigned to the correct sales rep based on your Zoho assignment rules.
Look up a customer before transferring
When a visitor starts a chat, the bot searches Zoho CRM and greets the customer by name. The agent who receives the transfer already sees the CRM record linked in the conversation.
Log every conversation as an activity
At the end of each conversation, a Velaro workflow creates a Zoho CRM activity (call or task) on the matching contact record so your sales team has a full interaction history.
Deal status check
A returning customer asks about their order. The bot searches Zoho CRM deals by contact name and returns the current deal stage and expected close date.
Troubleshooting
No contacts found
Confirm the Zoho OAuth app has CRM module permissions. In Zoho → Settings → OAuth Apps, check that the Velaro app has read access to Contacts and Leads. If permissions are missing, disconnect and reconnect from Settings → Integrations → Zoho CRM.
Cannot create leads
The Zoho user account used to authorize the integration must have Create permission on the Leads module. Check Zoho CRM → Setup → Users and Roles → Profiles and verify the profile has write access to Leads.
Screen pop shows no match
Phone numbers in Zoho CRM must be in E.164 format (+1XXXXXXXXXX) for the lookup to succeed. If your Zoho contacts store numbers as (XXX) XXX-XXXX, Velaro's lookup may not match. Standardize phone formats in Zoho CRM to resolve this.
OAuth expired
Zoho OAuth tokens expire if unused for 60 days. If the integration stops working after a period of inactivity, go to Settings → Integrations → Zoho CRM → Reconnect.
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