#How to Skip a Message Step in Voiceflow

Good day guys, can someone please put me through?

I "workflow-ed" my agent to first collect a user's name before handling their request. But the problem is, if the user already states their request before their name, my agent still asks: "how can I help you today?"

How do I make skip this message step and process to handling the request (after collecting name) if the user already states their request before their name?

NOTE: It must ask the user's name no matter what! I just want it to skip the "how can I help you today?" step is request is already stated like in the photo above. Can someone help?

RRick Bld Good day guys, can someone please put me through? I "workflow-ed" my agent to f...

Tico | Voiceflow Assistant•7/24/25, 11:27 AM

Here’s the simplest pattern to get the behaviour you want.

Capture the user’s name (and optionally any extra text they said).
Check if a request was already captured.
Only ask “How can I help you today?” when no request was found.

---
1 | Capture Step – ask for the name
• Prompt: “Hi {{first_name}}, what’s your name?”
• Entities to capture:
– Name (required) → save to
– Request (optional) → save to
• create a simple free-text custom entity or switch the Capture Step to Entire user reply and save it to .
• Leave Automatically reprompt off for the Request entity so the step never nags for it – it’s only filled when the user happens to include it.
• Turn on Listen for other triggers (optional but keeps the assistant flexible).

Result after this step:
• is always filled.
• is either filled (user already asked something) or empty.

---
2 | Condition Step – decide to skip or ask
Drag a Condition step right after the Capture.
Choose Business Logic and use the builder (or expression):

---
3 | Branch outcomes
request-found → go straight to the part of your flow that handles the request.
no-request → connect to a second Capture step (or a simple Text+Capture pair) that asks “How can I help you today?” and saves the answer to .

---
That’s it – the assistant will:

Always ask for the user’s name.
Skip the “How can I help you today?” question whenever the user’s first utterance already contained their request.

Docs that may help while you build:
• Capture Step: https://docs.voiceflow.com/docs/capture-step
• Condition Step: https://docs.voiceflow.com/docs/condition-step

Rick BldOP•7/24/25, 12:14 PM

Here's the logic I created in the Condition Block, is this correct?

IF 'users_request' == true
→ Jump straight to handling the request (using stored )
ELSE
→ Ask: “How may I help you today?”