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Sales Intermediate 20 min read

Lead Qualification Playbook

Score leads automatically based on chat content, set up routing rules, hand off hot leads to humans.

What you will set up

Manual lead qualification doesn’t scale: someone has to read every chat, decide whether the person is ready to buy and move them to the right stage. In MyChatBot the sales assistant does this during the conversation. It asks qualifying questions, remembers the answers and tags the client; the tags then drive your pipeline and follow-ups.

You will set up funnel statuses and labels, Client Context fields for the answers, tagging instructions and a follow-up for silent leads.

Before you start: an assistant in Agents → Agent configuration with at least one connected channel. A CRM is optional: built-in labels and statuses work without one.

Define your qualification criteria

Decide what makes a lead hot: a mentioned budget, an urgent timeline, a decision-maker in the chat, a specific problem you solve. Then map each signal to something the assistant can record:

  • Funnel status — one stage at a time, for example new_lead, qualified_lead, dropped. A new status replaces the previous one.
  • Labels — tags that stack, for example B2B and pricing_question on the same client.
  • Client Context fields — the answers themselves, such as Budget Range or Timeline.

Set it up step by step

  1. Create statuses and labels. Open Active chats, open a client card and use Add new status in Funnel status and Add new tag in Labels. With a CRM, import its stages via Integrations → your CRM → Sync statuses (statuses only; labels are still created by hand).
  2. Check Lead Management. In Agent configuration → Toolkit → Lead Management, pick the pipeline for this assistant and confirm your values appear in Pipeline Statuses and Labels.
  3. Turn on Contact Details and Client Context. Contact Details saves name, phone and email. In Client Context, switch on collection and click Add field for each answer; add a description when the label alone is ambiguous.
  4. Write the rules. In the Role card or a skill card, list the questions and when to tag, using the exact names you created: set qualified_lead when the customer shares contact details, add B2B when they mention bulk orders. Save the instructions.
  5. Test. Write to the assistant from a connected channel as a customer, then check the client card and the Leads page. Test Dialog only simulates status and label changes.
  6. Follow up. In Outreach → Create, choose Postponed contextual and save. In the Follow-up Builder, set the status, labels and delay under Edit targeting & intro, add the messages, click Publish Follow-Up and attach it under Toolkit → Follow ups.

Options that matter

  • Manage leads locally — on: statuses and labels are edited in MyChatBot; off with a CRM connected: they are synced from the CRM and read-only.
  • Disable auto-assign pipeline — by default a new assistant is attached to your default pipeline; turn this on to stop that and pick the pipeline yourself.
  • Handoff Control — how an operator takes over a qualified lead: a stop word or implicit handoff, plus optional silent handoff.
  • Allow agent to self schedule follow-ups in Reply & Tools — the assistant queues its own reminders.

Common problems and fixes

  • The status is not applied. The value must exist before the assistant uses it, and the name in the instructions must match exactly, including the CRM stage name. Run Sync statuses after the CRM funnel changes.
  • The follow-up never fires. Drafts do not run. Check that it is published, attached to this assistant and that the assistant really applies the targeted status and label. A client reply stops the sequence.
  • A renamed stage came back. Sync matches stages by name, so rename CRM-synced stages in the CRM, not in MyChatBot.
  • Night chats stay unqualified. Outside Work Hours the assistant is paused, and when hours resume it does not reply to the off-hours backlog; have an operator go through those chats or rely on follow-ups.

What to read next

Full documentationRelated reference on docs.mychatbot.app.