Build a lead qualification chatbot flow that routes hot leads to sales

Leads that message you on WhatsApp expect an answer in minutes, not tomorrow. A lead qualification flow answers instantly, asks the questions your sales team would ask, and sends the best leads to a person while they're still interested.

This guide gives you a complete flow you can build in On-chat's visual flow builder in under an hour.

What the flow does

The flow greets the lead, asks three qualifying questions, scores the answers and routes the lead to sales or to a nurture path.

1. Greets the lead and asks what they're interested in.
2. Asks three qualifying questions: company size, timeline and budget.
3. Calculates a simple score.
4. Hot leads: opens a ticket for sales, pushes the lead into your CRM and tells the lead someone will reply shortly.
5. Warm and cold leads: sends useful resources and adds them to a follow-up campaign.

The questions to ask

Keep it to three or four questions. Every extra question loses people. A common B2B set:

Use quick replies wherever possible: they're faster for the lead and give you clean data.

Step 1: Greeting and interest

Add Send the contact a message:

Hi @contact.first_name! Thanks for reaching out to Acme. I'll ask 3 quick questions so we can point you to the right person. What are you interested in?

Quick replies: Pricing, A demo, Partnership.

Follow with Wait for the contact to respond, saving the result as interest.

Step 2: Qualifying questions with validation

For each question, add a message and a wait. Use validation rules so the data is clean:

• team_size: has a number. On Other, reply "Just a number is perfect, for example 25."
• timeline: has any of the words month, now, asap → Now; quarter, soon → Soon; Other → Exploring.
• budget: has a number, with a gentle "No problem, a rough number is fine" retry.

Using categories like Now / Soon / Exploring instead of raw text makes reporting and branching much easier.

Step 3: Save what you learned to the contact

Add Update the contact actions to store the answers in contact fields, such as company_size, timeline and budget. Now:

• every future flow can personalise using @fields.company_size,
• your team sees the details on the contact,
• you can build groups like "Leads starting this month".

Step 4: Score and route the lead

Use a Split by a custom expression to route the lead. A simple, readable approach is to split on timeline first, then budget:

1. Split on @results.timeline.category:
2. Now → continue to the budget check
3. Soon → warm path
4. Exploring → nurture path
5. For Now, split on @results.budget with has a number at or above your threshold (for example 1000):
6. yes → hot
7. no → warm path

Prefer a points score? Calculate one with an expression and save it as a result, then split on the number. Keep the logic simple enough that your sales team can understand why a lead was routed where it was.

Step 5: Hot leads go straight to sales

On the hot path:

1. Call a webhook (POST) to create the lead in your CRM, or call Zapier to do it for you:

{
  "name": "@contact.name",
  "phone": "@contact.urn",
  "interest": "@results.interest",
  "team_size": "@results.team_size",
  "timeline": "@results.timeline.category",
  "budget": "@results.budget"
}

1. Open a ticket with a human agent with the topic Sales and a body that summarises the lead:

Hot lead: @results.interest, team of @results.team_size, starting @results.timeline.category, budget @results.budget

1. Tell the lead what happens next:

Perfect, thank you! One of our specialists will message you here within the next hour.

The sales rep accepts the ticket in the ticketing workspace and continues the same conversation, with all the answers in front of them.

Step 6: Nurture everyone else

Warm and cold leads still deserve a good experience:

• Send something useful right away: a pricing page, a short video or a case study.
• Add the contact to a group such as Nurture.
• Attach a campaign to that group that sends a helpful follow-up after 3 days and a check-in after 2 weeks.

If a nurtured lead replies "demo" later, a keyword trigger can start the qualification flow again. Their earlier answers are already saved, so you can skip the questions you've already asked.

Step 7: Test and launch

Test the flow as a hot, a warm and a cold lead, then start it from a keyword, a website link or a click-to-WhatsApp ad.

• Run the flow in the Simulator as a hot, warm and cold lead.
• Check that the webhook creates the lead in your CRM.
• Start the flow from a Keyword Trigger (for example demo), a click-to-chat link on your website, or ads that open a WhatsApp chat.

Measuring results

After a week, look at:

• Completion rate: how many leads answered all questions? If many drop off at one question, simplify it.
• Hot lead rate: too high, and your threshold is too low. Too low, and you may be filtering out good leads.
• Time to first human reply on hot leads, from the ticketing reports.

Want the fundamentals first? Read chatbot flow design best practices, or start building your lead flow for free.