Lead Qualification
Qualification is the work of separating callers worth your time from callers who are not. Your agent does this during the call, based on what you tell it to ask.
Qualification Happens in the Prompt
There is no separate qualification screen. The agent qualifies by asking the questions your system prompt tells it to ask, and the answers land in the lead record where scoring and workflows can act on them.
Deciding What Actually Qualifies
Most businesses over-complicate this. The questions that genuinely predict a good job are usually few:
- Service type — is this something you do?
- Location — is it within your service area?
- Timing — now, this week, or vaguely someday?
- Decision authority — for B2B, is this person able to proceed?
- Scale — rough size or scope where it changes how you respond
💡 Tip: Write down the last ten jobs you wish you had not taken, and the last ten you were glad to get. The question that best separates those two lists is your most valuable qualifying question.
Asking Without Interrogating
Qualification questions cost goodwill. A caller answering a five-question checklist before anyone has acknowledged their problem will hang up. Instruct the agent to acknowledge the problem first, then gather details conversationally.
⚠ Note: Put the callback number early in the sequence. If the caller abandons midway you still have a lead; if the number was last, you have nothing.
Disqualifying Gracefully
Some callers should be turned away — out of area, out of scope, or not something you handle. Tell the agent explicitly how to do this politely, and make sure disqualified calls are recorded rather than discarded. A steady volume of out-of-area calls is useful information about where demand exists.
Reviewing and Adjusting
Read transcripts in Call Logs weekly at first. You are looking for the question that never gets a useful answer, the question you keep wishing had been asked, and the point where callers become impatient. Adjust the prompt one question at a time.
✓ Success: Qualification is working when the leads reaching you need no clarifying call before you can decide whether to take the job.