Leads and briefs
What arrives in your inbox when someone is worth talking to, and how to answer in one tap.
What a brief is
When a conversation reaches the point of being a real lead, you get an email. Not a notification saying "someone chatted", a brief: who they are, what they wanted, in their own words, what is holding them back, and anything the agent promised them.
The quoted lines matter more than they look. People ask for things in a particular way, and a summary loses exactly the detail that decides how you answer.
Warm and hot
A lead is warm when it is worth telling you about, and hot when it is as complete as your kind of business can make it. Both send you a brief. Which details make a lead hot depends on your industry: a property enquiry needs a budget and an area, a shop needs to know what the person is actually shopping for.
For most business to business accounts, warm means they gave you a way to reach them. That single rule is worth understanding, because it decides whether your inbox fills or stays empty.
Reply in one tap
Every brief has a Reply to them in chat button. Tap it on your phone, read the conversation, and type. Your reply lands in the visitor's chat window as your business, and the agent steps back for the rest of that conversation.
Some things worth knowing about that link:
- It works for seven days, then politely expires and tells the reader to reply by email instead.
- It opens one conversation and nothing else. Forwarding the brief to a colleague lets them answer that one person, and gives them access to nothing else.
- Anything already queued to that person is cancelled the moment you speak. A follow up will never land on top of your reply.
The conversation carries on by email
If someone gives an email address and then leaves, the thread does not end, it changes channel. The email they receive continues the sentence they abandoned rather than starting again. They are never asked twice for something they already told the chat.
If a brief never arrives
Check Setup first. The mail identity step and the doorway step are the two that stop briefs without anything appearing broken. Then see Troubleshooting.