What is lead routing?
Lead routing assigns each incoming enquiry to a specific owner according to defined rules — by service, by area, by time of day, by workload, or in rotation. In a one-person business routing is trivial. From two people upward it is where most enquiries quietly go missing, because "whoever sees it" is not a rule.
The short definition
Lead routing assigns each incoming enquiry to a specific owner, according to defined rules.
By service, by area, by time of day, by workload, or in rotation.
The failure it prevents
An enquiry arrives and everyone assumes somebody else picked it up.
This is not carelessness. It is the predictable result of a shared inbox with no assignment — responsibility that belongs to everybody belongs to nobody, and enquiries age quietly with no single person aware they are aging.
The symptom is a business that receives plenty of enquiries and cannot explain why so few were contacted.
Routing rules that work
By service. The person who handles that trade gets it. Obvious, and it improves close rates because the response is competent immediately.
By area. Whoever covers that part of Houston.
By time. Different owners for evenings and weekends, so out-of-hours enquiries have somebody rather than waiting for Monday.
Round robin. Even distribution where any team member could handle any job. Simple and fair.
By workload. Whoever has fewest open enquiries. Better in principle, harder to maintain.
Most small businesses need by service or by time, and nothing more elaborate.
The escalation rule
Assignment alone is not enough. Without escalation, an enquiry assigned to someone who is unavailable sits there just as it would have in a shared inbox.
The rule that matters: if the owner has not made contact within X minutes, it goes to someone else, and someone is told.
Setting X is a management decision. For urgent service work, fifteen to thirty minutes during business hours is defensible.
Do not forget calls
Most routing systems handle web forms. Most service business leads arrive by phone.
Routing that covers forms only leaves the majority of enquiries following the old arrangement — whoever happens to pick up, with no record of what happened.
Keep it simple
Elaborate routing with many conditions produces edge cases nobody anticipated, and enquiries falling into gaps between rules.
Start with one rule and a default owner for anything that does not match. Add complexity only when a specific problem demands it.
Measuring whether it works
Two numbers: time from arrival to assignment, and time from assignment to first contact.
If the first is slow, routing is broken. If the second is slow, the problem is capacity or accountability, not routing — and buying a routing system will not fix it.
Where it sits
Contact routing is included from Starter Presence — $2,500 setup, $750 a month, with fuller workflow design in the AI Marketing System.
Frequently asked questions
What routing rule should a small business use?
Usually by service or by time of day, with a default owner for anything that does not match. Elaborate routing creates edge cases where enquiries fall between rules.
Why is assignment alone not enough?
Because an enquiry assigned to someone unavailable sits exactly as it would in a shared inbox. You need an escalation rule: no contact within a set time and it moves to someone else.
Does routing cover phone calls?
Most systems handle web forms only, which for a service business leaves the majority of enquiries unrouted — picked up by whoever happens to answer, with no record.
How do I know routing is working?
Measure time from arrival to assignment and time from assignment to first contact. A slow first number means routing is broken; a slow second means capacity or accountability.