Use case
Qualify leads on WhatsApp before your sales team calls them
A chatbot that asks the three or four questions your best salesperson would ask, scores the answer, and sends only ready buyers to a person, with the rest nurtured.
By Broadchat teamPublished 7 min read
How the flow works
The lead starts a chat
A prospect taps a Click-to-WhatsApp ad, a website chat button or a QR code on a hoarding. The chat opens with a prefilled message, and a chatbot with the Click to WhatsApp Ads or Match Keyword trigger replies within seconds.
The bot asks three or four questions
Ask Question steps collect need, budget, timeline and city, using buttons or a list where possible so answers are clean. Validation rejects a budget typed as text or a pin code with five digits and asks again.
The answers become a score
Save Variable Value writes each answer to a Super Field. Tags such as hot, warm and cold are added by simple rules: budget in range plus a timeline under 30 days is hot, for example. The lead source is stored so you know which ad produced which grade.
Hot leads go to a person, now
Within working hours, Assign to Agent routes hot leads to the right department (by city, product or language). Outside hours, the bot says when a person will reply and the lead lands at the top of the queue next morning.
Warm and cold leads are nurtured, not dropped
Warm leads move to a board column for a follow-up call; cold leads get useful information now and join an opted-in segment for later campaigns. A Qualified Lead conversion event goes back to Meta for hot leads so ad delivery can learn.
Customer: Hi, I saw your ad for 2 BHK flats in Wakad. Please share details.
Business: Hi, thanks for writing to Skyline Homes. I can share prices and floor plans in under a minute. First, what are you looking for? [2 BHK] [3 BHK] [Just exploring]
Customer: 2 BHK
Business: Great. What budget are you planning? [Under ₹70 lakh] [₹70-90 lakh] [Above ₹90 lakh]
Customer: ₹70-90 lakh
Business: When are you hoping to buy? [Within 1 month] [1-3 months] [Later this year]
Customer: Within 1 month
Business: Thank you, Rahul. Here is the floor plan and price sheet for our 2 BHK units in Wakad (PDF attached). Our site manager Neha will message you here in the next few minutes to fix a site visit.
Business: Hi Rahul, Neha here from Skyline Homes. Would Saturday 11 am or Sunday 4 pm suit you for a site visit?
What WhatsApp lead qualification does
WhatsApp lead qualification means a chatbot asks every new enquiry the handful of questions that decide whether it is worth a salesperson's time right now, saves the answers on the contact, and routes the conversation accordingly. Your team stops calling people who were only browsing, and serious buyers get a human reply while they are still interested.
It works best for businesses where leads arrive in volume and the sale needs a person: property, admissions, loans, insurance, vehicles and B2B orders. If you get five enquiries a day, a person reading each chat is still the better qualifier. For the basics of the platform, see what the WhatsApp Business API is.
Choose questions that change what you do
Every question should change the next step. If the answer would not change who calls, when, or what you send, drop it. Most flows need only four:
| Question | Why it matters | Best input |
|---|---|---|
| What are you looking for? | Routes to the right product team | 3 reply buttons |
| Budget range | Filters leads outside your price band | List of up to 10 rows |
| Timeline | Separates buy-now from research | 3 reply buttons |
| City or pin code | Assigns the right branch or territory | Text with validation |
Reply buttons are limited to three per message and list messages to ten rows in total, so design answer options to fit. Ask for name and email only after the lead has seen value, or let the AI Data Collector step pull them from free text such as "I'm Rahul, need a 2BHK under 85 lakh".
Messages you need approved
The qualification chat itself runs inside the 24-hour customer service window, so it needs no message template. Templates are needed for follow-ups after the window closes.
| Template name | Category | Sample (with values) |
|---|---|---|
lead_callback_confirm | Utility | Hi {{1}}, your call with {{2}} is booked for {{3}}. Reply here if you need to change it. (Rahul, Neha from Skyline Homes, Sat 12 Oct 11 am) |
lead_brochure_followup | Marketing | Hi {{1}}, you asked about {{2}} last week. New units are open for site visits this weekend. Want a slot? (Rahul, 2 BHK in Wakad) |
lead_application_status | Utility | Hi {{1}}, your enquiry {{2}} has been assigned to {{3}}, who will call you today. (Priya, ENQ-2291, Arjun Mehta) |
lead_nurture_guide | Marketing | Hi {{1}}, here is our free guide to {{2}}. Reply YES if you would like a call. (Meera, choosing a term plan) |
Anything that tries to sell or re-engage is Marketing. A message about a booking or request the person already made is Utility, as long as it carries no promotion. Meta reviews and may recategorise templates; see the template guide.
Build it in Broadchat
- Add your ad, website and offline sources under Lead Source, so each contact carries where it came from.
- Create Super Fields under CRM → Super Field: need, budget, timeline, city, lead_grade.
- In Chatbots → Chatbots, start the flow with the Click to WhatsApp Ads trigger (and a Match Keyword trigger for the website prefilled text).
- Add Ask Question steps with validation; on each answer, Save Variable Value into the matching field.
- Give each answer button its own path so hot, warm and cold leads go different ways (or use an AI router step for free-text answers), then add a Working Hours step.
- For hot leads, Assign to Agent by department (set up under Department → Departments) and a Send Conversion Event step with Qualified Lead.
- Move warm leads to a column in CRM → Boards; add cold leads to a nurture segment in CRM → Segment.
Failure modes and fixes
- People stop after question two. Too many questions or typed answers. Cut to four, use buttons, and send something useful (a price sheet, a fee structure) before the last question.
- Hot leads wait overnight. No one covers evenings. Set honest working-hours messages and a morning queue sorted by grade.
- Everyone says "within 1 month". The option is too attractive. Ask for a concrete next step instead (site visit this week, yes or no).
- Sales ignores the grade. Show the fields in the CRM → Live Chat contact panel so agents see the answers without asking again.
Illustrative ROI
Illustrative only, not a result. Say a coaching institute gets 600 ad leads a month, and two counsellors used to call all of them. If the bot grades 150 as hot and counsellors spend their calls there, and the hot-lead admission rate is 8% against 3% for unqualified calling, that is 12 admissions from focused calls. At a fee of ₹45,000, each extra admission is a large multiple of the monthly running cost. Subtract Meta's message charges for follow-up templates and service replies beyond the free monthly allowance (see WhatsApp API pricing) and the platform subscription before you judge it. Measure your own baseline first.
Agencies that run ads for clients can sell this flow as a package under their own brand through the partner program.
Broadchat modules used
- Chatbot builder (Click to WhatsApp Ads trigger)
- Ask Question with validation
- AI Data Collector
- Super Fields and tags
- Kanban boards
- Departments and Assign to Agent
- Send Conversion Event
- Lead Source
Industries: Real estate, Education and coaching, Insurance, NBFC and loans, Automobile dealers, B2B distributors
What to measure
- Completion rate: leads who answered every qualification question, as a share of chats started.
- Grade mix by lead source and ad: the share of hot, warm and cold leads each campaign produces.
- Time to first human reply for hot leads, inside and outside working hours.
- Hot-lead conversion to the next sales stage (site visit, demo, application) compared with unqualified leads.
- Drop-off point: the question where most people stop answering, to shorten or reword it.
Sources
- Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform — Meta for Developers, checked 12 October 2026
- WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy — WhatsApp, checked 12 October 2026
Broadchat team · Product and partner success team
The people who build and support Broadchat, the white-label WhatsApp Business API platform. We write from what we see while onboarding partners and their clients on the official WhatsApp Cloud API, and we check every article against Meta's current documentation.
Last updated:
Frequently asked questions
How many questions should a WhatsApp qualification bot ask?
Three to five. Each extra question loses some people, so keep only questions whose answer changes who follows up, how fast, or what you send next. Ask contact details after you have given something useful.
Can the bot hand over to a person mid-chat?
Yes. An Assign to Agent step moves the chat to the shared inbox for a department or agent, with the answers already saved on the contact. Customers should always have a way to reach a person; WhatsApp's policy expects it for automated experiences.
Does sending a conversion event to Meta help my ads?
The Send Conversion Event step reports events such as Qualified Lead through Meta's Conversions API for business messaging, which gives ad optimisation better signals than chat starts alone. How much it helps depends on your volume and campaign setup, so compare cost per qualified lead before and after.
Can AI qualify leads instead of fixed questions?
The AI Data Collector and AI Intent Detector steps can extract budget, need and location from free text, which suits people who type a long message. Keep button questions as the fallback, check the extracted values in the inbox, and do not let AI make credit or eligibility decisions.
Is qualifying leads on WhatsApp charged by Meta?
Replies inside the customer service window are service messages: each number gets 1,000 free per month, and later ones are charged. Templates sent after the window closes are charged by category. Click-to-WhatsApp ad chats can be free for up to 7 days under Meta's entry point rules.