Automatic Lead Routing

Lead Routing distributes eligible agency inquiries among your advisors. The complete setup connects three things: the specialties on the lead, the specialties your advisors cover, and an ordered list of routing rules.

Start with the form’s assignment path

Agency visibility means the form is shared; it does not determine who receives its leads. Check the routing badge on the Forms list and Form settings → Leads in the builder.

• An advisor’s personal form stays with that advisor and bypasses agency routing rules.
• Specific Agent or Round-Robin with selected advisors uses the form’s own assignment pool.
• Unassigned selects no fixed assignee on the form. Eligible agency forms try the agency rules; if no rule can place the inquiry, review the Unassigned queue. It does not mean agency routing is disabled.
• On agency forms, a matched existing client normally stays with their assigned advisor. Personal forms preserve their advisor’s ownership, and an explicit Preferred Planner choice takes priority. Notifications are separate: receiving an alert does not make someone the lead’s owner.

How agency routing chooses an advisor

1. The agency form’s answer mappings attach specialty tags to the inquiry.
2. Active rules are checked from top to bottom against interest, budget, and source.
3. The first matching rule with an available eligible advisor assigns the lead. If its pool is empty, routing tries the next rule.
4. Specialty matching prefers available primary specialists, then backup specialists. Paused, deactivated, unavailable, and at-capacity members are skipped.
5. If no rule can place the inquiry, a person needs to review and assign it.

For example, map the answer Alaska Cruise to Alaska, then ensure an eligible advisor covers Alaska. Do not map a generic Cruise answer to one cruise brand unless the question actually identifies that brand.

Step 1 — Tag Your Advisors

Go to Settings → Advisors, open an advisor, and switch to the Payments tab:

• Booking partner — flag the members who take leads. When at least one member is flagged, the lead "Assigned to" list narrows to just partners (plus owners/admins), which keeps a large roster manageable.
• Lead routing → Specialties — click a tag once to make it a primary specialty (preferred match), twice for backup (used only when no primary specialist is available), a third time to remove it. Tags cover brands (Disney, Universal, Royal Caribbean…), hotel brands (Marriott, Hilton, IHG…), destinations, trip types, special categories, and Seller of Travel states.
• Add your own — under the tag groups, type a specialty name, pick the group it belongs in, and click Add. Custom specialties belong to your agency: they show for every member, route leads exactly like the built-in ones, and carry an × so you can remove one later. Owners and admins only.
• Accepting new leads — turn off to take someone out of every rule (vacation, onboarding, overloaded).
• Open-lead capacity — auto-assignment pauses for an advisor once they have this many open leads. Leave blank for no cap.

Step 2 — Write Routing Rules

Go to Leads → Partner performance to open Lead program (owners and admins only) and click Add rule. Each rule has:

• A match — interest tags, a budget range, and/or a lead source. Leave the match empty to catch every lead.
• A target — set Send to to Specialty partners for most rules. That sends each lead to whoever is tagged with what the lead wants, so you never build or maintain a roster by hand. You can also target one specific advisor or everyone. (A team only appears if your workspace has the Teams add-on turned on. You do not need Teams for specialty routing, skip it.)
• A balance mode — round-robin or least-open-leads.

Put specific rules first. If you want a fallback, add a separate rule below them, select Round-robin all, leave interest, budget, and source unrestricted, and choose Round-robin or Least-loaded under Balance by. Use the up/down arrow buttons to change rule order.

When a booking-partner program exists, automatic specialty, team, and broad pools are restricted to its members. A rule naming a specific advisor is a deliberate exception. Without a configured program, those pools use eligible agency members. A fallback still needs an available advisor under capacity. It cannot promise that every inquiry will be assigned.

The builder offers supported automatic modes. Older rules marked Manager assigns actually use round-robin; older Triage rules are skipped. Edit those legacy rules to choose a supported setting. Manual triage happens from the Leads queue.

The Coverage panel on the right shows every specialty tag and how many partners cover it — thin or uncovered tags are flagged so you can see gaps before leads fall through to the fallback.

Step 3 — Teach Your Forms to Tag Leads

Routing is only as smart as the tags on the lead. In the form builder, select a choice field, open its Leads tab, and expand Route leads by specialty. Click + Tags next to an answer and pick the specialties it signals — for example, on a "What kind of trip?" field:

• "Disney World" → Disney
• "Alaska Cruise" → Alaska
• "Beach getaway" → All-Inclusive

When the form is submitted, the lead is tagged automatically and the rules take it from there. You can also tag any lead manually from its detail view — useful for phone inquiries you enter by hand.

Only map answers that actually say something about what the client wants to book. A seat preference or an allergy question tells routing nothing, so leave those blank. If you want to segment on them anyway, use Let clients tag themselves in the same panel instead — that writes an ordinary tag you can filter a campaign by, and it doesn't touch routing. See Form Builder for the difference between the two.

This section is hidden on a solo account, since specialty routing exists to choose between advisors and there is only one.

Step 4 (Optional) — Set an Accept Deadline

On the Routing rules page, set the Accept SLA to a number of minutes. For eligible leads assigned by the routing engine, if the advisor does not accept within that window, JourneyFuse automatically re-routes the lead to the next available advisor (the non-responder is skipped) and notifies the new assignee. Leave it blank to disable the deadline. Personal, existing-client, client-selected, and deliberate manual assignments are protected from automatic reassignment.

When a lead can't be re-routed

Sometimes there is nobody to move the lead to: no advisor lists its specialty, everyone is paused or full, or the rule can't resolve a pool. JourneyFuse stops re-trying that lead and sends "A lead needs manual assignment" so a person can place it by hand. The lead stays put until someone does, and you won't be emailed about it again unless the assignment changes.

By default that email goes to every owner and admin, which on a larger agency means several copies of the same alert. Under Settings → Notifications → Who handles lead routing, name one person and only they get the email. Point it at whoever works your queue, or at a shared agency mailbox that has been added as an admin on the account. Everyone still sees the alert in their in-app notifications either way.

The Command Center

On Leads, switch to Agency and the Table view tab to get the routing command center:

• Headline tiles — new this week, unassigned, awaiting accept, contacted, won. Each tile is a filter: click it to see exactly those leads, click again to clear. The Unassigned tile turns amber whenever a lead needs a human.
• Triage queue — every unrouted lead, right at the top with an Assign button.
• Partner rail — each booking partner with their specialties, availability (Open / Full / Paused), and a load bar against their capacity.
• Why-assigned chips — every auto-routed lead shows the rule match that placed it.
• Audience tabs — "All advisors" vs "Booking partners" scopes the pipeline to leads held by partners.
• Partner performance — on the Routing rules page: leads received, accept rate, response time, conversion, and won revenue per partner.

Booking-partner leads are hidden from the main pipeline by default so your agency's own pipeline stays clean — use the Show booking-partner leads toggle or the Booking partners tab to see them.

What the Advisor Sees

An assigned advisor gets one email and one in-app notification for each new lead. The email names the lead, shows what they asked for (email, phone, request and budget when given), carries any files uploaded on the form, and has Accept and Decline buttons. Replying to it writes to the lead directly. The lead also appears in their leads list with an Accept / Decline banner. Accepting records their acceptance. Declining an agency-routed or manually handed-off inquiry returns it to shared triage, unless the advisor is declining their own original inquiry; that ownership stays with them. Accept rates and response times feed the partner performance scorecard.

Matching takes a few seconds

A lead from an agency form is read for specialties before it is placed, so it goes straight to the partner whose specialties match what the client asked for. That reading takes a few seconds, and during it the lead shows in the queue as matching a partner with nobody on it. Nobody is emailed until it is placed, and then only the partner who gets it. If the reading adds nothing or takes too long, the lead is placed by your routing rules alone.

Good to Know

• No rules? Nothing changes. Forms with their own assignment mode (specific agent, round-robin) keep that behavior; everything else follows your default owner routing.
• Existing-client ownership is protected on agency forms. Personal-form ownership and an explicit Preferred Planner choice are important exceptions; do not assume every email match overrides them.
• Capacity counts open leads — leads move out of an advisor's count when they're won, lost, or converted.
• Owners and admins can add custom specialties from an advisor’s Payments tab alongside the built-in taxonomy.