How to hand a chatbot lead to sales with a context summary

Updated 2026-10-23 · 6 min read · By the Convo360 team

Why leads go cold at the handoff

Your bot has done the hard part. It has greeted the visitor, asked about budget, location and timeline, and found someone who is ready to talk. Then the chat lands with a salesperson who opens with 'Hi, how can I help you?' and the customer has to type everything again. That repeated question is where many warm leads quietly cool off.

A good chatbot lead handoff moves three things together: the lead's answers, a short summary a busy rep can read in ten seconds, and an alert that actually reaches the rep. This guide covers the sales handoff only. If you need a teammate to take over a live conversation inside the inbox, that is a different pattern, covered in setting up live-chat handoff.

The goal is simple. When Priya from your sales team calls the lead, her first sentence should prove she already knows the requirement.

What the salesperson should see in one glance

Decide the handoff fields before you open the flow builder. Keep the list short, because every extra question lowers completion. For most Indian small businesses, five or six fields are enough.

Use buttons and lists wherever you can. A typed budget like 'around 70-75 L maybe' is hard to filter later, while a button value is always consistent. Free text is fine for the requirement itself, because the AI summary will tidy it up.

Building the sales handoff on Convo360

On Convo360 the whole handoff is one branch in the Flow Builder. No code is needed.

1. Capture answers into variables. Use Ask a Question, Buttons and List Menu blocks, each saving to a named variable such as requirement, budget and timeline.
2. Decide who is qualified. Add a Condition block, for example budget above your minimum and timeline within three months. Everyone else goes to a nurture branch instead of a rep's phone.
3. Let the AI write the summary. Add an AI Reply block with the summary prompt below, and save its output to a variable called lead_summary rather than sending it to the customer.
4. Create or update the CRM lead. Add a Save CRM lead block, map the variables, including the summary, to the lead and choose a stage such as 'Qualified'. The card appears on the Kanban board in the CRM.
5. Notify the rep. Add Send Email, Send SMS, or both, using the handoff message below. Assign the conversation to the rep in the team inbox so ownership is clear.
6. Tell the customer what happens next. A Send Message block closes the loop: who will call, and roughly when.

Run Preview / Try-it before publishing, and check the Flow Logs to confirm each variable is filled. An empty variable in the alert is the most common handoff bug.

A copy-ready summary prompt and handoff message

Paste this into the AI Reply block and adjust the variable names to match yours:

You are writing an internal note for a salesperson. Using only the details below, write a summary of at most 60 words in plain English. Line 1: who the lead is and what they want. Line 2: budget, timeline and location. Line 3: any objection or special request, and the best time to call. Do not invent details. If something is missing, write 'not shared'. Details: Name {{user_name}}, Requirement {{requirement}}, Budget {{budget}}, Timeline {{timeline}}, Call time {{call_time}}.

Three habits make this prompt reliable. It names the reader, it caps the length, and it tells the model what to do when data is missing, which stops guessed details from reaching your rep.

Now the alert. A sample body for Send Email:

• Subject: New qualified lead: {{user_name}}, {{budget}}
• Summary: {{lead_summary}}
• Contact: {{phone}}. Source: WhatsApp bot. Stage: Qualified.
• Action: Please call within 30 minutes and update the stage in the CRM after the call.

Keep the SMS version to the summary and the phone number. In India, business SMS needs DLT registration and an approved template, so complete that before relying on SMS alerts.

Picking the right alert channel for your team

Convo360 can be installed on a phone as a web app, straight from the browser, and it sends push notifications when a new chat arrives or a conversation needs a human reply. For most small teams the practical combination is inbox assignment plus push on the phone, with email as the written record.

Whichever channel you choose, send the alert to a named person. A lead sent to a shared mailbox is a lead that everybody assumes somebody else has called. If you have several reps, a Condition block can route by city, product or language, so a Marathi-speaking lead from Nashik reaches the rep who can serve them best.

Common mistakes and what to test before going live

• Showing the summary to the customer. Save the AI Reply output to a variable. It is an internal note.
• Asking too much. If the rep never uses a field, remove the question.
• Alerting on every chat. Only the qualified branch should notify a rep. Noise trains people to ignore alerts.
• No promise to the customer. Tell the lead who will call and when, then keep that promise.
• Sensitive data in summaries. The bot should never collect OTPs, card numbers or passwords, so they can never end up in a handoff.

To test, run a full conversation from your own number as a qualified lead, then as an unqualified one. Check that the CRM card lands in the right stage, the email or SMS arrives with every variable filled, and the push notification appears on the rep's phone. Then ask the rep a simple question: could you make this call without asking the customer anything twice?

The Flow Builder and CRM are included from the Starter plan at ₹999 per month plus GST, and everything is unlocked in the 14-day free trial. AI usage for the summary is billed by your own AI provider under BYOK, with no markup from Convo360. For more on working the pipeline after the handoff, see using the CRM pipeline for chatbot leads.

Step by step

1. Capture answers into variablesUse Ask a Question, Buttons and List Menu blocks to save requirement, budget, timeline and call time into named variables.
2. Qualify with a Condition blockBranch on budget and timeline so only sales-ready leads reach a rep. Send the rest to a nurture branch.
3. Generate the AI summaryAdd an AI Reply block with the summary prompt and save its output to a variable such as lead_summary instead of sending it to the customer.
4. Save the CRM lead in the right stageAdd a Save CRM lead block, map the variables and the summary, and set the stage to Qualified.
5. Alert a named salespersonUse Send Email or Send SMS with the summary, assign the conversation in the team inbox, and have the rep enable push notifications in the installed web app.
6. Confirm next steps to the customerSend a message saying who will call and when, then test the full path with Preview / Try-it before publishing.

Example conversation

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

Available across India — see WhatsApp & AI calling automation by state and city.