A vendor lead sitting in the wrong inbox
Your product gives homeowners an instant valuation estimate on agency websites and passes the details to the agency as a vendor lead. A homeowner on the edge of two towns fills it in on Sunday evening. The lead goes to the branch whose postcode list contains the first half of their postcode, which is the branch fifteen miles away. That branch assumes the other one will pick it up. By Wednesday the homeowner has booked a valuation with a rival agency.
There are quieter versions of the same failure. A lead reaches the right branch but lands in a shared inbox on a day when two negotiators are off and the manager is at a valuation. A lead arrives at ten at night and is buried by morning under portal enquiries. A lead from a landlord thinking of letting goes to the sales team, who pass it on by forwarding an email that nobody in lettings is watching.
The agency's director asks you why they are paying for leads their own branches never see. Your team checks and finds the routing table has not changed since onboarding, even though the agency redrew its branch areas in the spring.
Where routing goes wrong
Vendor leads are among the most valuable things an agency receives, and they are time sensitive. Routing needs to reflect how the agency actually divides its patch, which is rarely neat.
- Territories are set by postcode district, but agencies divide areas by street, village or local knowledge.
- Branches open, close and merge, and the routing table is not updated.
- Lead delivery is an email to a branch inbox, with no confirmation anyone read it.
- There is no rule for leads outside every territory, so they go to a default that nobody checks.
- Nobody measures time from lead to first contact, so slow branches go unnoticed.
The cost when a lead goes astray
For the agency, a missed vendor lead can mean a lost instruction and the fee that would have followed. For you, it undermines the whole reason the agency pays for your product. Directors who see leads arrive late or in the wrong place stop believing your lead numbers, and a product whose value is measured in leads cannot afford that doubt.
It also affects your own product decisions. If you cannot see what happened to leads after delivery, you cannot tell whether a quiet month at an agency means fewer homeowners used the tool or that leads were delivered and ignored. Those two problems need very different fixes, and without follow-up data they look the same in your dashboard.
How we build routing agencies can rely on
What we build makes routing follow the agency's own map and confirms each lead reached a person.
- Territory setup per agency: drawn on a map, or defined by full postcodes and streets, with an overlap rule where two branches share an area.
- Branch changes managed by the agency admin, with a date, so routing changes when the agency's patch changes.
- Delivery into the agency's CRM where your product connects to it, or to a named negotiator's inbox and phone, not just a general branch address.
- Receipt tracking: the lead is marked as opened, and as contacted when the CRM shows a call or note, or when the negotiator taps a button.
- Escalation if a lead has not been contacted within the agency's own chosen window: to the branch manager, then to a second branch or a central team.
- A lead report per branch showing time to first contact and leads escalated, so the agency sees where follow-up lags.
| Situation | Routing rule |
|---|---|
| Postcode inside one branch territory | That branch, to the named negotiator on duty |
| Postcode in an overlap area | Agency's chosen rule, such as nearest branch or rota |
| Postcode outside all territories | Central team or head office, flagged |
| Lead not contacted in time | Escalated to branch manager, then a second branch |
| Branch closed | Territory reassigned from the closure date |
Sunday evening, done properly
The same homeowner fills in the form on Sunday. Their street falls in the overlap area between two branches, and the agency's rule sends overlap leads to the nearest branch by distance. The lead lands in the CRM of the right branch and on the phone of the negotiator on duty. By Monday lunchtime the CRM shows a call logged. Had nobody called, the branch manager would have had a reminder by mid-afternoon. The director's monthly report shows the lead, the branch and the time to contact.
Signs your leads are going astray
- Routing tables were set at onboarding and have not been reviewed.
- Leads go to a general branch email with no record of who read them.
- You cannot say how long agencies take to contact a lead.
- Agencies dispute your lead numbers because their branches never saw some leads.
- Leads outside territories go to a default that nobody watches.