Route qualified leads

Route qualified leads tells a bot what to do the moment a conversation first becomes qualified: assign it to someone and notify them, automatically, without anyone watching the inbox. It builds directly on Lead qualification scoring — qualification decides which conversations are worth a follow-up, and routing decides who picks them up.

It's a per-bot setting and it's off by default. You turn it on inside the bot editor, on the same card where you configure qualification.

The setting lives at app.hydra-help.com → Bots → pick a bot → Qualification → Route qualified leads.

What it does

A bot with qualification enabled scores every conversation against your rubric and stamps a decision: qualified, pending, or disqualified. Route qualified leads watches for the first time a conversation crosses your qualify threshold and, when that happens, does two things:

Assigns the conversation to the target you choose.
Notifies the recipient with a context-rich handoff (see below).

It fires once per conversation — the first time it qualifies. A conversation that re-scores and stays qualified on later turns does not route again, and you won't get a second assignment or a second page. The routing is a single, one-time event tied to that first threshold crossing.

It will not steal a conversation a human has already picked up. If someone is already assigned to the conversation, or already working it, auto-route is skipped — Hydra leaves the human in place rather than reassigning over them. Routing is for conversations no one has claimed yet.

Turning it on

In the bot editor, open the Qualification card. Below the rubric and thresholds, you'll find the Route qualified leads sub-section.

Toggle Route qualified leads on.
Choose a Route to target:
- Channel — round-robin across members — qualified leads spread evenly across that channel's members. Each new qualified lead goes to the next person in rotation, so no single teammate gets a pile while others sit idle.
- Channel — whole team — the lead is routed to the channel without picking a specific person. Anyone on the channel can pick it up from the shared inbox.
- A specific person — every qualified lead from this bot always goes to one teammate you choose.
Pick the channel (for either channel option) or the person (for the specific-person option). The editor requires this selection while the toggle is on — you can't save a routing rule with no target.
Click Save. The routing rule saves with the bot.

Until you save, nothing routes. And because routing depends on qualification, the toggle only has an effect when qualification itself is enabled on the bot.

The handoff the recipient gets

Before this feature, getting assigned a conversation meant a bare "you've been assigned" with nothing to go on. Now, when a qualified lead is routed — or when the bot hands a conversation off to a human the normal way — the recipient gets a handoff that carries the context with it.

The in-app notification and the email both include:

The qualification score and decision.
The rationale — the one-line explanation of why the conversation qualified.
The captured customer fields the conversation collected, such as company, email, and phone.
A short conversation summary.
A recent transcript excerpt so you can see the last exchange without opening the conversation first.

The email subject line tells you which kind of handoff it is:

For an auto-routed qualified lead, it reads like New qualified lead routed to you — <name> (score N).
For a normal human handoff (the bot handing off because the visitor asked for a person), it reads like <name> asked for a human.

Handoff emails honor each teammate's notification preferences. If someone has email turned off for assignments at Settings → Notifications, they'll still get the in-app handoff but no email.

Going further with automation (advanced)

Built-in routing covers the common case: assign the lead, page the right person. If you want to do more when a lead qualifies — create a CRM task, post to a webhook, send a custom email through a flow — there's a separate hook for that.

A new automation trigger event, conversation.qualified, fires the first time a conversation qualifies. You can build a Flow on that event and have it run alongside the built-in routing. The two are independent: routing assigns and notifies; a conversation.qualified flow does whatever else you design. You don't need a flow to use routing, and you can use both at once.

Good to know

Routing needs qualification on, plus a target. If qualified leads aren't being assigned, confirm qualification is enabled on that bot, the Route qualified leads toggle is on, you picked a channel or person, and you saved.
Round-robin needs members in the channel. If you route round-robin to a channel with no members, there's no one to rotate through. Add members to the channel, or route to a specific person instead.
It won't reassign a claimed conversation. Auto-route only touches unassigned conversations. A conversation a human already picked up is left alone.
Notifications follow each teammate's preferences. Whether a recipient gets an email (versus only the in-app bell) is controlled per person at Settings → Notifications.

Frequently asked questions

Why didn't a qualified conversation get routed? The most common reasons: qualification isn't enabled on that bot, the Route qualified leads toggle is off, you didn't pick a target (or didn't save), or the conversation was already assigned to a human when it qualified. Auto-route only fires on the first qualification of an unassigned conversation.

Does it route every time a conversation re-scores as qualified? No. It fires once — the first time the conversation crosses the qualify threshold. Later turns that keep it qualified don't trigger another assignment or another notification.

What happens if the conversation is already assigned to someone? Auto-route is skipped. Hydra never reassigns over a human who has already picked up the conversation. Routing only acts on conversations no one has claimed.

Can I route different bots to different people? Yes. The routing rule is per bot. One bot can round-robin across a sales channel while another always routes to a single person — set each bot's Route qualified leads independently.

Does round-robin remember who got the last lead? Yes. Each new qualified lead goes to the next member in the channel's rotation, so leads spread evenly rather than all landing on one person.

Will the recipient get an email, or just an in-app notification? Both, unless they've turned email off for assignments at Settings → Notifications. The handoff content (score, rationale, captured fields, summary, transcript excerpt) is the same in either channel.

How is this different from the conversation.qualified flow trigger? Route qualified leads is the built-in assign-and-notify action. The conversation.qualified trigger is for building your own Flow on top of qualification — create a task, hit a webhook, send a custom email. They run independently, and you can use one, the other, or both.