Client intake triage

Triage one inbound client enquiry from initial capture through fit assessment to an accepted next-owner handoff. One run evaluates a single submission against your company's agreed service scope, current capacity, and qualification criteria. The agent extracts submitted statements, identifies material uncertainties, drafts clarification for missing facts, and prepares an intake briefing. It does not send unapproved client messages, contract new business, disclose lead information to third parties, or execute unconfigured workspace writes without explicit human confirmation. Where integrations are unconfigured or read-only, the agent prepares structured export records for the accountable owner to apply and verify.

• When a submission arrives from an intake form or direct email, record the prospect's claimed requirements, requested timeline, stated budget indications, and contact details as unconfirmed statements. Match inbound email domains and organisation names against existing workspace records. If an active enquiry or customer account already exists, link the new submission to the existing case, notify the intake owner of the duplicate, and hold further outreach so the owner can decide whether to merge the enquiry or continue an existing commercial thread.
• Compare the prospect's requested scope and delivery dates against your company's documented service boundaries, minimum budget guidelines, and current delivery capacity. If the request diverges from standard offerings but touches an adjacent capability, flag the trade-off as an exception rather than rejecting it outright. When decisive facts—such as the required deliverable type, target milestone dates, or operating constraints—remain ambiguous, prepare a targeted clarification draft rather than assuming intent.
• Information request. Ask the intake owner to clarify ambiguous internal service boundaries or provide missing historical context before engaging the prospect. Specify the exact gap in service policy, current team availability, or prior relationship terms. The intake owner supplies the guiding criteria or directs the agent to evaluate the enquiry under default service standards.
• If decisive details are missing, draft a concise enquiry response focused strictly on the specific questions needed to establish service fit, timeline feasibility, and commercial alignment. Present the questions in plain language without requesting unnecessary technical specifications.
• Approval. Present the proposed clarification message, recipient address, and identified information gaps to the intake owner before dispatch. The intake owner may approve the message, edit the phrasing, or handle the prospect directly. Upon approval, send the message through your authorised email integration, verify the sent message in the thread, and park the case under Clarifying needs. If the owner rejects or cancels the outreach, record the reason and move the enquiry to manual review under Declined or unresolved.
• When the prospect replies, incorporate the new statements into the intake record and re-evaluate fit. If the prospect does not respond within the agreed follow-up window, do not send automated chasers and do not close the enquiry unilaterally; present the overdue enquiry to the intake owner to decide whether to extend the waiting period, send an approved personal follow-up, or close the case as unresolved with an assigned follow-up date.
• Approval. Present the compiled intake briefing, policy comparison, and recommended disposition to the intake owner. The briefing clearly distinguishes the prospect's unconfirmed claims from verified internal capacity and criteria. The intake owner decides the disposition across three concrete paths. If approved for internal service, proceed to next-owner handoff. If declined as an unsuitable fit, draft a polite rejection note for owner review, log the rationale, and transition the enquiry to Declined or unresolved. If designated for an external referral, prepare non-confidential referral details for the intake owner to share manually; never contact or transmit lead details to a third-party partner without explicit prospect consent. The intake owner confirms completion of the manual referral handoff or explicitly records a referral deferral with the named owner responsible for follow-up.
• For an accepted enquiry, identify the nominated delivery lead or sales representative using your team's routing rules. Prepare a handoff note containing the enquiry record, confirmed constraints, and agreed next steps. Request explicit acknowledgment from the nominated owner before considering the handoff complete.
• Exception. If the nominated owner declines the handoff, cites insufficient capacity, or fails to respond within the required window, escalate the unassigned enquiry to the intake owner. The intake owner either reassigns the case to an alternative colleague with confirmed availability or pauses the handoff until staffing is settled.
• When the nominated owner explicitly accepts the handoff, update the internal board or intake database to reflect the assignment. Verify the update by reading back the modified record. If an external write fails, times out, or returns an ambiguous result, inspect the destination system for existing effects before attempting another automatic or manual write; if inspection is unavailable, hold the action with the intake owner rather than risking a duplicate entry. If the database tool is unconfigured, read-only, or direct updates are unavailable, provide the exact record payload to the intake owner to apply manually and wait for their verification. When the manual update cannot be completed immediately, record the intake owner's explicit deferral, the operational blocker, and the named owner responsible for subsequent follow-up, closing the run under Declined or unresolved rather than claiming an accepted handoff.
• Consider the run complete when one of three verified terminal outcomes is recorded. An ordinary accepted completion occurs only when the intake owner has approved fit, the nominated next owner has accepted responsibility, and internal assignment records are verified via readback or confirmed owner write. A declined or unresponsive closure concludes under Declined or unresolved with the intake owner's recorded rationale and follow-up date. An owner-authorized referral or unverified write deferral completes under Declined or unresolved with the recorded operational reason and the named owner accountable for subsequent action.
• In a fictional evaluation, an enquiry arrived via Tally from a regional dental clinic requesting custom patient scheduling software within four weeks on a 5,000-dollar stated budget. The agent noted that custom software development exceeded standard configuration services and the deadline clashed with committed client work. The intake owner approved a clarification message asking if the clinic would consider an off-the-shelf system configuration within their budget. The clinic confirmed interest in configuring an existing package. The intake owner approved the adjusted fit, nominated the solutions lead, and the solutions lead explicitly accepted ownership. The agent updated the internal record, verified the readback, and closed the intake run under Accepted handoff.