Part 1 — Assignment rules, in evaluation order
Rules are evaluated top to bottom; the first match wins. The last row must be a catch-all, because the one state you can never allow is an unowned record.
| # | Condition | Assign to | Fallback |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contact or company matches an existing customer | Account owner | Account team lead |
| 2 | Source is a partner referral | Partner manager | Sales manager |
| 3 | Territory matches a defined region | Rep on rota for that region | Regional lead |
| 4 | Product interest matches a specialist line | Specialist rep | Sales manager |
| 5 | Anything else | Round-robin among available reps | Named fallback owner |
Part 2 — Response standards by source
Different sources justify different standards. Keep the number of tiers small enough that everyone remembers them.
| Source | First contact standard | Attempt sequence | Stop rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inbound demo or quote request | 15 minutes in-hours | 5 attempts, phone and email, over 7 days | No response after 5, move to nurture |
| Content download | 1 working day | 3 attempts, email first | No response after 3, move to nurture |
| Partner referral | 2 hours | 4 attempts plus partner notification | Escalate to partner manager |
| Inbound call missed | Same day callback | 3 callbacks plus one message | No answer after 3, log and nurture |
Part 3 — Out-of-hours and coverage
- Business window
- The hours the standard applies to, stated per region with the timezone written out.
- Out-of-hours behaviour
- Assign immediately, acknowledge with an honest next-window promise, queue the task for the window opening.
- Availability handling
- How the rota knows a rep is away. Round-robin that does not skip absent reps is the most common silent leak.
- Weekend and holiday rule
- Explicit. Either an on-call rota with an owner, or a stated slower standard that the acknowledgement matches.
Part 4 — Escalation
| Condition | Notify | Within | Action expected |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard reached, no contact logged | Record owner | At the standard | Contact now, or reassign |
| Double the standard, still no contact | Owner's manager | Immediately | Reassign and record the cause |
| Untouched at 2 working days | Marketing owner | Daily digest | Return to marketing for nurture |
| Routing rule matched nothing | Sales operations | Immediately | Fix the rule; fallback owner works the lead meanwhile |
Maintenance
- Review quarterly, and immediately after any change in territories, staffing or sources.
- Version and date the document; the automation is the implementation, this is the source of truth.
- Test the fallback path after every change — it is the rule that protects you and the one nobody exercises.
- Keep the breach report next to this document so rules and outcomes are reviewed together.
Related work
Build it with the lead routing playbook, and size the problem first with the lead response leakage calculator.
Muhammad Sameed Abid
Muhammad Sameed Abid is a business operations, automation and growth systems professional with 9+ years across operations management, workflow and CRM automation, marketing operations and customer success. He is currently Head of Customer Success at GHA Marketing and writes here about the operating layer underneath growth.