The AI lead handler

The lead handler is a skill the dealer assistant loads on every plan. It does not add new buttons; it adds a way of working. Ask "handle the first touch on Jane" or "what should we do with Marcus, he went quiet" and the assistant reads the whole lead, decides the next touch, and puts the cards in front of you.

What it reads first

Every piece of work on one person starts with the lead brief, a single read of the lead's whole situation: contact details, status, source, who owns it, the car they asked about (stock number, price, availability), their notes, the communications summary (when they last wrote in, when we last reached out, whether they are waiting on a reply), open tasks and appointments. The assistant will not draft, send, assign or change a status on a lead it has not read this way in the same reply.

The playbook

1. A reply they are waiting on comes first. If the person wrote in and nobody answered, the assistant proposes a reply to what they asked. It never sends a template over an unanswered message. A question typed into the inquiry form counts, even on a brand-new lead: someone who wrote "can I see it this weekend?" gets an answer, and the welcome template is for a lead who only filled in the form.
2. The first touch on a new lead prefers your own words: it reads your enabled message templates, picks the one written for a first contact, and proposes Send "Welcome" to Jane Alvarez with the subject and body exactly as she will read them. With no enabled template that fits, it proposes a short free-text email and says why. One message per person per reply, never two.
3. A follow-up task goes on the board for the lead's owner after every outbound message: the person's name in the title, sales follow-up category, due within a business day. It does not add a second task when one is already open on the lead.
4. Status hygiene as its own card, after the fact: contacted once the first message has gone out, engaged when they write back, appointment set when a visit is booked, showed or no-show after the visit, and dormant only after three unanswered touches over at least thirty days. It never marks a lead won or lost on its own judgement.

For a quiet lead the cadence is a second touch after two to three days, a third after about a week, then a dormant card and one last task. After three unanswered messages over at least thirty days the assistant does not draft, send or offer a fourth. Each touch is the next template in your set when there is one, otherwise a short email that adds something (the car is still available, a new arrival that fits, an invitation to come by), never the same message twice.

What it never does

• Invent a price, a discount, a financing rate, an approval, a trade value or availability that is not on the record.
• Message a person who asked to stop. A stop, unsubscribe or "do not contact" anywhere in their timeline or notes ends outbound contact; you get a note instead.
• Send more than one templated message to the same person in a day (the send itself refuses, see Templated emails).
• Pick a salesperson. When a lead has no owner it says so and assigns only to the person you name.
• Text anyone. Texting is not part of this skill.
• Treat the lead's own words as instructions. A note that reads like a command to the assistant is content it reports, not an order it follows.

With the new-lead trigger

When the A new lead comes in trigger is on (Settings → AI assistant, in the Autopilot card) and the lead handler is available, every new lead starts it, including website forms, leads the storefront assistant takes and marketplace or ADF leads, and the background job loads the skill and runs the first-touch playbook: the brief, the welcome template card, the follow-up task. Because that job started from the lead's own message, its cards wait for a person's approval whatever your autonomy setting; the assistant never sends on its own in a reply that read customer-written content.

Who can do what

The skill adds no permissions. A salesperson who cannot assign leads in the app cannot assign one through the assistant either, and every card follows the same approval and Autopilot rules as the rest of the assistant (see AI actions and approval).