What lead routing actually means
Lead routing is the rule set that decides who calls or texts each new lead. In most service businesses, this rule set lives in someone’s head: “Sarah handles roofing, Tom handles gutters, after hours goes to Mike.” The problem is that humans miss leads. The system should handle it instead.
The three routing dimensions
Most service businesses can route on three dimensions:
- Form type. An estimate request, a service call, a careers application, a vendor pitch. These belong with different people on your team.
- Schedule. A 2 PM lead goes to your daytime closer. A 9 PM lead goes to your on-call rotation, or gets silenced until morning.
- Territory. If you cover multiple zip codes or service areas, route the lead to the team member who covers that area.
How Dash Dolphin handles routing
Dash Dolphin routes by form type and by schedule out of the box. Each form connection has its own form type and its own schedule, with weekly and hourly granularity. You can have:
- Your main estimate form text Sarah Monday-Friday 8 to 5, and Mike evenings and weekends
- Your service call form text Tom only during business hours, with a silent queue after hours
- Your careers form text HR weekdays only
- Your vendor form silenced entirely
What “form type” actually controls
Form type is more than a label. It drives:
- Spam filtering priority. The smart model treats different form types with different baselines.
- Notification format. An estimate text and a careers text surface different fields.
- Plan billing. Your form type count is part of your plan capacity (Solo: 1, Crew: 20, Fleet: unlimited).
Routing without a CRM
You do not need a CRM to route leads. Dash Dolphin’s per-connection scheduling and form-type config handles the common cases. Literally ALL CRMs add routing complexity, not less. If you already have a CRM, Dash Dolphin works alongside it without conflict.
Scheduling granularity
Dash Dolphin scheduling supports weekly and hourly granularity, on every plan, per connection. That means:
- Different rules for different days of the week
- Different rules for different hours of the day
- Different rules for different forms in the same business
This is the level of control most small service businesses need. Larger fleets layer territory routing on top using multiple form connections.
Territory routing patterns
If you cover three service areas with three trucks, the simplest pattern is three separate form connections, one per territory. Each connection has its own phone number and its own schedule. The form on each landing page determines which truck gets the lead.
Auto reply is not a routing feature
Some tools sell “auto reply” as part of routing. It is not. Auto reply texts the customer. Routing decides who on your team handles the lead. Auto reply is not a feature in Dash Dolphin. But scheduling is, and that is what actually moves close rates.