Setting Up Lead Routing

Lead routing decides which agent on your team gets a new inbound lead. The wrong default — leads piling up on one person, or rotating to an agent who happens to be on vacation — kills response time. The right default doesn’t need your attention more than once a quarter.

This tutorial walks you through picking and configuring a routing mode, using a small Idaho brokerage as the example. Plan on 10 minutes.

By the end, you’ll have:

Picked a routing mode that matches how your team actually works
Configured the eligible-agent pool and fallback behavior
Verified the configuration end-to-end against a test inquiry

Before you start

You’ll need:

Broker or admin access to your brokerage’s settings.
Your agent roster set up, with each agent’s profile flagged correctly for whether they receive leads (the Lead Recipient toggle on each agent’s profile).
A decision on which agent is your primary agent. The primary is the fallback for several routing modes — usually the broker themselves or a senior agent.

If you haven’t designated a primary agent yet, do that first under Team → Agents. Exactly one agent should be marked primary.

Step 1 — narrow the decision

There are five routing modes. The right one is usually obvious once you’ve answered three questions about your team:

Question	If yes…	If no…
Is there one agent (probably you) who personally handles every inquiry, with the rest of the team doing fulfillment?	`primary_only`	Keep reading.
Do leads naturally split by inquiry type (buying vs. selling vs. valuation) where different agents specialize?	`subject_based`	Keep reading.
Do your agents have meaningfully different specialties (luxury vs. starter, specific neighborhoods, first-time buyers) that should match the lead’s stated interest?	`semantic` (or `round_robin` + semantic filter)	Keep reading.
Do you want everyone on a fair share of leads, no special-case routing?	`round_robin`	`random` is the last option, but rarely the right one — see the routing modes reference.

For the worked example below, assume you’re a 3-agent brokerage: you (the broker, marked primary), Ryan, and Josh. You all serve overlapping markets but Ryan tends to handle first-time buyers and Josh tends to handle relocations. You want leads distributed fairly but with some intelligence about who fits the inquiry. The right pick: round_robin with semantic filter enabled.

Step 2 — verify the eligible-agent pool

Routing only considers eligible agents. An agent is eligible when:

They belong to your brokerage.
Their Lead Recipient toggle is on.
Their status is active.
They aren’t disabled.

Navigate to Team → Agents and check that the agents you want in the rotation have Lead Recipient turned on. Anyone with it off is invisible to the routing engine — they can still be assigned manually, but no incoming inquiry will land on them automatically.

For the 3-agent example: turn the toggle on for all three agents.

Step 3 — set the routing mode

Navigate to Settings → Features → Lead Routing.

Set the Routing Mode dropdown to round_robin.

The configurable options for round-robin are minimal:

Use semantic filter — when on, the system narrows the eligible pool to the top N semantic matches before applying round-robin. You get fairness within a relevance-filtered pool.
Semantic top N — how many top matches to keep when the filter is on. Default 3.

For the example: turn Use semantic filter on, keep Semantic top N at 3.

Why this combination: with 3 agents, “top 3 of 3” is effectively the full pool — so the semantic filter is a no-op when all three agents have match criteria. But it gives you the right behavior the moment you add a fourth or fifth agent without needing to revisit the configuration.

Step 4 — set the fallback

Below the routing mode, set the Fallback Mode. There are two options:

primary_agent — when routing can’t find a match (no eligible agents, all agents excluded by the filter), the lead goes to the primary agent.
unassigned — when routing can’t find a match, the lead is created without an assignment. It appears in the board under NEW with no agent attached; someone has to claim it manually.

For most brokerages, primary_agent is the right choice. unassigned is for teams where the broker actively reviews every unrouted lead before assigning — workable for very small brokerages with low volume, but the lead pile-up risk is real.

For the example: pick primary_agent. You (as the broker, marked primary) will catch anything routing can’t place.

Step 5 — make sure semantic matching has data to work with

The semantic filter and semantic mode both depend on agent match criteria — a structured description of what each agent specializes in. Without match criteria, semantic matching falls back to “first eligible agent,” which defeats the purpose.

Navigate to each agent’s profile and check the Match Criteria section:

Field	What to fill in
Service areas	Neighborhoods, cities, regions the agent specifically serves.
Price range	Min and max price points they specialize in.
Property types	Single-family, condo, multi-family, land, etc.
Client types	Luxury, first-time buyer, investor, relocation, etc.
Specializations	Free-text or tag list (e.g., “VA loans,” “historic properties”).

For the example: for Ryan, list “first-time buyer” in Client types and tag relevant specializations. For Josh, list “relocation” in Client types and the cities/neighborhoods he targets for relocating clients. You stay as the catch-all primary.

The fields don’t all need to be filled in for every agent, but the more populated they are, the better the semantic filter performs.

Step 6 — verify with a test inquiry

The fastest way to confirm routing is working: submit a test inquiry yourself.

Open a property listing on your site in an incognito window.
Use the contact form to submit an inquiry with a specific subject and message. For example, subject “buying” with message “First-time buyer in Boise looking for a starter home under $400k.”
Switch back to the admin board and find the new lead in the NEW column.
Open the lead and check the Assigned Agent field.

For the example test inquiry, with the configuration above, the assignment should go to Ryan (first-time buyer match) — or to whichever agent is next in the round-robin rotation among the top semantic matches.

Re-run the test with different inquiry types (a “selling” subject, a “relocation” message) and watch the assignments distribute as expected.

Step 7 — document the decision for your team

Routing is invisible until it breaks. Add a short note to your team’s internal documentation or the brokerage’s onboarding doc:

Which routing mode is in effect.
What the fallback is.
How an agent toggles themselves out for vacation (the Lead Recipient toggle on their profile).
Who to ask when a routing decision looks wrong (you, or whoever owns the configuration).

Two months from now, someone will ask “why did Ryan get that lead?” and the note will save you a conversation.

What you’ve done

You’ve picked a routing mode aligned to how your team actually works, configured the eligible pool and fallback behavior, populated match criteria on each agent, and verified the end-to-end behavior with a test inquiry. The configuration is in place; it doesn’t need attention again unless your team composition or strategy changes.

When to revisit the routing decision

You added an agent and their lead share looks wrong → check Lead Recipient + match criteria.
A specific agent is getting too many leads → check whether they’re set as primary AND lead-recipient (primary mode beats round-robin if mode is set to primary_only).
Leads are landing unassigned regularly → fallback is set to unassigned; consider switching to primary_agent.
Inquiry types stopped mapping cleanly to agents → re-examine match criteria; specialties may have shifted.

Where to go next

If you want to…	Read…
Compare the five routing modes side by side	Routing modes reference
Manually reassign a lead after routing	Reassign a lead
Read pipeline health to see whether routing is working	Interpret the lifecycle dashboard