Leads and contacts: follow up with customers

BaTimo keeps one record for each customer. A record is either a contact (you know who they are) or a lead (they asked to buy something). This page explains the difference and how to follow up leads.

Contacts and leadsCopy Anchor Link

• Contact: a customer whose details are saved, such as a name, a phone number or an email. Partial details are kept: a name alone or a phone number alone is enough. A WhatsApp customer's number and the name shown on their profile can be saved this way.
• Lead: a contact who made a clear sales request: asked for a quote, wanted to buy, asked for a consultation, wanted to book, or completed a lead request. A teammate can also convert a contact to a lead.

A greeting, a name, a phone number, a message your business sent first, or a link the assistant shared does not make someone a lead. Instagram customers can be leads without sharing a phone number or email; you follow up in the same Instagram chat.

Contact details are the same everywhere. The name, email and phone you see in the Inbox and in Leads come from one record, so a correction shows up in both places. Details nobody gave stay empty.

Only leads count as leads: the Leads list, unread lead counts, New Lead notifications and New Lead webhooks ignore contacts. When a contact becomes a lead, you get the New Lead notification at that moment.

Open itCopy Anchor Link

• Web: sidebar > Leads. Switch between Leads and Contacts at the top.
• Mobile: Leads tab. Switch between Leads and Contacts with the chips under the title.

Contacts lists every saved customer, including leads, each marked Contact or Lead. Search by name, email or phone. On the web, Hide leads shows contacts only.

Filter leadsCopy Anchor Link

Leads have filters that work across all pages of results:

Follow-up due shows open leads whose follow-up time has passed. Leads marked Won or Lost are never due.

The list also shows each lead's stage, owner and follow-up time. Read and Unread are separate from the stage: opening a lead marks it read.

Work on a leadCopy Anchor Link

Select a lead (web) or tap it (mobile) to open its page. You can:

• Edit details: name, email and phone.
• See where it came from: Source (for example AI assistant or Added by a teammate) and Why this is a lead.
• Set the stage: New, In progress, Qualified, Won or Lost.
• Assign an owner: any teammate in your business.
• Plan a follow-up: a date and time in your own time zone, plus a short Follow-up note. On mobile, choose a quick option (In 3 hours, Tomorrow 9:00, In 3 days, Next week) or type the time as YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm.
• Add internal notes: only your team sees them. Notes are never sent to the customer and never shown to the AI assistant.
• Read the timeline: when the record became a lead and why, every stage, owner and follow-up change, and every note, with who did it and when. Use Load more for older entries.
• Open conversations: a customer can have several conversations; the page lists the linked ones.

When the assistant later saves new details for the customer, it updates the name, email or phone but never changes the stage, owner or follow-up you set.

Convert a contact to a leadCopy Anchor Link

1. Open the contact from Contacts, or open their conversation in the Inbox.
2. Choose Convert to lead.
3. Write what the customer asked for, for example "Asked for a quote for 20 chairs". A reason is required.
4. Confirm. The reason is shown as Why this is a lead and on the timeline.

Remove from leads or delete a contactCopy Anchor Link

• Remove from leads (web and mobile) takes the person off the Leads list. They stay as a contact with their details, conversations and bookings.
• Delete contact (web and mobile, on the contact's page) permanently deletes the saved details, extra fields, notes and timeline. Conversations are kept. You can't delete a contact that has bookings or orders.
• Deleting a conversation keeps the customer's record and sales stage.

Get notifiedCopy Anchor Link

BaTimo can notify you of every new lead. See Notifications. You can also send new leads to your own systems with webhooks (events New Lead and Lead Updated).

TipsCopy Anchor Link

• Decide which details matter and set them in Collect lead information.
• Use Follow-up due with Assigned to me as your daily list.
• Move a lead to Won or Lost when it is finished so it stops showing as due.

TroubleshootingCopy Anchor Link

• A customer is in Contacts but not in Leads: they shared details but didn't make a sales request yet. Use Convert to lead if they did.
• No leads yet: connect a channel first, then start a test conversation and ask for a quote. On mobile the empty screen offers Connect a channel.
• "Delete contact" fails: the contact has bookings or orders. Keep the contact, or remove it from Leads instead.

LimitationsCopy Anchor Link

• Customers are matched automatically only by their channel identity, such as the same WhatsApp number or the same Instagram account. BaTimo doesn't merge two records because they share a name or an email the customer typed.
• There is no board (Kanban) view.
• Leads saved before contacts were added stay leads, including some that only have a phone number.