So you’re using Crisp for your B2B sales team, drowning in incoming leads, and you need a way to get them to the right person—without playing email ping-pong or copying things into spreadsheets. This guide is for sales leaders, sales ops folks, and anyone who’s tired of their team asking, “Hey, who owns this lead?”
Automated lead routing sounds fancy, but it’s just a way to make sure leads go to the right rep, fast (and ideally, fairly). Crisp can do this, but there are some gotchas and caveats. I’ll walk you through setting it up, what works well, what to skip, and how to avoid common headaches.
1. Get Clear on Your Lead Routing Rules
Before you touch a setting in Crisp, slow down and sketch out what you actually want. Most teams jump straight into tools and regret it later.
Ask yourself: - Who should get which leads? (By region, company size, industry, round robin, etc.) - Who shouldn’t get leads? (Product, support, or junior SDRs, for example) - Do you need to factor in vacations, out-of-office, or workload balancing? - How will you know if it’s working? (First reply time, conversion rates, rep complaints...)
Pro tip: Keep it simple. The more complicated your rules, the more things break when people leave, change roles, or forget to update the system.
2. Check Your Crisp Plan and Feature Access
Crisp’s automation features (like triggers, routing, and integrations) aren’t in every plan. If you’re on the free or basic plan, you’ll hit a wall quickly.
- Automated lead assignment requires the “Unlimited” or higher plan.
- If you want to use integrations (say, with your CRM or Zapier), make sure your plan supports them.
- Don’t burn hours setting up something only to find out it’s paywalled.
You can check your plan by going to Settings > Subscription inside Crisp.
3. Organize Your Team in Crisp
Before routing works, you need your team set up right in Crisp:
- Add all sales reps as “Operators” in Crisp (not just admins).
- Use teams or groups (like “Sales EMEA,” “Sales US”) if you want to route by region or specialty.
- Make sure everyone’s email and display name are clear—routing rules use these fields.
Skip: Don’t bother adding non-sales folks here; it just muddies the waters.
4. Set Up Your Lead Capture Channels
Automated routing is pointless if your leads aren’t coming into Crisp in a structured way.
- Live chat widget: Make sure it’s on your site and capturing key info (email, company, maybe a “What are you looking for?” dropdown).
- Contact forms: Use Crisp’s own forms or connect your website forms via integrations.
- Email and social: If you have leads coming in from email or Facebook Messenger, connect those to Crisp’s inbox.
- API or Zapier: For more advanced setups, you can pipe leads in from almost anywhere.
What to ignore: Don’t try to route leads from every possible channel right away. Get chat and forms working first, then add more.
5. Set Up Routing Rules Using Crisp’s Automation
Here’s where most people get tripped up. Crisp calls its automation “Triggers.” They’re pretty powerful but not always intuitive.
How to set up a basic lead routing trigger:
- Go to “Settings > Automation > Triggers.”
- Click “New Trigger.”
- Name your trigger clearly (e.g., “Route US Leads to Alice”).
- Set the trigger event. For most lead routing, pick events like:
- New chat started
- New message received
- New contact created
- Add conditions. This is where you define rules:
- If email contains “.co.uk”, assign to UK team
- If company size (from lead form) is “Enterprise”, assign to senior rep
- If chat started during business hours, use round robin
- Set the action: “Assign to operator/team.”
- Save and test with a real lead.
Don’t overthink it: Start with just a couple of rules and build up. If you try to do “if/then/else” spaghetti logic for every edge case, you’ll make a mess.
6. Handle Round Robin Assignment (If Needed)
B2B teams love to overcomplicate round robin assignment. Crisp doesn’t have a native “true” round robin, but you can fake it with some effort:
Option 1: Use Crisp’s built-in “Assign to random operator” action
- Not really round robin—more like random, but good enough for small teams.
Option 2: Use Zapier or Make.com for true round robin
- Connect Crisp to Zapier.
- Set up a Zap: When a new chat/contact comes in, assign based on a rotating list.
- This takes more work, and Zapier charges after a certain number of runs.
- Honestly, unless your team is huge, the “random” action is usually fine.
What not to waste time on: Building your own round robin system in Google Sheets or hacking together scripts. You’ll spend more time maintaining it than it’s worth.
7. Test Your Routing—Don’t Skip This
Everyone skips testing and regrets it. Run through every routing rule with test leads:
- Use incognito windows, fake emails, and different form responses.
- Make sure leads actually land in the right rep’s inbox.
- Check notifications—are reps getting pinged? Or are they missing leads?
Pro tip: Ask a rep to check their inbox and role-play the first reply. You’ll catch issues you never thought of.
8. Train Your Team (Briefly)
Don’t assume everyone knows how this works just because you set it up.
- Send a quick Slack or email explaining the new process, what to expect, and who to ask if things go sideways.
- Remind reps to check their notifications and mark leads as “handled” when done.
- If you’re using round robin, clarify what happens if someone’s out of office.
Don’t: Force everyone into a long training session. Just give them the basics.
9. Monitor and Tweak (But Don’t Obsess)
Automated routing isn’t “set it and forget it.” Every few weeks:
- Check if leads are getting stuck or ignored.
- Ask reps if the leads they get make sense.
- Watch your response times.
If you see patterns (like someone getting way more leads, or leads falling through the cracks), tweak your rules or team assignments.
What to skip: Don’t try to optimize for every tiny edge case. Focus on fixing the big, obvious problems first.
Honest Takes: What Works and What Doesn’t
- Works well: Simple routing by country, company size, or lead type. Assigning to teams or reps directly.
- Works “okay”: Random assignment for small teams. It’s not really fair, but close enough.
- Doesn’t work: Super complex, nested rules. You’ll lose track and nobody will understand it.
- Annoyances: Crisp’s automation UI isn’t perfect. It can be fiddly, and debugging rules isn’t as easy as it should be. Keep your rules simple so troubleshooting is fast.
Wrapping Up
Automated lead routing in Crisp isn’t magic, but it’ll save your team a ton of time if you keep it straightforward. Start with just the basics—get leads to the right people, test that it works, and don’t try to automate every possible scenario. Your sales team will thank you, and you’ll spend less time untangling weird edge cases. Keep it simple, review it every so often, and tweak as you grow.