If you’re running a sales team and using live chat, you already know the pain: leads come in, and somehow the best ones get stuck in limbo or routed to the wrong rep. That’s where setting up real time chat routing in Qualified comes in. If you want to actually connect your reps with hot prospects—fast—this guide is for you.
Forget generic advice and vague promises. I’ll walk you through exactly how to get your chat routing working in Qualified, what to watch out for, and why some “best practices” aren’t always so smart. Let’s get your team talking to the right people, right away.
Why Chat Routing Matters (and Where It Can Go Wrong)
Before we dive into the setup, let’s be honest: chat routing can either make your sales team’s life way easier, or create a mess where good leads slip through the cracks.
Done right: - Hot leads go straight to the right rep (think: territory, account owner, product specialist). - No one’s fighting over chats that don’t matter. - Faster responses = happier prospects.
Done wrong: - Leads bounce around, get cold, or never hear from you. - Your best reps waste time with mismatched prospects. - Everyone gets frustrated—customers and your team.
Qualified gives you a lot of flexibility, but that also means you can overthink it. The best routing setups are simple, clear, and easy to maintain. Don’t try to solve every edge case on day one.
Step 1: Map Out Your Sales Routing Logic Before You Touch Qualified
Don’t skip this. The number one mistake? Jumping into the platform and clicking around before you’ve actually mapped out who should get what.
Ask yourself: - Who should talk to which leads? (By territory, product, company size, etc.) - Do you have dedicated reps for key accounts? - What happens if someone is offline or busy? - Do you want to prioritize certain types of leads (like demo requests or target accounts)?
Pro tip: Draw this out on paper or in a doc. If you can’t explain your routing rules to a new hire in five minutes, it’s too complicated.
Step 2: Set Up Teams, Users, and Calendars in Qualified
Qualified routes chats to people, not robots. That means you need to make sure your sales team is set up inside the platform.
- Add all your reps as users
- Go to Settings > Team.
- Invite every sales rep who’ll handle chats.
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Make sure their profiles are complete (including working hours and calendar integration).
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Organize reps into Teams if needed
- If you route by territory, product line, or function, set up Teams to match.
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You can always tweak this later, but start simple.
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Connect calendars
- If you want to route meetings (not just chats), integrate everyone’s calendar (Google or Outlook).
- This lets Qualified check who’s available for real-time handoffs or bookings.
Pitfall to avoid: Don’t set up phantom users or unused Teams “just in case.” It clutters things and confuses routing.
Step 3: Define Your Routing Rules
This is the heart of Qualified’s chat routing—and where most people overcomplicate things.
Find Routing in Qualified
- Go to Experiences > Routing Rules.
- You’ll see a list of existing routing rules (if any).
- Click Create Rule or edit an existing one.
Decide How You Want to Route
Here’s what actually works:
- By Account Owner: Route chats to the rep who owns the account in Salesforce.
- By Territory or Team: Route based on lead geography or market segment.
- By Lead Score or Type: Send high-value leads straight to senior reps.
- Round Robin: Distribute chats evenly among a group.
Be careful with too many layers. If you combine all of these at once, you’ll end up with rules that are impossible to troubleshoot.
Set Up the Rule
- Choose the trigger:
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Example: “When a visitor matches X criteria (like company size, location, or visiting a pricing page)…”
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Choose the routing logic:
- Account Owner: Connect your Salesforce instance, and pick “Route to Account Owner.”
- Team or User: Select the Team or specific users.
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Round Robin: Qualified will handle the distribution for you.
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Fallbacks:
- What if the main rep is offline? Set a fallback team or user.
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Don’t leave this blank—otherwise, chats will get lost.
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Priority order:
- If you have multiple rules, order them from most specific to most general.
- Example: “Target Accounts > Enterprise Leads > Everyone Else.”
Honest take: The more specific your rules, the harder they are to maintain. Resist the urge to make a rule for every possible scenario. Start broad, then fine-tune.
Step 4: Test Your Routing—Don’t Assume It Works
This step gets skipped all the time, and it’s why routing breaks.
- Create test leads in your CRM that match your routing criteria.
- Open an incognito browser (so you look like a new visitor).
- Trigger the chat, and see where it lands.
- Try with reps online and offline.
- Test fallbacks (what happens if the main rep is busy?).
Pro tip: Have your reps pretend to be prospects and run through a few scenarios. You’ll catch weird edge cases before your customers do.
Step 5: Monitor and Adjust
Once you go live, don’t set it and forget it.
- Check chat transcripts: Are the right reps getting the right leads?
- Ask your team: Are they getting overwhelmed, or are leads going to the wrong place?
- Watch for missed chats or slow responses—these usually mean routing isn’t matching your real-world workflow.
- Tweak your rules as you learn. Remove rules that aren’t pulling their weight.
What to ignore: Endless tweaks to cover every scenario. You’ll just end up with a brittle system no one understands.
Step 6: Keep It Simple (Seriously)
If you’re tempted to add a rule for every single sales rep or lead type, take a step back. Most teams get the best results by:
- Routing hot leads to account owners first.
- Using round robin for general inbound chats.
- Having one clear fallback for when folks are offline.
- Reviewing and updating rules every quarter—not every week.
If you’re spending hours tweaking routing, you’re probably overdoing it. Focus on speed and clarity.
Common Routing Traps (and How to Dodge Them)
1. Sales reps not online = missed chats
Remind your team to set their status. If they’re never online in Qualified, no amount of routing will help.
2. Overlapping rules
If two rules could match the same visitor, Qualified will follow the one higher in the list. Be explicit about rule order.
3. Unused Teams and users
Delete or archive old Teams and users. Otherwise, chats might route to nowhere.
4. Ignoring fallback logic
Always set a fallback user or team. Otherwise, hot leads can fall through the cracks when someone’s on vacation.
5. Letting it get too complex
If you need a whiteboard and a PhD to explain your routing, it’s time to simplify.
Wrapping Up
Chat routing in Qualified isn’t magic, but it’s powerful if you keep it simple. Start with clear logic, build your rules around your actual sales process, and test everything. Don’t get seduced by every shiny new routing option—what matters is that the right rep talks to the right prospect, fast.
Iterate over time. Your team and your prospects will thank you. And if something breaks? It’s probably because you made it more complicated than it needs to be. Keep it simple, check your assumptions, and you’ll be fine.