01 · Flagship automation
AI Lead Qualification & CRM AutomationEvery lead qualified, routed and answered before anyone opens the CRM.
200+ inbound leads a week, qualified by AI, routed by priority and synced to the CRM. Manual review dropped from 20 hours a week to 3, and first response from 4–6 hours to under 5 minutes.
- Client
- Service business (name withheld)
- Year
- 2026
- Status
- Live in production
- Role
- Automation engineer
- 1Webhook intake from web forms
- 2AI agent returns typed score + priority
- 3Router splits high / medium / low
- 4Single CRM upsert, then analytics log
- Inbound leads processed per week
- 200+
- Hours of manual review per week
- 20 → 3
- First response, down from 4–6 hours
- <5 min
01Problem
A service business was manually reviewing 200+ inbound leads every week. Initial qualification alone took three to four hours a day.
Each lead was typed into three separate systems (the CRM, the scheduling tool and the email platform), then routed to a sales rep by hand. Response times stretched to four to six hours, and data entry errors crept in at every hop.
02My role
Automation engineer, design through deployment
- Mapped the existing intake and qualification process
- Designed the workflow architecture and routing rules
- Built the AI qualification step with a typed output schema
- Integrated CRM, calendar, email and reporting
- Added logging and failure alerts for every run
03System architecture
A single n8n workflow replaces the manual chain. Business rules live in one configuration node, so thresholds and routing can change without touching the pipeline.
01 Intake
Lead data webhook
- Web forms (POST)
- Workflow configuration
- Contact enrichment APIs
02 Qualify
AI qualification agent
- OpenAI chat model
- Structured output parser
- Score + priority
03 Route
Route by priority
- High
- Medium
- Low
04 Act
Per-priority follow-up
- Calendar event (high)
- Tailored email sequence
- Rep assignment
05 Record
CRM sync & logging
- Create / update contact
- Analytics sheet log
- Failure notifications
04Implementation
01.1
Rules as configuration, not buried logic
Scoring thresholds, territories and routing rules sit in a dedicated configuration node at the top of the workflow. The business can retune qualification without anyone editing the pipeline itself.
01.2
Typed AI output the router can trust
The qualification agent returns a structured object (score, priority, reasoning) validated by an output parser. Downstream nodes branch on fields, never on free text.
01.3
Three paths, one write
High, medium and low priority leads each get their own payload and follow-up. High-priority leads get a calendar event created automatically. All three paths converge on a single create-or-update contact step, so the CRM never sees duplicates.
01.4
Observable by default
Every run is appended to an analytics sheet, and failed steps raise a notification instead of failing silently. The team can see what happened to any lead, and when.
05Outcome
- Manual lead review reduced from 20 hours a week to 3
- Lead response time improved from 4–6 hours to under 5 minutes
- Data entry errors across systems eliminated through automated syncing
- Sales team freed to focus on high-value conversations instead of admin
- n8n
- OpenAI
- GoHighLevel
- Webhooks
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Sheets
06Screens
Next step
Have a process that should be automated?
Tell me about the workflow that's slowing you down, the systems you need connected, or the application you want to build. We'll work out the right approach.