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A lead qualification bot answers the first message, finds out what someone wants, saves the answers onto the contact, and passes the strong ones to a human. DMLY ships two ready-made templates for this, and installing one is faster than building it node by node. Pick the one that matches what you have:

AI Lead Qualification bot

“An AI agent greets visitors, qualifies inbound leads, captures their details, tags hot leads, and hands strong prospects to a human.” Works on every channel. Needs a connected AI provider and the AI Agent on your plan.

Lead Qualification Flow

“Ask interest, budget and timeline, then route hot leads to sales and nurture the rest.” Fixed questions, no AI, nothing to connect. Predictable, and free of the plan gate.
The AI template is not self-sufficient. If no AI provider is connected, the AI Reply step does not error — it is skipped. The flow carries on to the end and writes a system note into the conversation (“AI step skipped — no AI provider is connected.”). The contact gets nothing back. Connect a provider before you publish.The AI Agent plan gate is skipped the same way, with its own note (“AI step skipped — your plan does not include the AI Agent.”). You won’t hit this on the way in — a plan without the AI Agent blocks the install outright. It only bites after a downgrade, so check the bot again after any plan change.

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Route A — the AI lead qualification bot

1

Connect an AI provider

Go to Integrations and connect one of the four providers the AI step supports: OpenAI, Claude (Anthropic), Google Gemini or DeepSeek. That is the whole list — nothing else can drive an AI Reply step.If the tile shows a Plan locked pill and an Upgrade button instead of Connect, the AI Agent isn’t on your plan. See Plans and Connect OpenAI.
2

Install the template

Create a new automation on the channel you want the bot to run on. The templates picker opens, already filtered to that channel’s platform — only templates that channel supports are shown. The AI bot carries a Popular badge and sits in the default Recommended section — look there, or search for it by name. Open the card and select Use this template.Installing creates a Draft automation seeded with the template’s flow and drops you straight onto the builder canvas. Nothing is live yet.An amber Setup required badge on the card means no AI provider is connected yet — and the button reads Install & set up instead. The template still installs; the step just won’t reply until you connect one. (The Requires AI chip is not a warning — it lists what the template needs, and stays on the card whether or not a provider is connected.)
3

Read the flow

The AI template is deliberately small: a trigger, one AI Reply node, and an End node. On the canvas the trigger reads User sends a message — installing rewrites the template’s generic trigger to the real one for your channel. It fires on every inbound message from a contact, not just their first; to change that, use the Only respond once per contact toggle on the trigger. All the behaviour lives inside the one node — there is no branching to wire up.
4

Write the prompt

Open the AI Reply node and go to the Prompt tab. System prompt / instructions is where you tell the AI what qualifying means for your business: what to ask, what counts as a hot lead, when to hand over.The prompt supports tokens — {{business_name}} resolves to your workspace name, and {{first_name}} to the contact’s first name. Be specific about your own qualifiers (“ask which treatment they want, roughly when, and whether they’ve visited before”) rather than leaving it generic.Also on this tab: Fallback message (on error / empty reply), which is what the contact receives if the AI fails or returns nothing, and Typing delay before reply (seconds).
5

Check the model settings

On Configuration, pick your Provider (only connected providers are listed) and a Model. The model field is free text with suggestions — you can type any model id your provider supports.Max tokens caps the length of a reply. Conversation history (messages) controls how much of the thread the AI sees each turn; qualification is a conversation, so don’t cut this down to a couple of messages.
6

Confirm the tools

Built-in Tools is what makes this a qualification bot rather than a chat toy. The template arrives with eight already ticked under CRM contact tools:Create the tags, stages and fields you name in the prompt first, so the AI has somewhere to put the answers — see Tags and segments, Pipeline stages and Custom fields. The full tool surface, including booking tools, is on AI agent tools.
7

Test it in the Playground

The Playground tab runs your configuration without sending a real message. Type a Test message, select Run, and you get back the Reply plus a Tool calls trace showing which tools the AI decided to use. Tool calls there run against demo data — no contact is touched and nothing lands in the Inbox.This is the fastest way to find a prompt that never bothers to hand over, or one that tags everyone as hot.
8

Publish

Publish from the builder. See Publishing bots.

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How the AI bot behaves in a real conversation

Because the node’s output leads to an End node, the AI Reply step is conversational: it replies, then waits for the contact’s next message and replies again. That’s what lets it ask a follow-up question. A conversation caps at 40 turns, after which the step moves on.Put a node after the AI step and it stops being conversational — it replies once and continues down the flow.
When the AI hands over to a human, the bot is paused for that contact and the AI step ends rather than parking for another turn. It can’t talk over your team.
If the AI errors or returns an empty reply, the contact receives your Fallback message (on error / empty reply) instead. The AI template ships with “Thanks {{first_name}}! A member of our team will follow up with you shortly.” unless you change it. The flow always continues.If the node’s chosen provider isn’t connected but another one is, it quietly uses the other one rather than failing.
Want the bot to answer product or pricing questions while it qualifies? Turn on Document search (File Search) on the Built-in Tools tab and select a vector store — but note it is offered on OpenAI and Google Gemini only. On Claude and DeepSeek the tab reads “Document search is not available for this provider.” The tool is also silently dropped if you switch it on without selecting a store. See Knowledge base.

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Route B — the fixed-question flow

Lead Qualification Flow asks the same three questions every time and branches on the answer. No AI provider, no plan gate, no surprises. The installed flow is eight nodes:
  1. Three question steps, asking interest, budget and timeline and saving each answer into a custom field of that name.
  2. A condition that checks the timeline answer against a keyword list: asap, urgent, this week, this month, now.
  3. A HOT branch with an Assign Conversation step, and a NURTURE branch that sends a follow-up message.
That keyword list is the whole of the bot’s judgement — edit it to match how your customers actually write. “Today”, “right away” and “before Friday” all fall into NURTURE until you add them.
As installed, the Assign Conversation step on the HOT branch assigns to nobody. The canvas summary reads “Assign to Sales”, but no team member is actually selected — and nothing warns you, on the canvas or at publish. Open the node and pick someone under Assign to, or hot leads route to the branch and sit there unassigned.
Both branches must stay connected. An unconnected condition branch is advisory on the canvas but blocks publish — see Common mistakes.

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Other qualification templates

Worth a look before you build anything by hand:

Welcome & qualify new chats

A WhatsApp quick automation — a welcome that qualifies in the same breath. No canvas.

Welcome & Qualify New Chats

The flow-builder one, near-identical in name. Uses interactive buttons, so it installs on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram only.

Lead qualification flow

Instagram. “Ask a question, branch on the answer, and tag the lead.”

Ask for phone number when missing

WhatsApp. Bolt onto the end of a qualification bot when the contact reached you without a number — see Request phone.

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Before it goes live

Publishing is blocked if another active automation on the same channel already replies to every message — both would answer. Give one a specific keyword, or pause the other. This is the most common thing that stops a lead qualification bot from publishing, because qualification bots are exactly the kind that answer everything.
You’ll see: “This automation uses an AI step, which your plan does not include. Upgrade your plan to use it, or remove the AI step.” Route B has no AI step and publishes fine.
A bot that is paused for that contact, a flow with no published version, or “only respond once per contact” having already fired will all silently do nothing. Start at Automation not triggering.

Flow builder

The canvas, nodes and ports in full.

AI agent tools

Every tool the AI step can act with.

Templates

The whole template library and how the picker filters it.

Common mistakes

Unconnected branches, fan-out, orphan nodes.