Run a click-to-WhatsApp ad for a weekend and you'll see the problem on Monday morning: 100 new chats. Some are people ready to buy. Many are a single "hi", a thumbs-up, or someone who never answers your first question. Your sales team has a few hours, and every minute spent on a dead chat is a minute a real buyer waits.
Good WhatsApp lead management means your team calls the best leads first and stops spending time on junk. This guide explains how Mywa scores every WhatsApp conversation, what the hot, warm, cold and junk labels mean, and how to use them to run your sales day.
Why not every WhatsApp enquiry deserves equal attention
Click-to-WhatsApp ads make it easy to start a chat, and that's the point. But anything that easy also attracts people who are curious, bored or tapped by accident. Most inboxes treat all of them the same: newest on top. That leaves your salespeople guessing, and they usually guess by scrolling.
A lead score answers one question for anyone scanning the inbox: is this person worth calling right now?
Where your WhatsApp leads come from
Mywa records how every conversation started, because the source says a lot about intent:
- Facebook or Instagram ads: someone tapped your click-to-WhatsApp ad. They're responding to something you're selling right now.
- Campaigns: someone replied to a WhatsApp campaign you sent.
- Direct messages: someone found your number, link or QR code and wrote in.
- Added by you: contacts you imported or created by hand.
Source is only one part of the score, though. A direct message that asks a detailed question beats an ad lead who said "hi" and left.
How WhatsApp lead scoring works in Mywa
Every conversation gets a score out of 100, updated as the chat goes on. It's built from things that, in practice, separate real buyers from passers-by:
| Signal | What raises it | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Replies | They keep the conversation going: more messages from them | Highest |
| Detail | Longer, substantial messages, not one-word answers | High |
| Response speed | They reply within minutes, not days | High |
| Buying signals | Questions, and words like price, quote, booking, delivery, EMI, kitna or कीमत | Medium |
| Source | Came from your ad or replied to a campaign | Medium |
| Talked to the team | A real back-and-forth with one of your agents | Medium |
| Recency | Active today rather than last week | Medium |
| Shared something | Sent a photo or document, or tapped a button | Low |
Buying signals are detected in English, Hindi and Gujarati, so a customer asking "kitne ka hai?" counts the same as one asking "what's the price?".
The four lead buckets: hot, warm, cold and junk
The score puts every conversation into one of four bands:
| Band | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Hot | Engaged, quick to reply, asking buying questions | Call or reply now, and assign to sales immediately |
| Warm | Interested but not ready yet | Follow up with something useful: a catalogue, a demo, an offer |
| Cold | Little engagement so far | Nurture or re-engage later, perhaps with a campaign |
| Junk | No real conversation, or they opted out | Don't spend sales time here |
What makes a lead junk
Mywa runs a junk check before scoring. If any of these is true, the score is capped low and the chat is marked junk, however good it looks otherwise:
- Only a greeting. "Hi", "hello" or "namaste" and nothing else. Mywa waits a day before calling this junk, so a new chat gets a fair chance.
- Only an emoji or a sticker.
- Never answered our question. Your automation asked something and got no reply.
- The same one-word message, repeated.
- Unsubscribed. They replied STOP or opted out.
Every score is explained, and you can override it
A score your team doesn't trust is useless, so nothing is hidden. Open Why this score? on any conversation to see each signal, the points it added and the reason, for example "replies within minutes" or "asked about price twice".
Your team also knows things a formula can't. If a salesperson spoke to the customer on the phone and knows they're ready, they can override the score by hand. Automations can set it too, for example raising the score of anyone who taps I want to buy.
Using lead scores in the team inbox
Scores matter because they change how your team works through the inbox:
- Best first. Sort the inbox by score instead of time, so the hottest conversations are always at the top.
- Filter by band. Show only hot and warm leads during a sales sprint, or only cold ones for a re-engagement push.
- Leads only. Hide support chats and show only the conversations marked as leads, whether your team or an automation marked them.
- Context next to the chat. Tags, lead status and past conversations sit beside the messages, so whoever picks up a lead knows the story.
Hot-lead alerts: act while they're interested
A hot lead an hour later is often a warm lead. Mywa automations can start when a conversation's lead quality changes, so you can set up a rule like:
When a conversation becomes hot → assign it to the next salesperson → alert them: "Hot lead: {{name}}".
Alerts appear in the app and as browser push notifications, so the salesperson sees them without watching the inbox. For the full set of qualification and follow-up workflows, see our guide to WhatsApp automation for business.
Better leads from your ads, not just better sorting
Scoring helps your team handle leads well. It's even better when it improves the leads you get in the first place.
Meta optimises your click-to-WhatsApp ads for whatever you tell it is valuable. By default, that's a tap, which is how ad campaigns fill up with "hi"s. If you connect Meta's Conversions API, Mywa can report the leads your team or automation qualified back to Meta. Meta learns what a real customer looks like and shows your ads to more people like them.
Example: 100 enquiries from a weekend property ad
This is an illustration of how the bands play out, not a real customer's data.
A real-estate agency runs a click-to-WhatsApp ad for a new project over a weekend. On Monday at 9 am there are 100 conversations:
- About a dozen are hot. They asked about carpet area, price and site visits, replied within minutes and sent their budget. The team calls these first, before 10 am.
- Around 25 are warm. They asked one question and went quiet. They get the brochure and a site-visit slot, then an automatic follow-up the next day.
- Around 20 are cold. Little back-and-forth. They go on a list for next month's launch campaign.
- The rest are junk: a lone "hi", an emoji, no answer to the qualifying question. Nobody spends time on them.
Without scores, a salesperson works top to bottom and might reach the hottest lead after lunch. With scores, they reach it in the first ten minutes.
Getting started with WhatsApp lead management
- Connect your WhatsApp number to Mywa and invite your sales team. Up to 5 team members are included.
- Turn on an ad-lead qualifier automation so every lead gets asked one good question. Their answer feeds the score.
- Sort the inbox by Best first and agree a simple rule with your team: hot chats get a reply or a call first.
- Add a hot-lead alert, so nobody has to watch the inbox to catch a hot lead.
- Connect Meta's Conversions API if you run click-to-WhatsApp ads, so qualified leads improve your targeting.
Lead scoring is included in Mywa at ₹999/month, with Meta's message rates passed on at zero markup. Want to see every WhatsApp lead ranked by buying intent? Try the live demo with sample data, or start in 5 minutes.