How Pippin Reads and Scores a Lead

Summary

Overview: Every time a customer writes, Pippin reads the conversation, fills in your lead attributes and the contact details, and scores the lead from 0 to 100 as hot, warm or cold. This guide explains how the score is worked out and where you change what counts.

Prerequisites:

• At least one channel is connected, so leads come in.
• For a score: at least one enabled attribute with an Importance value under Settings › AI Studio › Attributes. See How to Set Up Lead Scoring. (A lead who asks for a meeting or books one is Hot even without this.)

How Pippin Decides

1. What Pippin reads. On a lead's first message, Pippin reads that message and any photos the customer sent. On every later message, it reads the whole customer side of the conversation, so the score reflects everything the customer has said, not only the newest line. In email, quoted earlier replies and signatures are left out.
2. What Pippin fills in. For each enabled attribute, Pippin picks a value from the conversation, or leaves it empty when the customer has not said. For a Multiple Choice attribute it is told to pick one of your listed values, or leave it empty when unclear. It also looks for the contact's name and company.
3. Names and companies are filled once. Pippin only fills a name or company that is still blank or a placeholder (for example an email address, a phone number or Website visitor). It never overwrites a name that came from the sender or that your team typed, and it never uses your own business name or "Pippin" as the contact.
4. How the score is worked out. Only enabled attributes with an Importance value count. Pippin judges how well the conversation meets those criteria, giving more weight to higher importance. If that judgement is not available, Pippify works the score out from which weighted attributes have a value.
5. How the label is set. A score at or above your Hot ≥ threshold is hot. A score at or above Warm ≥ is warm. Anything lower is cold.
6. A meeting makes a lead Hot. When the customer clearly asks for a call, demo or meeting, or confirms they want one, the lead is Hot, whatever its attributes say. A confirmed booking through your connected calendar does the same. Only the customer's own words count: a question about how booking works, text quoted from an earlier email, or an automatic booking notice does not.
7. When the meeting rule stops. If the customer takes the request back, or cancels the booking, the score goes back to what the attributes give. Another booking that is still on keeps the lead Hot.
8. No weighted attributes, no score. If none of your enabled attributes has an Importance, the lead gets no score (it shows Not scored) unless a meeting makes it Hot. Pippify never scores against nothing.
9. Scores can go up or down. Because Pippin rereads the whole conversation each time, a lead that turns out to be a poor fit can cool down.
10. First message moves the stage. After reading a new lead's first message, Pippin moves it to Qualified, then writes its reply.
11. When Pippin stops reading. An archived lead is not re-scored. With Detect on close switched on, an attribute is read again when the lead is marked won or lost.

Limits

• Scoring works on every plan and on the free trial.
• The score never stops a reply. Pippin replies to cold leads too.
• Phone calls are scored live during the call by the AI voice agent, and a meeting asked for during a call is not counted by the meeting rule. See How the AI Voice Agent Scores Callers.
• Whether an email came from a real person is decided before the lead exists, not by the score. See What Happens When a New Email Arrives.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: See a lead's score and attributes

1. Open Inbox and click a conversation.
2. In the lead details panel, find the Pipeline section. If the panel is hidden, click the info icon (Show lead details) at the top of the conversation. It shows the score as N / 100 with the hot, warm or cold label. A dash (—) means the lead has no score.
3. Find the Qualification section. It lists the values Pippin filled in.
4. For more detail, click View Full Lead. On the Overview tab, the Lead Score card shows the score (or Not scored and a dash), ticks each attribute Pippin found a value that meets, and, when a meeting made the lead Hot, says Hot because the customer asked for a meeting. or Hot because the customer booked a meeting. See How to Read a Lead's Profile.

Step 2 (Admin): Choose what counts toward the score

1. Go to Settings › AI Studio and open the Attributes tab.
2. Click an attribute to edit it, or click New attribute.
3. Enter an Importance from 1 to 100. Leave it empty (Not scored) to collect the value without scoring it.
4. Keep Enabled on. Turn Detect on close on to read the value again when the lead is won or lost.
5. Click Save Changes (or Add Attribute for a new one).

Step 3 (Admin): Set the hot and warm thresholds

1. On the Attributes tab, find the Lead Scoring strip.
2. Enter Hot ≥ and Warm ≥. Hot must be higher than warm.
3. Click Save thresholds.

Step 4 (Admin): Test it

1. In Settings › AI Studio, click Test Pippin and send a sample customer message in Customer view.
2. Open Event log to check which attributes Pippin picked up. See How to Test Pippin Before Going Live.

Verify It Worked

Success criteria:

• New leads show a score and a hot, warm or cold label in the Pipeline section.
• The Qualification section shows the values the customer gave.
• After the customer sends more detail, the score updates.

Troubleshooting

Common errors

• "Hot threshold must be greater than warm.": the hot value is the same as or lower than the warm value. Fix: raise Hot ≥ or lower Warm ≥, then click Save thresholds.
• The score shows — or Not scored: no enabled attribute has an Importance. Fix: add an Importance to at least one attribute.
• A lead is Hot although few attributes are filled in: the customer asked for a meeting or booked one. The Lead Score card on the lead's page says which. No fix needed.
• An attribute stays empty: the customer has not mentioned it yet, or the attribute is switched off. Fix: check Enabled, and make the attribute's description clear about what to look for.

Limitations & considerations

• Changing attributes or thresholds affects the next message each lead sends. Existing scores are not recalculated straight away.
• The contact name Pippin fills in can be corrected by hand. See How to Edit a Lead or Change Its Stage.

Next Steps & Related Resources

• Next steps:
  • How to Set Up Lead Scoring
  • How to Set Hot and Warm Thresholds
• Related articles:
  • How Pippify Builds Scoring Attributes and Guidance Rules
  • How to Read a Lead's Profile
  • How the AI Voice Agent Scores Callers
  • What Happens When a New Email Arrives
  • How to Test Pippin Before Going Live

Need more help? For more information and assistance, please send an email to support@pippify.ai.

Last Updated: 10/19/2026