All cases Sales · Agency

AI Lead Capture & Follow-Up Assistant

OpenClaw ChatGPT via oAuth Google Sheets Telegram
0 lost leads
<30s from inquiry to CRM entry
auto follow-up without human input

The problem

A small digital agency was getting leads from three channels: a website form, a Telegram chat, and email. The classic problem — leads were falling through the cracks. The sales manager couldn't keep up: someone would write at 11 PM, someone else on Sunday, and by Monday morning half of them were forgotten.

The owner did the math: even one lost lead per week meant roughly $200–400 in missed revenue. Over a month, that's a salary. He needed a system that catches every single inquiry, scores it, and makes sure no follow-up gets missed.

What I built

Deployed OpenClaw on a Hetzner VPS and configured a full lead processing pipeline:

1. Multi-channel lead capture

The agent monitors a Telegram bot that receives form submissions from the website and direct messages. Every new inquiry hits the agent instantly — no delays, no human needed to copy-paste anything.

2. Automatic scoring: Hot / Warm / Cold

The agent reads the inquiry text and classifies the lead based on intent signals:

  • Hot — specific request with budget or deadline ("need a landing page by end of month, budget $1500")
  • Warm — genuine interest but vague ("how much does SMM cost?")
  • Cold — general question, browsing, or irrelevant

The scoring prompt was tuned over ~50 test messages to get accuracy above 90%. Edge cases default to Warm so nothing important slips through.

3. Google Sheets as lightweight CRM

Every lead lands in a shared spreadsheet via a skill: name, contact, channel, timestamp, score, original message. The team didn't want to learn a new CRM — Sheets was already open every day. Simple wins.

4. Smart follow-up reminders

The agent tracks response status and nudges via Telegram:

  • Hot leads — reminder in 4 hours if no response
  • Warm leads — reminder next day
  • Cold leads — gentle ping after 3 days

Example message: "Follow-up needed: Alex, warm lead from Telegram, asked about targeting services. Wrote 2 days ago, no reply yet."

5. Daily summary at 7 PM

Every evening the owner gets a Telegram digest: new leads today, breakdown by score, who needs follow-up tomorrow, overall pipeline health. Takes 30 seconds to read instead of digging through spreadsheets.

Result

Zero lost leads since launch. The owner sees the full picture every evening and knows exactly who to message first thing in the morning. Admin time dropped from ~1 hour/day to 5 minutes — just read the summary and act. After the first month, the agency reported higher lead-to-client conversion simply because they started responding faster.

Stack

  • VPS: Hetzner CX11 (Ubuntu 22.04, 1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM) — ~$4/mo
  • OpenClaw + Telegram Gateway
  • ChatGPT (GPT-4o) via oAuth
  • Google Sheets as CRM (via skill)
  • Cron: follow-up check every 4h + daily summary at 7 PM

Setup time

5 hours — agent config, Sheets integration, scoring logic, follow-up templates, and testing with real past inquiries.

Losing leads?

I'll set up an agent that captures every inquiry, scores it, and reminds you to follow up.

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