How to Use respond.io to Qualify and Route Chat Leads

The short answer: a sales team of up to 10 that answers WhatsApp and Instagram leads by hand can give the first questions to an AI agent on respond.io's Growth plan, $199 a month on monthly billing at 1,000 monthly active contacts, which is the first plan with AI Agents, Workflows and the HubSpot integration (pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026). The steps: connect the WhatsApp number and the Meta ad account, define lifecycle stages, sync HubSpot, build a sales agent from the template, review and test it, route qualified leads with a workflow, send the lead event back to Meta, then compare respond.io's counts with Ads Manager's.

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The job: leads arrive in WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger at all hours, and whoever is free answers the same five questions before a real conversation starts. The agent asks those questions, writes the answers to the contact, moves the lifecycle stage and hands the lead to a rep with the context already in the thread. What the product is and costs is in the respond.io glossary entry.

Before you build:

1. The seats. Growth includes 10 users and each extra one costs $20 a month. For example, a team of 12 adds 2 x $20 = $40, so the plan is $199 + $40 = $239 a month at the 1,000-contact tier, using the pricing page.
2. The stage names you already use. If HubSpot calls a stage "Sales qualified lead", use the same name in respond.io; the HubSpot article says lifecycle values must match between the two systems to sync.
3. Last month's numbers. From HubSpot, count the leads that came from chat and how many reached a deal. That pair is the baseline every later week is compared with.

What you need

• A Meta Business Manager where you are an admin, with a public business website in its business info, per the WhatsApp quick start.
• Owner or Manager access in respond.io and admin access in HubSpot.
• A written list of what a qualified lead looks like: budget, timing, location, product.

Step 1: Connect the WhatsApp number

Go to Workspace Settings, Channels, Add Channel, and connect the WhatsApp Business Platform (API) card through the Facebook sign-in. A number already registered in the WhatsApp app has to have that account deleted first. Set the WhatsApp account's currency to USD; the quick start warns that another currency causes problems with business-initiated messages even when credit is available.

Step 2: Connect the Meta ad account

Under Settings, Integrations, Meta Business accounts, click Manage, then Add account, per the Meta integration article. From then on, a conversation started by a click-to-chat ad shows a contact event with the ad name and click time, which the workflow in step 6 can read.

Step 3: Define the lifecycle

In Workspace settings, Lifecycle, keep or rename the four default stages, New Lead, Hot Lead, Payment and Customer, and add lost stages such as Cold Lead, per the lifecycle article. Twenty stages is the maximum. Set New Lead as the default so every new contact starts somewhere.

Step 4: Sync HubSpot

Under Workspace settings, Integrations, Browse, open HubSpot and click Connect. Map the fields sales reads, plus Lifecycle Stage. HubSpot is the source of truth for mapped fields, matching runs on email or phone, and contacts that already existed in HubSpot are not backfilled.

Step 5: Build and test the sales agent

This is the agent step. In the Inbox, click Create AI Agent and choose the Sales Agent template, per the AI agent guide. Edit the instructions to ask your qualifying questions one at a time, add your price list and FAQ as knowledge sources, and switch on three AI skills: Update Contact fields to store the answers, Update Lifecycle stage to mark a fit as Hot Lead, and Assign to agent or team for anyone who asks for a person. Type @ in the instructions to name that team.

Then check its work before any customer meets it. Click Review, which flags invalid references and conflicting instructions, and apply the fixes. Open the Chat tab and play three leads: a perfect fit, a time-waster and someone asking for a human. The testing article says test chats touch no real contacts, but workflows and follow-ups do not run there and team assignment is approximate, so test routing again on a live conversation with a colleague's phone. Publish only after that. A rep can take any conversation over from the composer, and the agent stays silent in it until reassigned.

Step 6: Give new chats to the agent

Create a workflow with the Conversation Opened trigger, per the triggers article; its sources include conversations opened from an ad, so you can start with ad traffic only. Add one Assign To step that gives the conversation to the AI agent.

Step 7: Hand qualified leads to a rep, and tell Meta

Create a second workflow with the Lifecycle Updated trigger and a Branch step that continues only when the new stage is Hot Lead. Add an Assign To step for the sales team with round-robin or fewest open contacts, online users only, and a timeout branch, because without one a contact who is never assigned leaves the workflow. Follow it with a Send a Message step so the customer knows who is taking over, then a Send Conversions API Event step that sends Meta a Lead event, per the Meta integration article. A Purchase event belongs on the Customer stage. That puts qualified leads, not only conversations, into Meta's event data.

What the help centre warns about

• Saving edits a live agent. On a published agent, Save changes the live version directly, with no draft to fall back on.
• The wrong number in the ad. Leads route to whatever number is the ad's messaging destination, so check it in Ads Manager and the Page settings.
• HubSpot overrides. Clearing a value in HubSpot clears it in respond.io, and changing the HubSpot owner reassigns the contact even when the AI agent holds it.
• Agents are not instant. Replies usually take 10 to 15 seconds, sometimes more than 20, per the AI agent guide.

Check the counts before trusting the agent

Run the agent for two weeks and compare: chat leads that reached a deal in HubSpot, against the baseline. Expect Ads Manager to report more ad-started conversations than respond.io does; the Meta integration article says respond.io sees only the attributions Meta's API sends, while Ads Manager also counts clicks that never became a message and view-based conversions. The free check is a holdout: pause one ad set for two weeks and see whether chat deals from that audience fall.

Mind what the trial is testing. The seven-day trial runs on Growth's features, so the agent and the routing workflows you build in it are exactly what the $99 Starter plan leaves out, and the setup that convinced you in week one is priced at $199 a month.

Later, if you want the question of which ads add sales answered continuously rather than by a manual holdout, a causal attribution tool like Causality Engine does it. Disclosure: I founded it.

FAQ

Does the AI agent cost extra?

Not on Growth and above, where AI usage is included under a fair-use policy and drawn from AI credits that grow with the contact tier; past the allowance, credits cost $15 per 1,000, capped at twice the allowance, per the pricing page.

What do the agent's WhatsApp replies cost?

Replies inside the 24-hour window are service messages. Since 1 October 2026 Meta charges them after the first 1,000 a month per business number, $0.05 each to a Dutch number on its USD rate card (Meta pricing), and respond.io adds no fee on top, per its pricing calculator. Conversations started from a click-to-WhatsApp ad stay free for 72 hours.

Can I manage the agent from Claude or ChatGPT?

Yes. The hosted MCP server can list, create, update and switch AI agents on or off for one workspace, within your user role, and the pricing table lists it on every plan. Its prompt enhancement returns a suggestion only; the agent keeps its prompt until you apply the change.