Enquiries from your website
Where a website enquiry lands, and what happens when it may be someone you already know.
When someone fills in the contact form on a website CLEO looks after, the enquiry doesn't sit in an inbox waiting to be retyped. It arrives in CLEO as a customer record, with their words attached, within seconds.
What arrives
What the visitor typed — their name, their email or phone, and their message — plus the quiet details a form knows: which page they were on, and, if they arrived through a campaign link, what brought them.
CLEO refuses anything it can't trust. An enquiry with neither an email nor a phone number isn't recorded, and the same enquiry delivered twice is recorded once.
Where it lands
CLEO asks one question of what the visitor typed: could this be someone I already have? It looks for the same email address first and, if there is none, the same phone number. Archived customers are never matched.
| What CLEO finds | What happens |
|---|---|
| Nobody with that email or phone | A new lead is created from what they typed |
| One customer with that email or phone | A new lead is created, marked as possibly being that customer. CLEO asks you whether it is |
| More than one | A new lead — CLEO never guesses between two records |
The one exception is a second message from the same visit to your site, with the same email or phone as the first. It is added to the record the first message created, and its History entry reads Website enquiry received again
.
When it may be someone you know
The new lead is marked Unconfirmed, with a line naming who it might be — may be Priya Nair — unconfirmed — on the Leads list, on its record, and under While you were away on Home. Its History says Could be someone you know
, and why: the same email address or phone number was used, and nobody verified it.
CLEO then asks you once, as one of the things it notices: Someone using Priya Nair's email address came through your website as "P. Nair" — the same person? The question sits on Home under Quick answers, on Attention, and on the visitor's own record under CLEO noticed. Priya's own customer record mentions it too, with a link to decide on the visitor's record.
- Same person — merge moves what the visitor did onto the existing record: the enquiry, anything else they sent, their History and any note you wrote on them. The visitor's separate record then goes. The existing record's own details are not changed. Its History gains one entry,
Merged a record into this one
, listing what moved and the email or phone the visitor gave,kept as what they said, not written onto this record.
- Not them — keep separate leaves the visitor as an ordinary lead of their own. Their History records
Kept as a separate record
.
Until you answer, nothing on the existing customer's record changes. You can leave the question as long as you like.
On Attention today, the question can only be answered with Not them — keep separate. To merge, answer it on Home or on the visitor's record.
Their words
What the visitor wrote becomes the new lead's Summary — the short answer to "what do they want?" that you see on their record from then on.
Your existing customers' summaries are never touched. If you merge, the visitor's words travel with their enquiry into the existing record's History. They don't replace anything you wrote.
What History records
On the visitor's record, one entry headed Website enquiry received
.
The line beneath says which website it came from, what they're asking about, and the campaign if there was one. Everything else the form knew is kept with the entry, so you can look back later and see which page the person was reading when they decided to get in touch.
A new lead also gets a Source line saying where the record came from. Today that line is written the way CLEO stores it rather than as a plain sentence — it's a note of origin, not something you need to tidy up.
What an enquiry does not do
It doesn't create a task. CLEO doesn't invent an action item or a follow-up for you.
What it does instead:
- Needs you lists the new lead as waiting to hear from you, like any new lead —
Just arrived.
at first, thenNo one has responded yet.
if nobody records anything. - Home shows it under While you were away, if it came in since you last signed in, marked as needing you.
- Leads and the Pipeline show the new lead like any other.
- CLEO noticed may pick the lead up later — an open lead with no follow-up planned and nothing recorded for fourteen days is one of the eight things CLEO watches for.
Nothing is emailed on CLEO's behalf either. CLEO doesn't reply to the visitor, and it doesn't give them access to anything — it records what happened and leaves the conversation to you.
An enquiry is one person. Website analytics is the other half of the picture: how many people came, where from, and how many of them got in touch at all.