Follow-Up Coverage Audit

Link

4

Link Name

Follow-Up

Playbook

Follow-Up Playbook

Role

audit

Loop Step

Diagnose

Review State

in_review

Delivery Status

content_ready_delivery_pending

Purpose

Measure whether leads receive sufficient, timely, consistent, multi-channel follow-up after the first contact attempt and after qualification, so opportunities are not lost to under-persistence, single-channel dependence, long gaps, missing next actions, or premature stops.

Governing Principle

Silence is not a disqualification event. This audit measures follow-up COVERAGE and CONSISTENCY, not lead quality. A lead that never received sufficient follow-up cannot be called 'not interested' — that is a coverage failure, not a buyer signal.

Critical Distinctions

No response vs not interested

NO RESPONSE means the prospect has not replied to attempts made. NOT INTERESTED requires an explicit signal from the prospect. Never record NO RESPONSE as NOT INTERESTED.

Not ready yet vs not a fit

NOT READY YET is a timing state that belongs in nurture (RLR-25). NOT A FIT is an evidence-based non-fit judgment. Never collapse a timing delay into a disqualification.

Unreachable vs abandoned

UNREACHABLE AFTER REQUIRED ATTEMPTS is a legitimate stop only once the defined coverage was actually delivered. ABANDONED means the business stopped before its own completion criteria — that is the leak.

Coverage quality vs lead quality

This audit judges whether the business followed up well, not whether the lead was good. Do not let thin follow-up make a valuable opportunity look dead.

Scope

Population

Representative recent inquiries and lead records that reached at least first contact attempt or qualification activity in the review window.

Window Guidance

Use a window long enough to observe complete follow-up lifecycles (attempts, stops, dispositions). Where volume is low, widen the window rather than reduce the sample.

Segmentation

qualification_classification; intent_level; urgency; owner; source; channel

Data To Collect

Note

One row per lead/inquiry. Record unknowns explicitly as UNKNOWN — never infer an attempt or a disposition that is not evidenced in the record.

Metrics

Note

Compute where data permits. Where a metric cannot be computed from evidence, report it as INSUFFICIENT DATA rather than estimating.

Leak Patterns

Benchmark Policy

Approved Benchmarks Available

false

Rule

Do not fabricate universal attempt counts or timing benchmarks. Where approved ShiFt benchmarks exist they may be referenced as benchmarks and MUST remain visually distinguishable from the customer's own measured data. Where no approved benchmark exists, the operator configures their own required coverage (attempts, channels, duration) and this audit measures against that configured standard.

Missing Data Rules

Count unknowns explicitly. A lead with no recorded attempts is a coverage gap, not a disqualification. Never convert an unknown stop reason into NOT INTERESTED or NOT A FIT; route unknown-stop-reason leads to disposition cleanup (RLR-21) and coverage repair (RLR-23).

Compliance Guardrail

When auditing coverage, treat opt-outs, do-not-contact requests, and suppressed contacts as legitimate stops, not as coverage failures — do not flag a business for under-following-up a lead it was required to stop contacting. The audit measures against the business's approved communication policy and consent controls; it never recommends bypassing provider restrictions, opt-outs, or applicable messaging rules. Jurisdiction- and industry-specific requirements are applied by the operator.

Handoff From Link3

Consumes RLR-18 classification, intent, urgency, RLR-20 routing/owner, RLR-21 disposition and next action. The audit does not re-run qualification; it measures whether the qualified/handoff output actually received the follow-up it was routed for.

What To Measure

Follow-up coverage, consistency, multi-channel reach, timing, next-action completion, and stop discipline across representative recent leads, segmented by classification, owner, source, and channel.

Data Required

Per-lead follow-up records with attempt-level timestamps, channel, replies, two-way contact, appointment, nurture entry, stop reason, and final disposition.

How To Interpret

High abandon-after-first-attempt, single-channel dependence, long gaps, unknown stop reasons, or qualified-lead abandonment indicate a coverage leak. Low response despite full coverage points to a message/sequence problem (RLR-23/RLR-24), not an attempt-count problem.

Action That Follows

Install RLR-23 for active persistence, RLR-24 where prior engagement exists, RLR-25 for timing-delay opportunities, and enforce RLR-26 stop/escalation rules; fix disposition hygiene via RLR-21.

Owner

Follow-up owner named in RLR-20 routing, accountable to the revenue operations lead who owns the audit cadence.

How To Implement

Pull representative records, populate one row per lead, compute the metric set, tag leak patterns, and record the configured coverage standard the business is measured against.

How To Test

Re-run on a fresh sample after installing repairs; confirm attempt-level data is captured for new leads and stop reasons are recorded.

When To Remeasure

At 14 and 30 days after repairs are installed, then on a recurring operating-review cadence.

How To Know It Improved

Re-measured average/median attempts, multi-channel coverage %, scheduled-next-action %, response and appointment rates rise; abandoned-after-first-attempt %, unknown stop-reason rate, and aged unresolved count fall — with the improvement evidenced by data, not by the mere installation of sequences.