Prospect Tracking and Inquiry Outcomes
How to track inquiries, manually add phone or email inquiries, follow up in Conversations, and record what happened with each prospect.
Prospect tracking and inquiry outcomes
PracticeRunner treats inquiries as part of the practice workflow, not just messages. An inquiry can come from public scheduling, a client-facing form, a phone call, an email, voicemail, or a referral. Tracking these in one place helps your practice see which prospects still need follow-up and what happened after the first contact.
During the pilot, this workflow is intentionally simple. It is meant to help you keep up with follow-up and collect enough outcome data for future reporting, without turning inquiry management into a separate sales system.
Where inquiries appear
Inquiries appear in Conversations alongside secure messages and appointment request threads.
Use Conversations to:
- review new public inquiries
- respond to a prospective client
- send a booking link or ask a follow-up question
- review appointment requests from existing clients
- manually add inquiries that came in by phone, email, voicemail, referral, or another source
- close or archive inquiry threads when follow-up is complete
The Inquiries filter in Conversations shows prospect inquiry conversations. Existing-client messages and appointment requests remain in Conversations too, but they are not counted the same way as prospect inquiries.
Adding an inquiry manually
Use Conversations -> Add inquiry when someone contacts the practice outside the online scheduler.
This is useful for:
- a voicemail asking about availability
- an email from a prospective client
- a phone call from a parent, partner, or referral source
- a referral from another clinician
- a person who should be tracked before they are ready to book
You can add a new prospect with only the information you have. Email is optional. If you only have a phone number, enter the phone number and leave email blank.
The manual inquiry form can record:
- whether this is a new prospect or an existing contact
- first and last name
- email, if available
- phone, if available
- inquiry source
- assigned clinician
- requested service
- notes about what they need and what follow-up is next
When the inquiry is added, PracticeRunner creates the prospect record if needed, opens a Conversations thread, and creates a follow-up task.
Following up
For a new prospect inquiry, the normal workflow is:
- Open the inquiry from Conversations or Tasks.
- Read the inquiry details and notes.
- Reply, send a booking link, ask a follow-up question, or decide not to move forward.
- Keep follow-up in the same thread when possible.
- Close or archive the thread when no more follow-up is needed.
Sending a follow-up message, closing the thread, or archiving the inquiry can clear the related follow-up task.
Recording the outcome
When you close or archive a prospect inquiry thread, PracticeRunner can record an optional outcome.
Common outcomes include:
- became a client
- scheduled consultation
- practice declined
- prospect declined
- no response
- duplicate
- spam
- not a fit
- other
Outcome notes are optional. Use them for short context, such as "wanted evening availability we do not offer" or "referred to group practice."
These fields are for prospect tracking and future reporting. They are not required to close a thread.
When outcomes are ignored
Prospect outcomes are not meant for every appointment request.
If an existing active client requests a new appointment, reschedules, cancels, or asks for a location change, PracticeRunner treats that as client scheduling workflow, not prospect conversion. Those requests still appear in Conversations when review is needed, but prospect outcome fields are ignored.
This keeps conversion tracking focused on new prospects and avoids mixing active-client scheduling activity into future prospect reports.
Becoming a client
If a prospect becomes an active client, mark the client active through the inquiry workflow or the client profile. The inquiry can be archived with the outcome Became a client.
This keeps the prospect history attached to the client while separating the initial inquiry from ongoing client care.
What this can support later
As your practice uses inquiry tracking over time, this data can support reporting such as:
- how many new inquiries came in
- how many inquiries became consultations
- how many prospects became active clients
- common reasons inquiries did not move forward
- which sources bring in appropriate referrals
- how long inquiries wait for follow-up
These reports depend on consistently adding inquiries and recording outcomes when practical. During the pilot, capturing the basics is enough.