# Classifying a prospect's reply, end to end

A reply is classified so that the right thing stops or starts: a refusal stops the sequence and is recorded as suppression, interest becomes an opportunity, a later date becomes a dated follow-up, and an automatic message is not mistaken for either. Stops are honoured immediately; anything that would start commercial work goes past a person.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/prospects, #/inbox, #/needs-you, #/pipeline
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/workflows/reply-classification/

## The chain, stage by stage

1. Trigger — a reply arrives to a message that began as cold outreach.
2. External event — the prospect has now written to you. That single fact changes which path this is: outreach and a reply are two paths with different gates, never merged.
3. Authentication and workspace resolution — the reply is resolved into the workspace that sent the original, which is what keeps two workspaces prospecting the same organisation entirely separate.
4. Ingest — the message joins its canonical thread, so the answer is read with the message it answers rather than alone.
5. Canonical record — the sender resolves to a person and the prospect begins to become a relationship. This is the moment that conversion actually happens.
6. Classification — the reply is sorted: interested, not now, not interested, wrong person, a question, or not a human reply at all.
7. Knowledge, memory and rules — a refusal is recorded as suppression in the one place compliance is checked, so it holds on every future run rather than on this sequence only.
8. Autonomy and approval — the class decides what is proposed; autonomy decides whether the proposal is acted on or put in front of a person.
9. Action through a provider — any answer goes out through the same send boundary as every other message. The reply to a reply is ordinary correspondence.
10. Result — the sequence continues, pauses, or stops; and an opportunity, a follow-up or a Needs You item exists where there was none.
11. Relationship, timeline and memory — the exchange joins the person's timeline. Anything durable they told you — a budget cycle, the right person to ask — belongs in memory rather than in the thread.
12. Audit, usage and Needs You — the classification and what followed from it are recorded, so a stop that was not honoured is a question with an answer.

## The classes, and what each one moves

| Class | Stops | Starts |
|---|---|---|
| Not interested, or a request to stop | The sequence, immediately and permanently | A suppression entry, so it holds beyond this sequence |
| Interested | The cold sequence — they are no longer a cold prospect | An opportunity on the pipeline, and an ordinary conversation |
| Not now, ask later | The current sequence | A dated follow-up carrying the reason, so the colleague who picks it up knows what was agreed |
| Wrong person | The sequence to this contact | Work to reach the right one — often a `task` for a person, since a redirection is rarely a published address |
| A question | Nothing by itself | A grounded answer, subject to the rule that refuses a commercial term Knowledge does not support |
| Not a human reply | Nothing | Nothing. An automatic acknowledgement is neither engagement nor refusal, and treating it as either is a real error |

Two of these carry the weight. Getting a stop wrong is a compliance failure with a person on the other end of it, and getting an automatic message wrong quietly corrupts every number you use to judge a campaign — an out-of-office counted as interest inflates the only metric anyone actually watches.

## Where a person must be involved

Stops do not wait for anybody. A refusal is honoured immediately and recorded as suppression, because the cost of a delayed stop falls entirely on the person who asked for it. That is the one class where acting first is unambiguously right.

Everything that starts commercial work goes past a person, according to the channel's autonomy at the narrowest applicable scope. An opportunity on the pipeline is a claim about your business's near future, and a reply answering a pricing question runs into the rule that refuses unsupported terms whatever the classification said.

**Ambiguous replies** — "Send me something in March" is either a follow-up or a polite refusal, depending on tone and on the sender. Ambiguity is queued rather than resolved confidently.
**A complaint** — Handled as compliance, not as a reply class to be argued with. It becomes a suppression entry, and a do-not-contact entry is not something the Assistant can clear.
**An angry reply that is not a stop** — Still not a stop, and still worth a person reading it. Needs You ranks it rather than burying it in a list ordered by arrival.
**A reply from a competitor or a recruiter** — Neither interest nor refusal. Ending the sequence is usually right; recording it as suppression is not, because it says something about them that is not true.

## Checking it is working

1. Sample the replies classified as automatic.
   - Result: This is the class where an error is invisible, because nothing happens when it goes wrong. A genuine reply filed as an out-of-office is a lost customer nobody notices.
2. Confirm that every stop produced a suppression entry.
   - Result: A sequence that stopped without one will start again on the next run, which is the compliance failure most likely to be repeated.
3. Read the opportunities created this week against the replies that created them.
   - Result: An optimistic classifier shows up here first, as a pipeline fuller than the conversations behind it.
4. Correct a wrong classification on the record rather than only in the outcome.
   - Result: The audit trail then shows what was decided and what it was changed to, which is what makes a pattern of errors visible instead of anecdotal.

> **Careful** A stop applies to the person, not to the campaign. Recording it anywhere narrower — as an end to one sequence rather than as suppression — means the next list you build will find them again, and they will be right to be annoyed.

## Questions

### Does a stop need my approval?

No. Refusals are honoured immediately and recorded as suppression rather than queued for a decision. Everything that would start work — an opportunity, a commercial answer — is what goes past a person, according to the channel's autonomy at the narrowest applicable scope.

### What happens to an out-of-office message?

It is not treated as a reply. It neither stops the sequence nor counts as interest, because it is a machine acknowledging receipt. Counting these as engagement is one of the quieter ways an outbound report becomes fiction.

### The prospect asked a question about price. What then?

Answering is ordinary work, but the commercial rule still applies: a term your Knowledge does not support is refused and escalated to a person rather than improvised. The classification does not exempt it.

### Can I correct a classification?

Yes, and it is worth doing on the record rather than only fixing the outcome. The correction is recorded, so a repeated misclassification becomes a visible pattern instead of something everyone has a different impression of.

## Related

- [A prospect replies](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/prospects/prospect-reply/)
- [Handling a prospect's reply, end to end](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/workflows/prospect-reply-handling/)
- [Stopping a cold sequence](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/prospects/cold-sequence-stop/)
- [From prospect to opportunity](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/prospects/prospect-to-opportunity/)
- [The compliance check before outreach](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/prospects/compliance-check/)
- [Creating a follow-up](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/follow-ups/creating/)
- [Needs You](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/autonomy/needs-you/)
- [A commercial decision reaching a person](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/workflows/commercial-decision/)

## What this page is based on

- `docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md` §4 — reply classification as a prospecting stage, ending in an opportunity or a stop
- `docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md` §1 — compliance checked in one place, and outreach and a customer reply as two paths that are never merged
- `docs-source/sources/CHANNELS.md` §6 — the rule that refuses a commercial term Knowledge does not support
- `docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md` §5 and §7 — autonomy scopes, Needs You, the audit trail, and follow-ups carrying a reason