# Contacts and leads

The difference between a contact and a lead in Nuteq is that a contact is a person, and a lead is one request or job they asked about.

*Customers · Last updated 2026-09-08*

In Nuteq, a contact is anyone who has ever called, texted, or messaged your
business, and a lead is one specific request or job that came out of one of
those conversations. A contact can have several leads over time, but every
lead points back to exactly one contact, so you always know who asked for
what.

## What is a contact?

A contact is created automatically the first time someone reaches your
business, whether that's a phone call, a text, a WhatsApp message, or a chat
on your website. Nuteq matches the same phone number or the same person
across channels, so a customer who calls once and texts later shows up as
one contact, not two.

Each contact keeps a running record of their phone number, their name if
they've given one, how many times they've called, how many leads they have
open, and the last time they were in touch. The All contacts tab under
Customers lists everyone who has ever reached you, and you can search by name
or phone number or filter by activity, for example everyone with an open
inquiry, or everyone you haven't heard from in 90 days.

If someone never gave their name, Nuteq shows "No name given" rather than
guessing. A contact is only merged with another one when you choose to merge
them, and merging can always be undone.

## What is a lead?

A lead is a specific inquiry: a job, a booking, or a question a customer
raised that your business needs to act on. Most leads are captured
automatically when your agent gathers someone's details during a call or
message, though a lead can also come from a booking request.

Every lead moves through a stage: New, Contacted, Qualified, Booked, or
Closed. The stage only moves forward on its own when something real happens,
such as your team replying or an appointment getting booked. Once a lead is
finished, you can also record an outcome of Won or Lost, along with an
optional sale amount. That outcome is a separate fact from the stage, so a
Closed lead with no recorded outcome simply means nobody has said yet whether
it was won or lost, not that it was automatically lost.

The Inquiries tab under Customers lists every lead with a plain description
of what the person asked for and where it came from.

## How they connect

A lead always carries the conversation that produced it, so opening a lead
also shows you the call or message it came from. The other direction works
the same way: opening a contact shows every conversation, lead, and
appointment tied to that person in one timeline, in order, so your team never
has to piece together someone's history from separate screens.

Because contacts and leads are the two records everything else builds on,
they also feed the rest of Customers. The Needs attention tab surfaces leads
and conversations that still need a reply or a decision from you, described
in [Follow-ups](/docs/customers/follow-ups). And selecting a group of
contacts lets you reach them at once through a campaign, described in
[Create and run a campaign](/docs/campaigns/create-and-run-a-campaign).