C1 Clearance · Lead Centre

What we need from you to go live

The Lead Centre's built and running, it's just on made-up data until we plug the real stuff in. Here's the short list of what we need from you.

For Sam and Dan · 15 September 2026

What we need from Sam

These six are what's holding everything else up.

  • Is 0330 133 9144 moving to Aircall? Or is the Aircall number a new one? More on this below.
  • A yes to the new WhatsApp number — roughly £45 a month.
  • The Aircall settings — account, the two API keys, the number id, and a webhook with its secret. Ten minutes for whoever's the Aircall admin. We'll send the exact steps.
  • Business details for WhatsApp — legal name, address, website, and the name customers see.
  • Billing in C1's name, so the number's always yours.
  • The real staff list — who's in the team, who's an admin. There are two made-up accounts in there now, and everyone shares one password.

What we need from Dan

  • Where the jobs actually come from — calls, Google, the website, word of mouth. A rough split is plenty.
  • The job types you really quote for.
  • Any live enquiries to bring across, or do we start clean.
  • Ten minutes on switch-on day to test a real message and a real call.

The two we're still waiting on

We asked both of these before. Everything else can run alongside, these two can't.

Sam

Is 0330 133 9144 moving to Aircall, or is the Aircall number brand new?

That number's painted down the side of the van and it's on the leaflets. If the Aircall one's new, the number on your van is wrong from day one — which is a bigger problem than anything on the WhatsApp side, because it's the number people ring. Either answer's fine, we just can't set the call routing up until we know.

Dan

Where do the jobs actually come from?

Dan's QR figure was the most useful thing anyone's told us — it stopped us spending money protecting a channel that brought in two enquiries in eight months. A rough split is enough. It decides what we connect after the phones.

WhatsApp without Facebook

Sam was clear he doesn't want the Facebook route, so we worked out where that leaves us. You can have WhatsApp in the Lead Centre without ever logging into Facebook. Three ways to go:

What we'd do ~£45/mo

We buy the number through a provider that's licensed to run WhatsApp for you. There is an account on Meta's side — there always is, for any WhatsApp that isn't just someone's personal phone — but we set it up and we hold it. No login for you, no documents, no queue. One catch: until a business is verified there's a limit on how many new people you can message a day. We think around 250. At forty enquiries a week you wouldn't get near it, and we'll confirm the number before we buy anything.

Get verified later only if you ever want it

Verification shows your business name instead of a bare number and lifts that daily limit. It needs C1's documents going to Meta, which is the bit Sam doesn't want. Skip it for now. Revisit if the volume grows.

No Meta at all £0 extra

Drop WhatsApp and run on calls and texts through Aircall. Nothing touches Meta in any form. Given Dan's two enquiries in eight months, that's more sensible than it sounds — say the word and we'll price it that way.

One to say no to. If anyone offers WhatsApp with no Meta involvement at all, it's a tool that logs in as a normal user. It breaks WhatsApp's rules and gets numbers banned with no appeal. The proper providers aren't avoiding Meta — they're just dealing with it so you don't have to.

What's changed since the last pack

  • No Facebook route. That rules out Aircall's own WhatsApp add-on, which needed a verified Meta account. It was the slowest thing on the old list, so dropping it speeds us up.
  • The van stays as it is. Dan's had 2 enquiries in 8 months off the QR code, so we're not touching it and nothing gets restickered. We'd assumed it was your main source and built a careful plan around protecting it — that plan's gone.
  • New separate WhatsApp number instead, wired straight into the Lead Centre. Nothing happens to 07440 517077.

Things we guessed — tell us if we're wrong

These came from the design, not from you. Dan was right about the QR, so there may be more.

  • The flow Sam talked us through. That's worth more than anything we guessed, but it's only in someone's notes. We'll write it up and send it back for Sam to correct — it'll probably settle most of the rest of this list.
  • Eight stages — new enquiry, contacted, site photos in, quote sent, booked, job completed, invoiced, paid. Plus lost / no answer. Is that how you work a job?
  • Job types — full house, flat void, garden, probate, office strip-out, builders waste, single item.
  • Routing — 7am to 6pm rings the office then Sam's mobile, out of hours goes to voicemail, missed calls get a text within a minute.
  • How fast is late? The inbox flags an enquiry as overdue after a set time. Half an hour, an hour, same day?
  • Auto-reply wording for missed calls and out of hours, in your words.
  • Email, the website form, and Statto CRM. All in the design, none connected. Which are real and worth wiring up?
  • Call recording announcement, and how long we keep things. Callers have to be told they're recorded, and GDPR wants a set retention period rather than forever.

What we still have to build

Being straight about what isn't finished. The first three matter most.

  • The WhatsApp connection. The app only speaks Aircall today, so a different provider means building a second connection. Our cost, not yours.
  • Photos have nowhere to go. You quote off photos, and right now anything sent over WhatsApp arrives and gets dropped.
  • Nobody gets told when it breaks. No alerting yet — if the connection fails, enquiries stop and the inbox just looks quiet. Worst way for a lead system to fail.
  • Call recordings get binned, backups aren't confirmed yet, and the Numbers & Routing screen still shows the old porting plan that's now cancelled.
  • Smaller stuff: no password reset, everyone can see every screen, the lead list loads all at once, and it's still on a temporary web address.

Then what happens

  1. Sam answers the 0330 question and sends the Aircall settings.
  2. We confirm the no-Facebook route in writing before buying anything.
  3. We buy and connect the number, registered to C1 so it's always yours.
  4. We wire up the phones — calls, voicemail and texts start landing on lead threads.
  5. We test it properly with Dan — real message in, real reply out, plus a real call.
  6. We clear the demo data and set the real logins.
  7. Go live.

Short version

Two answers unblock everything: whether 0330 133 9144 is moving to Aircall, and a yes to the new WhatsApp number. Send those with the Aircall settings and real enquiries could be arriving within days. The rest can follow while the inbox is already working.