Keep Your Inbox Clean with Inquiry Prioritization

Rank member questions by urgency, get each one to the right person, and close them out fast, so nothing urgent sits under a pile of routine requests.

A busy agency can collect dozens of inquiries a day. Most are routine (a missing ID card, a benefits question), but a few can't wait: an upset member, a cancellation, a doctor who turned out to be out of network. Inquiry prioritization puts those few on top automatically, so your team works the right thing first and the routine stuff still gets handled.

What you'll set up

Priority rules that match how your agency defines "urgent"
An Inbox that sorts by urgency
A way to get each inquiry to the right person
A resolve routine, with AI callbacks doing the routine dialing
A view for each team member, so everyone sees their own queue

How inquiries get created

Most inquiries come from calls. When a member asks something on a call that needs a real person, the AI logs it as an inquiry (that's the Log Inquiry escalation). careCycle also logs one after the call when the AI promised a follow-up or the member asked for a callback that didn't get booked, so those don't slip through. See Handle Inquiries for the basics.

careCycle also tidies up on its own:

Duplicates. If one call logged the same request twice, the extra copy is marked Duplicate.
Booked calls. If the call that raised an inquiry also booked an appointment, the inquiry moves to Appointment Scheduled, since someone's already calling them about it. If that appointment gets cancelled, the inquiry reopens.

How priority works

After each call, the AI reads the inquiry and the call transcript and matches it to one of your categories. Every category sits in one of five tiers, and that tier becomes the inquiry's priority:

Priority	Tier	Out of the box, this includes
P1	Urgent	Upset callers, complaints, a doctor that's out of network after the member was told otherwise, and asks to stop contacting them
P2	High	Wanting to cancel, a death or hospital stay, billing or premium problems, and prescription or pharmacy trouble
P3	Medium	Hostile language, shopping for plans, the ride benefit, claims, missing cards, and enrollment status
P4	Low	Benefits questions, finding in-network providers, account updates, and "why did you call me?"
P5	Routine	Returning a call or asking for a specific person, with no other details

If more than one category fits, the AI picks the most urgent one. So a member who's upset about a billing problem lands in Urgent, not High.

You'll see the result everywhere the inquiry shows up: a P1 to P5 badge, the category name, how confident the AI was (like "92%"), and a short note on why it picked that category. An inquiry that hasn't been scored yet shows as Unscored.

Priority is set once

Each inquiry gets its priority right after the call, and it doesn't change after that. If you change your rules, new inquiries follow the new rules, but existing ones keep the priority they already have. There's no way to change one inquiry's priority by hand, so tune the rules instead.

Set it up

Tune your priority rules

Go to Inquiries and click Priority rules (you need permission to view organization settings to see it, and to update them to make changes). You'll land on Inquiry Priority, a board with the five tiers.

Each card is a category with three parts:

Category name, like "Wants to Cancel Coverage."
Choose this category when..., a plain description of the situation. This is what the AI matches on, so be specific.
Add example utterance, optional lines a member might say. A few good examples help the AI tell similar categories apart.

To make it yours:

Drag a category to another tier to change its priority.
Use the arrows on a card to make it More urgent or Less urgent within its tier. The number on the card is its rank, and two cards can share a number if they're equally urgent.
Click Add category at the bottom of a tier to add your own, or the trash icon to remove one.
Click Save. Nothing changes until you do.

A category with no description is dropped when you save. The top of the page tells you whether you're Using your custom rubric or Using the default rubric, and Reset to defaults puts you back on ours.

Sort your Inbox by urgency

In the Inbox, open the sort menu above the thread list and pick Most urgent. Threads are grouped under Urgent, High, Medium, Low, and Routine, then Upcoming (only future-dated tasks) and Nothing open.

A few things decide where a thread lands:

The most urgent open inquiry on that customer sets its tier.
Within a tier, a category ranked higher on your priority board comes first. Then newer activity, then the AI's confidence.
Tasks count too. A task due today or earlier (or with no due date) counts at its own priority, and an unanswered text from the member counts as High.

To make Most urgent the starting sort for everyone, go to Settings > Organization > Inbox Settings and set Sort threads by. Anyone can still change the sort while they work.

Get each inquiry to the right person

Inquiries the AI logs aren't assigned to anyone. They show up for the member's assigned agent (that's why customer assignments matter) and for anyone who can see every customer.

To hand one to someone specific, open it from the Inquiries page and use Inquiry Assigned To under Assignment. careCycle asks Reassign customer too?: pick Inquiry only to hand off just this question, or Both to make that person the customer's owner as well.

To hand off several at once, switch the Inquiries page to List, check the ones you want, and click Reassign.

The new owner gets an "Inquiry Assigned to You" notification, and the customer shows up in their Inbox even if they normally only see their own customers. You need the Assign inquiry permission to do this (Owners and Admins have it out of the box).

Resolve, or let the AI call back

Open the inquiry from the Inbox and the composer switches to resolve mode, with two options:

AI Callback. Type the answer and click Schedule Callback. An AI employee calls the member and tells them, and your callback workflow handles retries and texts. The inquiry stays Pending while the AI works on it, then moves to Resolved, or to Unresolved if the member still needs your team.
Manual. Call the member yourself, then type what you told them and click Resolve.

On the inquiry's own page (from the Inquiries list), the same choices are called careCycle Callback and Manual Resolution. Manual Resolution there also lets you Mark as Pending Resolution (requires follow-up) if you've started on it but aren't done.

Use AI callbacks for anything with a clear, short answer (enrollment status, a card on the way, a benefit question). Save manual calls for the Urgent tier, where a human voice matters.

AI callbacks need the customer's time zone or ZIP code, so careCycle knows when it's okay to call. Without one, the AI Callback option won't work. Add it on the customer's record, or resolve it manually.

Give everyone their own queue

Each teammate can narrow the Inbox to the work that's theirs:

Assignment. Next to the thread count, choose My Threads (your customers, plus any inquiry assigned to you), All Threads, or pick one or more teammates to see their queue. Agents who only see their own customers don't get this menu, since their Inbox is already just theirs.
Status, Type, and Carrier narrow threads by the customer's policies. Handy if one person handles one carrier, or your Medicare Supplement book.
Prioritize floats Inquiries first, Tasks first, or Requirements first to the top. (While one of these is on, the urgency groups are hidden.)

The lane, assignment, and policy filters are saved in the page address, so a bookmark brings that view right back. The sort isn't, so it goes back to your organization's default sort.

On the Inquiries page, you can also filter by status and by All Agents (the agent who wrote the member's policy), and switch between Grouped (by status, then by priority) and List. In List, click the Priority column header to sort by it.

A recommended setup for a busy agency

Here's a setup that works well when inquiries are piling up:

Start with the default rules for a week. Then look at what landed in each tier and adjust. Most agencies only need to move a few categories.
Make your Inbox sort Most urgent in Settings > Organization > Inbox Settings.
Name an inquiry lead. One person (or a small team) watches the Urgent and High groups with All Threads and handles or assigns them within the hour.
Let agents work their own. With the Most urgent sort, each agent's Inbox lists their own members' most pressing work first. (Agents on the built-in Agent role only see their own customers anyway. Others can pick My Threads.)
Send the routine stuff to AI callbacks. Low and Routine inquiries with a clear answer go back through AI Callback, so your team isn't dialing for "your card is in the mail."
Clear the leftovers daily. Check the Unresolved group on the Inquiries page (those are callbacks where the member still needs a person), and mark true repeats as Duplicate.
Make sure assigned agents get notified. Each person can turn on Inquiry Raised in Settings > Account > Notifications. See Organization Settings.

Tips

Write descriptions like you'd train a new hire. "The member wants to cancel or disenroll" is better than "cancel." Say what doesn't belong too, like "a routine provider search goes in Find In-Network Providers instead."
Keep the list short. A handful of clear categories per tier sorts more consistently than lots of overlapping ones.
Use ranks for tie-breakers. If two Urgent categories aren't equally urgent to you, rank them, and the Inbox follows.
Hover the priority badge on the Inquiries list to see why the AI picked that category.

Common questions

I changed my rules. Why didn't my old inquiries move? Priority is set once, right after the call. Your new rules apply to inquiries created after you click Save.

Can I set an inquiry's priority by hand? No. If the AI keeps putting a certain kind of question in the wrong tier, adjust that category's description or examples, or move it to another tier.

Does priority change what the AI says on the call? No. Priority only decides how the inquiry is sorted for your team. To change what the AI does in a situation, see Escalations.

Who can change the priority rules? Anyone whose role can update organization settings. Others with view access can see the board but can't edit it.