Why your follow-up report counts messages nobody received
Most follow-up reports count touches attempted rather than touches received, so a message sent to a contact with no email address still counts as activity. bkd.ai now degrades each touch to the channels the contact can actually receive, which makes the number describe contact instead of effort.
What does a follow-up report actually count?
Most of them count touches attempted, not touches received. A step fires, a row gets written, the number goes up. Whether a human being on the other end ever saw it is a separate question that the report usually does not ask.
That is fine until you start making decisions with the number. Cadence length, rep performance, whether a lead was worked before it was written off. All of it rests on a count that includes messages sent into nothing.
Why would a follow-up message go nowhere?
Because the cadence was built for a complete customer record and real customers are incomplete. A lead arrives with a phone number and no email address. The cadence still has an email touch on day four, so the email touch fires, fails quietly, and gets logged.
The same thing happens in reverse with a form lead that gave an email and a fake phone number. And it happens with consent, where a customer who opted out of texts should never have had a text step attempt in the first place.
None of this is exotic. It is the normal state of a lead database, which is exactly why a follow-up engine has to handle it rather than assume it away.
How does bkd.ai decide which channels to use?
In bkd.ai, a follow-up touch now degrades to the channels the contact can actually receive. If there is no email address, the email is not attempted. If a cadence has calls switched off, the engine honours that instead of quietly putting call steps back in.
The step is not silently dropped either. What changes is that the record reflects what happened, so a manager reading the file can tell the difference between a customer who ignored four messages and a customer who was never reachable on those channels at all.
What does an honest follow-up number change?
It changes who you chase. A lead showing four touches and no reply looks cold. The same lead showing one touch that landed and three that could not be delivered is not cold, it is unworked, and it deserves a phone call rather than a lost stamp.
It also changes coaching. When attempts and contact are the same number, the rep who dials nobody and the rep who reaches people look similar on a report.
Frequently asked questions
Why do follow-up emails get sent to contacts with no email address?
Because most cadences are built assuming a complete customer record, and real leads arrive incomplete. The step fires on schedule regardless, fails at the delivery layer, and still gets logged as activity. bkd.ai now skips a channel the contact cannot receive rather than attempting it.
Does skipping a channel mean the customer gets less follow-up?
No. The touch still happens on the channels that work. What changes is that a channel with nothing to send to is not attempted and not counted, so the follow-up record describes what the customer actually received rather than what the schedule tried to do.
What if I do not want calls in a cadence at all?
Turning calls off on a cadence is now carried through to the engine that runs it, so call steps are not reintroduced downstream. The cadence you configured is the cadence that runs, which matters most for stores where the BDC and the floor split channels deliberately.