Your lead form almost certainly opens with name and phone, because that is the order every form builder hands you. That order asks for the most guarded item on the page while the person still has one foot out the door, and the agent who built an automated calling system on top of these forms flipped it on purpose.
This Austin agent runs Facebook lead ads into a system that calls every lead the moment the form is submitted. The thing worth taking is not the automation, it is what he changed about the form itself.
The form collects three things, and he is specific about the sequence: "The field order matters: email first (easiest to give), then name, then phone number." His reasoning, in his own words: "You ease people into giving their phone number rather than leading with it."
Two more items sit in the same section. Leave the autofill alone — "Facebook also auto-populates all three fields for most users, which helps completion rates." And put the disclosure on the form: "Include a privacy policy disclosure on the form. This notifies leads that they may receive a call, which is both a legal requirement and a practical signal that they've opted in."
He attaches no split test to the field order. It is his own judgment from running the ads, which is worth knowing before you treat it as a measured result.
“The field order matters: email first (easiest to give), then name, then phone number.”
What the standard order costs you is the fill you never see. A form is a run of small commitments, and the first field sets what the whole thing feels like. Name and phone at the top reads like a sales call about to start. Email at the top reads like a list you are joining.
What changes takes two minutes and costs nothing. Reorder the three fields and leave everything else where it is. It is free and it is reversible, which makes it a better trade than most of what you are currently testing — and if anything automated is going to dial that number, the disclosure line is not optional anyway.