Stealth Escalations

Posted on April 8, 2015 by peteralderliesten

Introduction

Escalations can come in various forms, from the understated ironic remark to a highly emotional outburst of frustration. Below I will introduce two other forms of escalations, ‘shared ‘ and ‘stealth’ escalations, which in some situations can be more effective than either of the earlier two mentioned.

Original escalations

Let’s first examine what an escalation really means. According to Webster’s Online Dictionary an escalation is: “to increase in extent, volume, number, amount, intensity, or scope”. Apparently it was first used in 1944, based on an escalator, the “power-driven set of stairs arranged like an endless belt that ascend or descend continuously”.

In business, it is often used to ‘go one level higher’, or get the bosses involved. The traditional escalation often is ‘about somebody’, where an ‘action’-person does not get the desired response from a ‘resister’-person. The ‘action’-person then asks for the help of a more ‘powerful’ person or higher in the hierarchy (often one’s boss) to overcome the resistance of the ‘resister’(often by talking to the boss of the latter).

Shared escalations

I find that a ‘shared escalation’ often is more effective. In such a case two parties meet on the basis of equality and exchange views, which might differ from one another. If that occurs and at least one of them finds it important enough, then together the issue is escalated to the next higher up, usually the boss of the ‘resister’-party.

The major differences with a ‘normal’escalation are that both the boss of the ‘action requester’ is not involved, and that the relationship between the action-requester and the ‘resister’ are maintained. Often I have escalated together with a colleague because we both ultimately agreed on the desirability of a particular action, but he did not have the means to execute. Then together you encounter boundaries and together you go find a solution.

That saves a lot of time, and a lot of trouble.

Stealth escalations

Most escalations make the issue bigger, not only in size, but also in parties involved. The danger with increasing the group of people involved is that it becomes ever more painful for either party to give in. And to make an action item bigger, one needs to create urgency, which often is difficult to do without attaching blame. In addition, with some dinosaur action items, responsibility is difficult to attach, and especially if an action item has been hanging there for quite some time; publicity only will make people to start justifying their actions, covering their backs, not necessarily resolve the issue (except in the companies where the reader works, of course.)

A further difficulty with ‘normal escalations’ might be that you are ‘too far away’: the action item has been delegated to one team member, who is relying on an ‘external’ party that has been subcontracting it out to the following party etc. There it does not really make a difference whether the ‘external’ party is within or without the formal corporation.

In such a case it might be an option to start the escalation from ‘the other end’. Rather than following the communication trail, a ‘stealth escalation’ starts with the action that needs to be performed and then escalates to an identifiable and influential person within the ultimately responsible party, usually the CEO of that party. (This person by definition is powerful, and you do not have to analyze the exact lines to the place where it needs to happen, which is often unfeasible, especially given the short deadlines that accompany most escalations like this.)

A second characteristic of a stealth escalation is that it does not use any publicity at all. No cc’s and no bcc’s. This aspect requires professionalism from both sender and receiver. Sender needs to maintain the strictest confidentiality, usually even his direct operational counterpart may not be informed to avoid political games or putting him into a difficult position. The hardest part might be not to inform the own manager, to ‘cover your own back’. There it might be useful to just indicate something to the extent of ‘I am considering something creative’. In the ideal, most professional case you will get a response in the line of ‘as long as it is according to our corporate values and gets the job done’.

At the same time, the receiver needs to do the same: if he distributes the ‘stealth escalation’ too widely or ‘thunders from Olympos’, the stealth-component is lost and everybody will jump in the trenches again. To continue on that analogy, then the minefield will erupt. However, sometimes it is necessary to take those risks in order to ensure that goals are achieved and customers serviced.

(Originally published July 20, 2013)

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Choosing between dinosaurs and ants

Posted on April 8, 2015 by peteralderliesten

Sometimes in a project you have one of those action items or open points that just ‘refuses to die’. The point drags on and on, preferably the ownership changes hands multiple times, the deadline is extended as often, and frustration of all concerned rises to the boiling point. When those ‘dinosaurs’ show up, be wary.

What is a ‘dinosaur’? An action item that has been re-visited more than approx 4-8 times (depending upon the type of project and the frequency of updates) without being resolved. There can be different underlying causes, such as (but not limited to):

*the item has not been properly defined (definition error).  Sometimes large to-do’s are given short deadlines because when defining the topic one  just does not realize the complete portent of it. As slowly the complete elephant becomes visible, the deadline is extended according to the new view of the animal.

*the item changes in the course of time (consistency error).  This change can be both that the original definition has not been properly checked  with the ‘user’, and that one initially defines the first step while later the second step is  taken. For example: “John needs to check with Mary if she can prepare the report.” By itself this seems fairly clear, however, the underlying request is that Mary prepare the report, so the obvious next step is to ensure that the report is actually done next month.

Whether this second step  is a separate action item or included in the former are both viable methods, however in the former (‘separatist’) system the second action item should be defined at the same time as the first, in the latter (‘inclusive’) system, the action item   should be phrased differently. In a program it is important that there is clarity and             consistency on this topic so that upper management is not confused when sampling             action item lists.

*the item has been delegated to the wrong person (delegation error). When John just is in ‘no position’ to speak to Mary physically, in knowledge or ‘hierarchically’ he might not be able to get access to Mary to pose the question, get a commitment or follow-up. Leaving aside whether following up on a topic is within the capability of John.

This capability is not necessarily a reflection on John himself as a person, but IT issues are best followed-up by somebody suitable versed in the subject to also understand           questions and feedback on the matter.

*the ‘supplier’ behaves unprofessionally or is ‘stretched’ (supplier error). This error often occurs when one of the project team members needs to follow-up with a non-project member. When Mary does not properly plan het actions and forgets every time, or is loaded with tasks to the degree that she can not fulfill all the requests, John will repeatedly need to go back to the action item list and ask for an extension of the deadline.

Undoubtedly this list can be extended – and I would be interested to hear additions.

A common response when faced with ‘dinosaurs’ is to overreact and create ‘ants’. The intelligent reader, but also the less intelligent one, will understand that these are the action items so small that administering them takes more effort then the action items themselves.

One observation I would like to make here is that one could easily argue that the example used above is an ‘ant’. We have a tendency to identify the next step as an action item, regardless of it’s size. If John just has to send an e-mail to Mary to produce the report, that is a small step. But if it is not registered, it might be forgotton. There the ‘art of project management’comes into play: we (almost) all would like to eat bite-sized pieces of food, but sometimes you just have to choose between eating either the dinosaur or the ant.

(originally published July 10, 2013)

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Words with time bombs

Posted on April 8, 2015 by peteralderliesten

Somehow, it seems as if some words meant to clarify only add confusion.

“Don’t you understand this?” by itself is a horror because it is a negative question but the speaker assumes all readers are very well aware of what is meant by ‘this‘. Below some other examples in the tradition I am building of not telling others what to do, but only showing what happens if they do not.

The first component in an explanation is the person speaking. A little while ago, for fun I divided ‘the world’ into speakers and listeners, whereby speakers are masters in words, they are the ones that can motivate others, are managers, sales people. They are crucial in getting things done by others. Listeners on the other hand spend their time doing things rather than talking about it. And of course, in every person there is a some of each, in some people there is a lot of one and a little of the other…

However, for speakers there is something to be said for allowing the other party to respond (more than just filling up the time the speaker needs to gasp for air). As an example, a sample out of a purely hypothetical conversation via mobile phones between representatives of both species, where ‘…’ indicates a person has been cut off by the other:

Speaker: “bla, bla”

Listener: “Sorry, but …..”

Speaker: “Do you understand this?”

Listener: “No, I ……”

Speaker: “But isn’t my explanation clear?

Listener: “No, ….”

Speaker: “But I spent all this time explaining …………”

Listener: “Sorry, but there was a train passing by, so I could not properly hear your first sentence. Could you repeat it please?”

A second component in the conversation is the sentence structure used. The better one party knows the other, the shorter, more staccato, interaction can be. When a team of movers is lifting a heavy piano, a simple “1,2,3!” is sufficient to fully coordinate their exertion of physical power. In a relationship a mere facial expression can be sufficient for the partner to change behavior. Long-time colleagues do not even ask any more whether you have milk in your coffee, they know (to what extent that also happens in a partner relationship does give insight into the nature of that relationship, I would say).

Same thing when people make notes for themselves: if the intended party is no one but yourself, your handwriting generally will be less legible. The same thing happens to status reports, if it is just used inside a closely knitted group, mere single words could be sufficient to get the message across, but poor Program Manager who does not deal with the subject every day and has to understand these solitary words!

So, depending upon the (relationship and experience with the) receiver, the communication needs to be longer and completer or can be shorter with more abbreviations.

On top of both, a third element in conversations is the use of specific words. In the two earlier ones, parties and sentence structure, any unclarities usually are found out in the conversation itself, however, some words can make parties think they have agreement, to find out that this is not the case afterwards. These words set the stage for utter disorientation because they carry little ‘time bombs’ inside. Detonation is occurring when clarification is created.

The least hurtful are the vague descriptions ‘some transactions’ or ‘previous months’, they are non-specific but a reader should see immediately the ambiguity in the terms. All of these landmines can be de-activated by one single question: “Which?”.

Much more damage is done by statements where both parties think they have a common understanding, but where they err. The classic “So we agree on this.” shows the way to the category of the ‘words with the hand grenades’: this, that, these and those. All of these words can help in making communication making more specific when used in front of a noun, like ‘this contract’. However, when used without the noun, they get ‘loaded by reference’, which means loaded with inspecifics and thus with potential unclarity and misunderstanding. It is the obligation of a writer/sender to avoid these kind of statements, it is the obligation of the reader/receiver to ask for clarification.

On this note, I sent out a change of address to postNL, the provider of my P.O. Box in Holland. This change of address indicated both my original Dutch home address, the relevant Dutch P.O. Box and my new German address. Promptly, I received a return question asking me whether I wanted to keep “the Dutch address I used in my mail” as a correspondence address after my move. I could not help but asking for clarification.

Just the same, such an unclear statement can also be used to ‘defuse’ a situation. When both parties agree to disagree but do not want to communicate the latter, a vague reference can be inserted so that a common declaration at the end of a meeting can be issued. This (!) prevents them from having to say ‘both parties disagree vehemently and both are too exhausted to even listen to the arguments of the opposite side any more’.

It is to the communicator to choose when to apply which methodology.

(Originally posted April 27, 2013)

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Chris, the critical customer

Posted on April 8, 2015 by peteralderliesten

(Originally posted on April 20, 2013)

Sometimes, I do not understand the world – and no, I do not mean all those new features Microsoft has hidden (‘automated’) into its office suite that prevent me from writing a normal letter – I speak of websites. And not just any websites, but specifically websites that are meant to interact with people.

Let me not talk about some other websites, but let’s stick to myself. First I started writing about my hobby which is customer service. After producing some ‘self-proclaimed major pieces of art’ this resulted in less then 10 hits, which mostly were the result of my own checking whether anybody at all had read what I had written. Increased activity in other social media where I contributed to the public debate on the subject resulted in weekly Hootsuite reports which confirmed that there were a mere 3 readers in total which had clicked through on links to my blogs. I did not care much, because I wrote for the fun, although my ego had totally different views on it…

When I started to follow a couple of industry experts on Twitter and re-tweeted some stories I found interesting, some of them started to follow me back, and even tweeted links to some of my blogs. One day, I even had a spike of 100 readers this way. Something similar happened when I wrote – in English – about a phenomenon like Klout, and how people artificially inflate their followers for a couple of euro’s (or more often: dollars). By the way, these articles also resulted in my website being found much more by spammers, who added comments to especially my English-language articles referring to Louis Vuitton bags at wholesale prices, and payday loans from Virginia(?). Undoubtedly marketing activities from very succesful internet enterpreneurs… That put the more than 8.000 hits a month I got kind of in perspective: how many of those hits were from real readers? (By the way, my website-provider is notoriously bad in protecting the comments, so what does that say about visitor numbers of other blogs, where spammers do not get through security to post comments and thus be visible?)

And then the amazing thing happened: I got entangled into a very busy assignment, where I had virtually no time to ‘breathe’, let alone write well-thought through articles. So my blogs became scarce and limited to customer service bloopers I experienced myself, easy writing. Not in the way I often see consultants write about their own frustration-experiences as if those are exceptions – like their insights… – but ‘killing with irony’ and also indicating how it could be done better. The former is my way of working through frustrations, the latter my excuse to write about it at all. After a couple of months I looked at my visitor numbers by pure accident (kind of avoided looking at them, would be bad for the aforementioned ego anyway) and visitor numbers had gone ‘through the roof’. On top of that, I started getting al kinds of reactions IRL (In Real Life for those of you like me who do not Twitter ‘enough’). People complained I wrote less, and others that they wanted me to write in English.

So my conclusion is clear: the ‘market’ (wish there were one) for blogs is not interested in learning, but only in entertainment, and customer service horror stories are found entertaining. So I will let go of my goal of showing how customer service can be improved, and just take you along in the horrors that ‘Chris’ experiences in the world of customer service. What’s in it for me is that this allows me to vent my frustration. All based on true-life events, and without any pretenses left…

New cases might be published not as new blogs but as comments below this original blog. That would guarantee that all those wonderful offers for Louis Vuitton bags get sufficient attention… But no guarantees given.

Since ‘all’ Dutch readers also read English, but some of my German readers seem to have difficulty with Dutch (incomprehensible for me), I will from now on focus more on works in the English language.

——————————————————————————

Case 1

Christian is moving to Germany for his work and is seeking a connection for internet. Through sheer naivity he signs a contract with Vodafone for DSL. Not for the choice of Vodafone, but for the choice of fixed internet. Although, come to think of it….

The installation takes a couple of weeks, and a couple of steps. Step 1 = that he will get an order confirmation by letter. One guess: whether he really receives it. Step 2 = a letter with his installation password and the date and time the service will be switched on. Second guess: whether he really receives this second letter. Step 3 = he will get his hardware by mail. Which he does get. As described, he is fairly naive, so he calls Vodafone and asks where the previous letters are. Guess whether the lady is apologetic or not. “You have received this letter already” is the accusative reply, as if she can physically access the mailbox at his door. Duly impressed by the fortune-telling capabilities of this lady and well aware of his own lack in this area, Chris asks for this letter to be sent again, because he needs the installation password of course. Thank heavens that at least this favour is granted to him by our good fairy, at least in the conversation. Guess whether he ever receives this letter.

Step 4 = an SMS. Guess whether Chris ever receives this SMS.

Step 5 = the service activation itself. Like a Russian ‘Matrushka’-doll, it consists of 5 substeps. Of those, the first 2 (5.1 and 5.2)go like the fire brigade: connection of the modem to the electricity socket and pushing a ‘Restart’-key are well within the capabilities of our hero.

Step 5.3 though, is the check that the signal is active. Somehow, this one requires a little more work. On a Monday, Chris is in Frankfurt with the movers, who unload the van with his furniture and other belongings. Around 11 am a technician from Telecom shows up, with a wild look in his eyes. A comparison to Tom Hanks in ‘Outcast’ (oid) is the first that comes to mind. Chris is on the (mobile!)telephone with a client (his fault of course), but the technician is very adamant, he does need to get to the meter closet, in as little time as possible, to compensate for his own delay apparently. When access to the meter closet is not immediately available, the technician runs outside, mumbling that he will then switch it over in the public area. 15 minutes later he comes to Chris with a form to sign that Chris has checked that at 1 pm the service is working. Chris: “But how can I sign that I have checked if I have not been able to check it at all?” The response from the technician is unintelligible, but he takes the form away irritatedly again and marches off.

When Chris checks the service, guess whether it has been activated. Fortunately his company mobile is Vodafone as well, so he can call the Vodafone service line for free. After working his way through a jungle of multiple choice he gets to an operator. The first thing she asks him, is his telephone number. Chris: “I do not have that number, and that is exactly why I am calling you.” Then the lady informs him that of course, the service is only activated for the first connection point in the house. That is obvious, right? Especially since that connection point is in the hallway, where there is no electricity socket for the modem, and we would not want to place it in the living room, next to 2 electricity sockets, of course. Why do you have 2 connection points anyway?

Chris, demotivated to the bone, hangs up and checks the socket in the hallway. No success (of course). The next Vodafone customer service employee is kind enough to at least provide the ‘Modem Installationscode’ by Phone, and schedules a technician for next Saturday.

This final savior finds out that a setting in a central switch is not correct, so the system could not work at all anyway. By the way, the socket in the living room is the first one in this particular case, no problem to have it activated. After his intervention Chris has succesfully mastered step 3(!) of the installation process. He has only 2 more to go…

That next and fourth step is an easy one: you just put an analog phone into the socket… We live in 2013, who still has an analog phone? Chris is old-fashioned, and he has one, but stil in his old place. Fortunately one of the neighbors lends Chris one. He only has to connect the phone, and the system will lead him through the way… No more guessing at this time whether this works. In utter despair, Chris then connects the wireless connection of his laptop, and ‘Lo and Behold!’ he gets a conection to the modem. It allows him to enter the modem-installation code, and now he is home scot-free, because Step 5 is fully automated! The next 10 minutes are a breeze!

Except that afterwards the wireless connection between the laptop and the modem does not work any more. A service desk employee informs Chris that he should – of course, how do you even get the idea to make a wireless connection to your modem instead of a wired one – first connect via one of the wires delivered together with the modem. For a wireless connection, Chris first has to de-install McAfee’s firewall. He decides to wait with that for a little while…

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How to gain 800+ followers in 5 days (and add 29 Klout points).

Posted on April 8, 2015 by peteralderliesten

(Originally posted on October 20, 2011)

Below the results of a social experiment, where a new Twitter account was created, which made it explicitly clear that no content and only spam would be supplied, to obtain significantly more followers and social media influence than average, or proper. Here is the story…

Background

Recently I saw a posting that Britney Spears had managed to get more than 10 million followers on Twitter. In addition, whenever I speak with ‘iltwitterate’ acquaintances or read articles in newspapers, one’s influence in social media seems to be measured by the number of followers. Apparently, a measurement like Klout which takes into account the potential of getting people into action, requires too much social media-knowledge for most.

Regular social media

After having worked hard in creating content on customer service (in Dutch) and posting it every two weeks @peteralderliest, after 6 months I managed to interest 290 tweeps in following me. It is obvious that my cycle time of 2 weeks (‘Takt’in LEAN-terms) does not correspond with the cycle time of Twitter, where updates are required multiple times per day. Below is an overview of stats of several |Dutch social media parties which do much better. First some publishing organizations, then followed by some personal accounts. For fun, I included mine as well:

Publishing accounts Tweets Following Followers Klout score
MarketingFacts 79.034          1.523        15.823 72
Dutchcowboys 15.418        53.295        69.771 75
Frankwatching 7.838        43.621        44.393 71
Personal accounts Tweets Following Followers Klout score
RoosvanVugt 67.543          3.166          5.855 75
PaulusVeltman 19.511          2.279          2.925 65
CarmenVriesema 12.987          1.955          2.059 57
BasW(estland) 9.459              603          1.702 63
TonyBosma 5.391              342          1.777 66

PeterAlderliest

 42 415 290 26

Note: any account starts with a Klout score of 10 out of 100, with a worldwide average Klout score of 20. Justin Bieber is the highest and scores 99 at this moment, the previously mentioned Britney Spears does 86. The highest-scoring Dutchman this week was Alexander Klöpping (@AlexanderNL), with 86.

Spam in Twitter

At the same time, ‘wondering through Twitterland’ I was confronted with the phenomenon of #Followback. Various claims were – and are – made that numbers of followers are up for sale, which would put the 10 million follower claim of Britney Spears – and others – into doubt. Therefore, I checked out the following accounts, each of which has made no significant contribution to content whatsoever. Virtually all tweets are limited to ‘Shout out’s of new followers, containing contents like “Thank you for following @abc12345” etc.. Most have no link with a Facebook-page, except @teamfollowwack, which accumulated 784 likes on their Facebook-page, which was also linked to the @Teamfollowwacky-account. @Loopinloops is linked to a Youtube channel with 581 subscriptions (many back and forth if I may believe the various messages).

Accounts Tweets Following Followers Klout score
Teamfollowwacky 386 4363 60231 83
teamfollowwack 66 10567 17519 78
Headlessgang 48421 2683 5062 75
loopinloops 20497 1472 1306 69
glauciacalasans 34357 4920 5174 67
folloowbacks 9012 1542 3341 66
Unfollow_tool 6777 2136 2160 62
operationRT 11761 11903 11596 55
afollowbackstar 2281 19257 22516 50
allfollowmax 762 6546 6016 50
Followback68 796 1204 1079 48
Follow500perday 234 2458 2393 45
Folowmeback 5540 22231 31109 45

It is obvious, though, that the relatively low numbers in followers provide no data to support any claim of illegitimacy of the 10 million follower-mark of Britney Spears.

Social experiment

However, would it be possible for a regular tweep to copy this ‘success’? Thus, on October 16, 2011 @lifeevents2 was started, it provided no picture and explicitly mentioned ‘no content promised’ in the headline. Then, I followed a couple of followback mailinglists, followed followers of these mailinglists, followbacked ‘incoming followers’, and Shouted Out anybody who followed me and unfollowed those who unfollowed me. In this experiment, I also followed accounts in other languages (e.g. Spanish) and using cyrillic and Chinese alfabets, since the fact that we could not read each others postings was not relevant. These efforts led to the following results:

Results

oct 16 17 oct 18 oct 19 oct 20 oct
Following 152 773 1639 2002 1999
Followers 62 198 454 741 856
Tweets 63 161 194 229 232
DM’s (rec’d) 0 29 49 67 89
Mentioned 2 6 32 40 42
Retweeted 0 0 0 0 0
unfollowers 0 0 2 7 10
Klout score 10 21 27 36 39

On October 20th, this account was determined to be a ‘Networker’: “You know how to connect to the right people and share what’s important to your audience. You generously share your network to help your followers. You have a high level of engagement and an influential audience,” according to Klout. I find that ‘interesting’.

Lessons learned along the way:

  • ‘Shout outs’ do generate mentions from followers;
  • Several ‘operational lessons’ which I will not mention here as not to facilitate further abuse of the system;
  • The application truetwit.com is used to authenticate followers via a DM. It is fairly useless, since a bot may generate the followings, a human would deal with the ‘fall-out’ in the DM’s. At most it would hamper the speed of following.
  • Followback is explained by some as a very simple game: you follow many accounts, wait for them to follow you back, and than quickly you unfollow them again so that you can follow new victims. This is ‘Twitterspam’. There are various tools to keep track of such behaviour. I used fllwrs.com to make the unfollowers visible and unfollow them as well.

Limiting abuse

Fortunately, Twitter has already introduced some limits to the number of accounts one can follow: initially, the total is limited to 2,000 until the number of Followers has reached a certain point. This is one measure to limit aggressive following and unfollowing. However, this has not stopped the following accounts which provided ‘nothing but Shout outs’ to gain significant Klout even with less than 2,000 followers:

Accounts Tweets Following Followers Klout score
alfianstracci 3505 2001 1629 62
bigrichmufucka 5103 1637 1815 67

Apparently these accounts were even more succesful than yours truly in obtaining influence in social media. Furthermore, Twitter has imposed (understandably kept secret) relative limits on the number of accounts that can be followed once Follower-numbers grow beyond the 2,000 level.

Next week, Klout is implementing further steps in improving their rating system, for which they claim transparency. (Maybe pressed for improvements with the advent of the new entrant Kred?) I have not been able to clearly find the Klout-algorithm, but undoubtedly that is the result of my ignorance. Maybe it would be an idea to keep that rating system as secret as the Google-algorithms. It also would prevent frequent explanations whenever an update is rolled-out, and in my opinion most legitimate users would consider that perfectly acceptable. But then quit the transparency claim.

Follow-up

Joe Hernandez of Klout has expressed the expectation that the reported scores will be negatively affected by the new algorithm. Next week I will come with an update to show what the Klout algorithm change had for effect on the Klout scores mentioned before, and to what extent they managed to filter out the abuse.

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Hoe zit een ACD in elkaar?

Posted on February 4, 2011 by peteralderliesten

Achtergrond: de structuur van een ACD

Voor diegenen die niet erg bekend zijn met telefooncentrales: de meeste telefooncentrales zijn origineel ontworpen voor uitgaand verkeer. Dat blijkt voornamelijk uit de rapporten die je uit een standaard telefooncentrale kunt krijgen, dit zijn voornamelijk rapportages over hoeveel gesprekken van hoeveel minuten naar welke bestemmingen. Dit bepaalde namelijk de hoogte van je telefoonrekening.

Later bleek er ook behoefte aan centrales die voornamelijk ingesteld waren op juist  het ontvangen van telefoongesprekken. Het aantal ontvangen telefoontjes en hun gespreksduur bepaalde namelijk hoeveel mensen er nodig waren om ze te beantwoorden. De ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) was geboren. Tegenwoordig is dit meestal een module die je bij je standaard telefooncentrale koopt.

De volgende stap in de technische ontwikkeling was het combineren van verschillende soorten werkstromen (telefoon, e-mail, post, chat etc.). Precies dezelfde technieken die hieronder worden beschreven kunnen  ook uitgevoerd worden in WorkFlow Management omgevingen, maar hieronder zal ik het uitleggen met de simpelere telefonie.

Om te zorgen dat een telefoongesprek bij de juiste medewerker terecht komt gaat de centrale eerst zoeken welke agentgroep of skill  dit gesprek kan beantwoorden, en daarna welke medewerkers er ingelogd zitten in die agentgroep. Dus moeten er meestal 2 zaken gedefinieerd worden: ten eerste de verbinding tussen het telefoonnummer en een agentgroep, dit heet het ACD-pad , en ten tweede de verbinding tussen een individuele medewerker en een agentgroep. Bij grote ACD-wijzigingen zit het grote risico in de ACD-pad veranderingen, het overbrengen van agenten naar een andere agentgroep is normale bedrijfsprocedure (en dus ook een beperkt risico).

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