Sage, a senior customer service representative, groused, "I hope this meeting doesn’t take too long. I don’t want it to affect my performance numbers."

"Don’t worry, Sage. I’ve got you covered. I’ll put a special note in the monthly report," Tracy, the Manager of Analytics replied. "Besides, Ryan really wants this done right. If the Director of Customer Service thinks it’s important, it won’t be held against you."

Marion, the IT project manager jumped in. "We’ll try to take as little of your time as possible, but we really need your expertise to do this right. Let’s start with the primary needs. Call centers can work in lots of ways, but how do we use our call center at Empire Enterprises? What is your typical day like?"

"Mostly I and the other reps get calls routed through our headsets. We pull up the CRM system data for that customer, so we know what they’ve got and any history to their issue. We also use that to record the important details of this call. If we can answer their questions, we do that and close the issue. Some issues are more complicated, though."

"How does the system know which rep gets which call?" Blaise asked.

"Mostly by the phone number that was called. We have different customer service phone numbers for different divisions of the company. Most reps are only familiar with one division."

…

After Blaise and Marion got the big-picture view of how the system works from the customer service representative point of view, Sage went back to work and they talked with Tracy about the metrics gathering. They didn’t go into great detail, just enough to understand the major needs and a little bit of background on why they were important. The details could come later.