The people in the loop

Harbour Hotels asked for a discount of twenty per cent on sixty mid-range kettles. Policy permits fifteen without reference to a person. The run reached that point, computed a provisional quotation at fifteen, and stopped. Some forty seconds later the request reached Tom, with the company, the quantity, the discount requested and the discount permitted, what the research had established and what it had not, and two buttons. Tom asked the assistant provided alongside the request to summarise the research, read the summary, and approved the twenty. The quotation went out at twenty, the deal was recorded in the CRM at twenty, and the record shows Tom's name against the decision, beside the fifteen the rule had proposed. Had he not answered within a day, the request would have passed to Sam, the sales lead.

Participants, not users

Most of what needs to be said about accountability in such a process is contained in that account. A workflow is not a chatbot with a single participant. It has several, and they are not interchangeable: the buyer, the representative, the sales lead who receives escalations, and the agent, which is also a participant and has less authority than any of the people. Each acts under a role. Roles are declared in the workflow and are bound to individuals or teams when a run begins, so that no names appear in the process itself. A step that requires a person names the role and waits, whether for a minute or for a week, and the person answers from wherever he or she happens to be working. Nobody is obliged to keep a window open.

What the agent may do

The agent's role deserves particular attention, because it is the source of most questions about accountability. A model step acts under a role of its own, with exactly the access its step has been granted, never with a person's login and never reaching a system the workflow has not connected. People carry authority; the agent carries only the scope it has been given. When the record states that a step looked something up or drafted a reply, it also states which role did so and on whose authority, and the answer is never "the system". The decision to grant the buyer twenty per cent was Tom's, taken with a model's assistance and recorded as his.

Which decisions a person must own

For Nadia the practical consequence was a question of design rather than of technology: which decisions must be owned by a named person? A discount above policy, certainly. The declining of an enquiry from a country the company does not serve, on the other hand, is a matter for a rule, and the rule declines it courteously. Whether a buyer's follow-up question warrants a telephone call is a matter for a person, and the workflow passes it to one rather than guessing. The line between the two piles described in chapter 2 is also the line between what the agent may do on its own and where a person must be placed, and it is drawn by the owner of the process rather than by the model.