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hello@adherelabs.com · San Ramon, California · Serving clients across North America
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03 — Run

Agents do the volume. People do the judgment calls.

Agents handle the repetitive work. Trained people handle the exceptions, the escalations, and the judgment calls — as part of the same system. This is where “AI-powered, human-led” stops being a slogan.

The connective argument

Automation always leaves a remainder.

No agent closes 100% of what comes in. The question is what happens to the rest — and whether anyone is accountable for it.

i.

The exception queue is the real product

Every automated workflow we build routes what it cannot finish. A caller with a situation the script does not cover. An invoice that does not match the purchase order. A record that fails validation. That stream is predictable, it is measurable, and it is where operations quietly break when nobody owns it.

ii.

Hiring for it is the wrong shape

Exception volume is spiky. It peaks after hours, during weather events, at month end, and during any campaign that works. Staffing your own payroll for the peak means paying for idle time in the trough, and staffing for the trough means the peak becomes a backlog and then a complaint.

iii.

The human layer only works if it is governed like software

A desk with no SOPs is a group chat. What makes managed operations different from a body-shop arrangement is the governance around it: written procedures for every work type, named response and resolution targets, defined escalation paths back into your team, sampled quality review, and a monthly report you can argue with. And because we built the automation, everything the desk learns feeds back into it — work that proves repeatable gets automated out of the queue instead of being staffed forever.

Three ways we run

The desks we operate.

Bought separately or as one operation. Most engagements start with whichever queue is currently costing you the most attention.

/ 01

Back-Office Support

Data entry and validation, invoicing and reconciliation, order and record processing, document handling, CRM hygiene, and vendor admin.

/ 02

Dispatch & Support Desk

After-hours coverage, overflow handling, escalation triage, live dispatch and technician coordination, ticket handling, and SLA management.

/ 03

Data & Reporting Operations

Pipeline monitoring, data quality checks, cross-system reconciliation, recurring report production, dashboard maintenance, and the operating review pack.

How an engagement works

What you are actually buying.

Seven things, in this order. Nothing here is a black box — you can see every queue, every procedure, and every number.

01

Scoping the exception queue

Queue mappingVolume profileWork types

Before anyone is trained, we define the queue. What kinds of exception exist, how they arrive, what triggers them, how often, at what hours, and what a correct outcome looks like for each. Where automation already runs, we pull the actual routing data rather than asking people to estimate. Where it does not, we shadow the current process and record what really happens, including the shortcuts nobody documented.

  • A written inventory of work types with volume and timing profiles
  • Definition of done for each type, agreed with your operations lead
  • The boundary line: what the desk decides, what it must escalate
  • Access, systems, and permission requirements listed up front
  • An honest list of what should be automated before it is ever staffed
02

SOP documentation

NotionRunbooksDecision trees

Each work type gets a procedure written down: the trigger, the steps, the systems touched, the judgment allowed, the wording used with your customers, and the exact conditions that force an escalation. These are working documents, not compliance theater — they are edited whenever the queue produces a case they do not cover, and the edit history is visible to you.

  • Step-level SOPs per work type, versioned and dated
  • Decision trees for the calls that are genuinely ambiguous
  • Approved language and tone for customer-facing responses
  • Escalation matrix naming who in your team receives what, and when
  • Everything stored in your documentation system, owned by you
03

Staffing and training

Role designCertificationShadowing

People are assigned to your account, not to a shared pool that rotates weekly. Training runs against your SOPs, your systems and real historical cases, and nobody works live volume on a work type until they have been signed off on it. Coverage is designed around your queue profile rather than a generic shift pattern, so the hours that actually produce exceptions are the hours that are staffed.

  • Named, account-dedicated team members with a documented ramp plan
  • Certification per work type before live handling, with a shadow period
  • Coverage windows matched to your real volume curve
  • Cross-training for continuity so no work type has one point of failure
  • A single operations point of contact on our side
04

SLAs and escalation paths

Response targetsSeverity tiersOn-call routing

Every work type carries a response target and a resolution target, set during scoping and written into the agreement. Severity tiers decide which clock applies: a stranded customer at midnight and a duplicate contact record are not the same emergency. When something exceeds the desk's authority, it moves — to a named role on your side, through a defined channel, with the context already assembled so your manager is not starting from zero.

  • Named response and resolution targets per work type and severity
  • Escalation paths mapped to roles in your organization, not to inboxes
  • Handoff packets: what happened, what was tried, what is needed
  • Breach handling — alerting, cause capture, and corrective action
  • SLA performance visible to you continuously, not just at review time
05

Quality assurance

SamplingScorecardsRoot cause

Completed work is sampled and reviewed against the SOP on a set cadence, with heavier sampling for new work types and newly certified team members. Scoring is against the written procedure, so a low score is always traceable to a specific step. Errors are logged with a cause rather than a count, because a count tells you how bad last month was and a cause tells you what to change.

  • Defined sampling rates per work type, weighted by risk
  • Scorecards tied to SOP steps, reviewed with the team
  • Error log with categorized root causes and corrective actions
  • Customer-facing work reviewed for tone as well as accuracy
  • Recurring causes converted into SOP edits, training, or validation rules
06

Reporting and the monthly review

DashboardsMonthly packGA4Postgres

You get a live dashboard and a monthly pack. The dashboard covers queue volume, mix by work type, SLA attainment, backlog and aging. The pack adds interpretation: what moved, what broke, which exceptions are recurring often enough to be worth automating, and what we are recommending for the next month. The review is a working session, not a presentation — the misses are on the same page as the wins.

  • Live operational dashboard covering volume, SLA attainment and aging
  • Monthly pack with trend analysis and a prioritized recommendation list
  • Automation candidates ranked by frequency and effort to build
  • Cost and coverage transparency — hours, work types, outcomes
  • A standing monthly review with the people who run the desk
07

Automating what proves repeatable

n8nWebhooksMCPRAG

This is the part most managed-service arrangements have no incentive to do. Every month, the queue tells us which exceptions keep coming back in the same shape. Those get built out: a new branch in the agent's logic, a validation rule at the point of entry, a knowledge-base article the agent can retrieve, or an integration that removes the manual step entirely. The human queue is supposed to get narrower and harder over time, and the reporting shows whether it did.

  • Monthly automation candidates drawn from real exception data
  • Agent logic, retrieval content and validation rules updated on a cycle
  • Integration work to remove manual steps between systems
  • Before-and-after volume on every exception type we automate
  • All workflows, prompts and code delivered into accounts you own
One system, two layers

The agents and the desk are
governed together.

Engagement scale

Start where the pain actually is.

Scope is defined in the audit. You never commit to a full operation to find out whether one desk works.

Pilot

One queue, proven

A single work type or a single coverage window — after-hours calls, month-end reconciliation, one inbound queue. Scoped, documented and staffed so you can judge quality against real volume before widening anything.

Defined scope · fixed coverage window
Managed Desk

A function, run end to end

A complete function operated on your behalf — the support and dispatch desk, or the back-office queue, or data operations. Full SOP set, SLAs, quality sampling and the monthly review cycle.

Ongoing · one operational function
Full Operations

The whole operating layer

Multiple desks under one operating model, with the automation roadmap running alongside it. Shared reporting, one escalation structure, and a continuous cycle of automating what turns out to be repeatable.

Ongoing · multi-desk · roadmap included
Common questions

Before you ask.

Is this outsourcing with a new name? +

No. Traditional outsourcing takes your whole process and staffs it with people. We automate the repeatable majority first, then staff only the exceptions the agents route out. The queue is designed to shrink, and the monthly report shows whether it is shrinking. That is the opposite of an arrangement that bills you for volume.

Do we have to use your AI agents to buy managed operations? +

No, but it changes the shape of the engagement. If you already run automation we can work behind it and instrument the handoffs. If you have no automation at all we start with the exception queue as it exists, document it, and use the first weeks of data to decide what gets automated. Either way the automation and the desk are governed as one system.

What service levels do you commit to? +

Named response and resolution targets per work type, agreed during scoping and written into the engagement. A dispatch escalation and a monthly vendor reconciliation do not deserve the same clock, so they do not get the same one. Performance against each target is measured continuously and reported monthly, including the misses and what caused them.

Who writes the SOPs, and who owns them? +

We write them, working from your existing process and correcting it against what the queue actually turns up. You own them. They live in your documentation system, in your account, and they stay with you if the engagement ends. The same applies to the workflows, dashboards and code around them.

How do you keep quality from drifting? +

A sample of completed work is reviewed against the SOP on a defined cadence, with heavier sampling on new work types and new team members. Errors are logged with a cause, not just a count. Recurring causes become an SOP change, a training change, or a validation rule in the automation so the same mistake cannot be made twice.

Start here

Find out what your exception queue actually costs.

Thirty minutes, no charge. We map where work escapes your automation, what it takes to handle, and which parts should be automated before anyone is staffed against them.

Roadmap delivered · whether or not you build with us