Patent ID: 8917861

Claim:
A method within a retail store for initiating a voice communication to a best-determined target, comprising the steps of: listing, by a task manager in the store, a plurality of workers of the store in a worker list with a skills profile for each worker; receiving a request for assistance from a requestor in the store; automatically searching, by the task manager, the skills profiles in the worker list for target contacts having the skills profile best-matching search criteria associated with the corresponding request needing assistance; producing, by the task manager, an ordered list of matched target contacts in order of best matches according to the search criteria; selecting, by the task manager, the best-determined matched target contact from the ordered list based in part on a current activities of the target contacts and a relative importance of those activities as determined by the task manager; automatically initiating a voice communication between the requestor and the selected target contact from the ordered list in a communication over a local area network communication system bypassing an external communication system; and wherein the search criteria of the searching step includes an authority level for the requestor and each of the matched target contacts, wherein each target contact is provided a weighting value proportional to L atc /L ar , where L atc is the authority level of the target contact and L ar is the authority value of the requestor.