Contact Center Terminology

Contact Center Terminology useful for Contact Center technology members or operation team member.

1. Contact Center Terminology
Vishad Garg

2. Contact Center Terminology
Abandoned Call or Contact – A call or contact that is
terminated by the person originating the call before
any conversation happens. In an outbound call center,
abandoned calls ref er to connects that are
disconnected by the automated dialer if live contact is
detected but no agent is available to answer the call.

3. Contact Center Terminology
After Call Work (ACW) – Work such as keying in activity
codes, updating a customer database, or filling
out forms immediately following a call.

4. Contact Center Terminology
Average Handle Time (AHT) – The amount of time an agent
spends with a call, or transaction time plus
wrap-up time.

5. Contact Center Terminology
ANI (Automatic Number Identification) – The telephone
number of a caller..

6. Contact Center Terminology
Auto dialer, Autodialler, or Automatic Calling Unit (ACU) –
Software to automatically dial telephone numbers. Autodialers
can use predictive dialing algorithms to detect whether an
answering machine or a human voice answers the call.
Autodialers can leave voice messages (see Broadcast
Messaging / Robocall) or data (like SMS messages) with the
called party. Autodialers are important to outbound call center
campaigns, like outbound telemarketing.

7. Contact Center Terminology
Automated Attendant – Answers callers with a recording and
menu choices, like an Interactive Voice system.
Automated Greetings - A greeting that automatically plays
when call is answered. Also called a voicesaver
system.

8. Contact Center Terminology
Automatic Call Back – A scheduling feature in software that
automatically queues a call back to a numberthat does not
answer.

9. Contact Center Terminology
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) – Software that processes,
queues, routes, tracks and reports incoming calls and tracks
call statistics automatically.

10. Contact Center Terminology
Average Speed Of Answer (ASA) – Average amount of time
that callers wait in queue.

11. Contact Center Terminology
Barging – Barging allows a call center manager to interrupt a
call center agent’s conversation and add additional
information while the agent and customer are on a call.

12. Contact Center Terminology
Benchmarking – Measuring your company or call center’s
performance against a standard or average, or against the
performance of other similar companies.

13. Contact Center Terminology
Blended Services – Call center services that dynamically
adjust outbound dialing levels as inbound call volumes
fluctuate to balance call load. This adjustment allows agents
to receive both inbound and outbound calls simultaneously,
and for those calls to be placed or answered with maximum
efficiency.

14. Contact Center Terminology
Busy Hour – The hour in which the largest number of
calls/contacts are offered. Some businesses will
have more than one peak call time.

15. Contact Center Terminology
Call Center – Any operation (a help desks, customer service
center, sales center, reservation centers, or
telemarketing/collections operation) with two or more agents.

16. Contact Center Terminology
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) – Software
integration that allows computer systems to interact
with telephones, email, web, f ax, voice messaging, etc.

17. Contact Center Terminology
Conferencing – Conferencing permits the call center
manager and call center agent to be on the call
simultaneously with the customer.

18. Contact Center Terminology
Contact Management – Software that keep tracks of all
customer contacts.
Contact Rate – Measure f or successfully connected inbound
and outbound calls in a call center.

19. Contact Center Terminology
Cross-Selling – A technique used by agents to sell an
additional product or service while on a customer call.

20. Contact Center Terminology
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – in a call
center, CRM is software to capture contact information for
customers. More broadly, it is a company’s strategy to attract,
grow and retain customers profitably, and involves sales,
service and customer retention.

21. Contact Center Terminology
Customer Service Representative (CSR) – An agent who
handles customer calls and contacts including account
inquiries, complaints, or support calls.

22. Contact Center Terminology
Data Directed Call Routing – Call routing by an ACD based
on a database of information such as an account number. A
caller enters the account number via touch-tone phone, the
number is identified in the database, and the call is distributed
automatically.

23. Contact Center Terminology
Delay or Queue Time – The time callers remain in queue
waiting f or an agent.

24. Contact Center Terminology
Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) – DNIS is a
feature of toll free lines that shows the number the caller
dialed.
Direct Inward Dialing (DID or DDI) – A DID is a local
telephone number that connects an extension or a
single line on a phone system.

25. Contact Center Terminology
Do Not Call (DNC) List – List of telephone numbers on the
U.S. National Do Not Call Registry.
Dual-Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) – Dialing using tones, or
touch-tone.

26. Contact Center Terminology
Handled Call – A call answered by an agent.
Handle Time – The time an agent spends on the call plus
after work time.
Hit Rate – The number of connected calls as a percent of the
number of attempts.

27. Contact Center Terminology
Handled Call – A call answered by an agent.
Handle Time – The time an agent spends on the call plus
after work time.
Hit Rate – The number of connected calls as a percent of the
number of attempts.

28. Contact Center Terminology
Home Agent or Remote Agent – An agent that works from
home or outside of the contact center location, such as at a
branch of f ice.

29. Contact Center Terminology
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Auto-Attendant – A
system that automates retrieval and processing of information.
Callers choose from a menu of options using a touchtone
(Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) or voice recognition telephone
interface. IVRs use pre-recorded voice menus and prompts. A
Hosted IVR is an IVR system hosted by an outsourced service
provider.

30. Contact Center Terminology
List Management – Managing telephone number lists,
including sorting, selecting, importing or exporting telephone
number records f or outbound calling campaigns.

31. Contact Center Terminology
Next Available Agent - Routing the first contact in queue to
the first available agent, or the agent idle the
longest, to maintain an equitable workload among agents.

32. Contact Center Terminology
Predictive Dialer or Predictive Dialler – A call center system
that uses mathematical algorithms to manage calls based on
expected agent availability, screens out no-answers, busy
signals, answering machines, and disconnected numbers, and
delivers the call to the next available agent. The dialer takes
into account the number of available agents, the number of
lines, talk time and call results to determine how many calls
need to be made to increase agent productivity. Similar to an
auto-dialer, predictive dialers also use algorithms to analyze
incoming audio to detect whether an answering machine or a
human voice answers the call.

33. Contact Center Terminology
Preview Dialer – A dialer that shows the account information
and phone number on the screen for the agent to “preview”
the information before dialing.

34. Contact Center Terminology
Private Branch Exchange (PBX) – A landline telephone
system usually internal to a company that switches calls
between internal phone lines, and shares external phone
lines, so that a dedicated line for each extension is not
required.

35. Contact Center Terminology
Progressive Dialer – An automated dialer shows the account
information and phone number on the screen after the number
is dialed, but is not predictive.

36. Contact Center Terminology
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) – The world’s
public, circuit-switched telephone service provider network.
The PSTN switches calls between telephone lines, fiber-optic
cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks,
communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables.

37. Contact Center Terminology
Queue – A queue holds an incoming or outgoing call until an
agent is available.

38. Contact Center Terminology
Screen Monitoring – Software that lets a supervisor or
manager to see an agent’s screen activity in realtime.
Screen Pop – CTI software that pops-up corresponding
customer data or campaign scripts on the computer screen
when receiving or placing a call.

39. Contact Center Terminology
Service Level – Promised speed of answer or percentage of
calls to be answered within a predefined number of seconds.

40. Contact Center Terminology
Silent Monitoring – Permits a supervisor to listen to both
sides of a conversation including an agent and a caller for
determining training and performance quality monitoring.

41. Contact Center Terminology
Skills Based Routing or Skill-Based Routing – Dialer rules
to route inbound calls to the agent best able to meet that
caller’s needs, rather than the first available or longest idle
agent.

42. Contact Center Terminology
Speech Recognition – Voice processing software to translate
human voice signals into digital signals that a computer
system can understand using discrete syllable recognition or
continuous speech recognition.
Text-to-Speech or Speech Synthesis – Software that
converts normal language text into spoken words. A
synthesizer incorporates a model of human voice
characteristics to create a synthetic but realistic
voice.

43. Contact Center Terminology
Trunk – Transmission channel between switching centers or
nodes.
Trunk Group – Several trunks provided as a group f or a call
center.

44. Contact Center Terminology
Voice Mail or Voicemail – Centralized system that captures
and stores voice-based telephone messages for later retrieval,
including taped or electronic messages.
Voice Processing – A technology that allows computers to
speak, store human voices, and react to human speech.
Voice Recognition System – Software that uses speech
recognition to dial telephone numbers
automatically.

45. Contact Center Terminology
Whisper Coaching – Whisper coaching allows a call center
manager to speak in a call center agent’s ear while a call is
going on without the customer hearing.

46. Contact Center Terminology
Wrap-Up Time – Time required by an ACD agent after a
conversation is ended, to complete work directly associated
with the completed call.