Call Center Glossary !

Audio Text - A pre-recorded message heard by system users.

Automated Attendant - A specialized form of an Interactive Voice Response system .Automated Attendants help manage the flow of incoming calls by automatically answering them without the intervention of a live operator. They are designed for departments that receive a large volume of incoming calls, or those that may not have enough staff to handle incoming call traffic. An automated attendant is customized software that responds to touch-tone input and routes callers to specific extensions, provides access to prerecorded information, and take messages 24 hours a day.

Automatic Number Identification (ANI) - A call center uses ANI to track the phone numbers of persons calling the call center. Useful for reporting crank or threatening callers to the appropriate authorities. Caller ID is the public telephone network version of ANI.

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) - Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is technology that allows a computer to identify the words that a person speaks into a microphone or telephone. Describes a group of special technologies that allow callers to speak words, phrases, or utterances that are used to control applications.

Call accounting - An information system that records and reports on telephone calls. Call accounting is used by most large companies to control expenses and allocate costs to various departments as well as by hotels, hospitals and other organizations that resell calls to its clientele.

Call center - Industry term referring to a company phone center that handles such services as help desk, customer support, lead generation, emergency response, telephone answering service, inbound response and outbound telemarketing.

Call distribution - Call center software feature that routes an inbound call to the most appropriate company representative (agent) based on the type of call.

Call Processing - The system and process that sets up the intended connection in a switching system. The system scans the trunk and/or station ports for any "requests" for service. Upon detecting a request, the system checks the stored instructions and look-up tables and sets the connection up accordingly.

Call Screening - This allows subscribers to answer their extensions, be told who is on the line (callers are asked by the system to speak their name before their call is connected), and choose to accept or reject the call.

Dispatch call - Call center feature that relays a call taken by a "dispatcher" to the most appropriate person to handle the call. Typically, a call is dispatched via pager or cell phone to a representative in the field.

Distribution List- A Distribution List contains the Mailbox Numbers of the subscribers included in the Distribution List.

Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) - Numbers passed from the public telephone network to identify what phone number the caller dialed.

Handling time - Time a call center representative spends talking to a caller plus the time the representative spends processing the call afterwards.

Help desk - Type of call center call that involves product use and support. Common for computer hardware and software applications.

Inbound call center - Call center services that support calls received from a customer. Inbound call center calls typically include customer support and help desk calls.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) - A voice processing system that interfaces with a database to provide callers with specific information. Callers input their unique identifying data—either by pressing certain digits on the touchtone telephone or via speech recognition—and the system responds with the requested information. IVR is commonly found in businesses to direct callers to the appropriate department. Banking by telephone is an example of an IVR application

Outbound call center - Call center services that consist of calls made by a company representative out to customers. Outbound call center calls are primarily telemarketing calls.

Personal broadcast - A type of outbound call center call that consists of a pre-recorded message that is phoned out automatically to a large number of customer phone numbers stored in a database.

Predictive dialers - Outbound call center software or hardware where phone numbers in a database are automatically dialed. Once a connection is made with a person, the call center routes the call to a company representative. Predictive dialers can detect if there is no answer, if the line is busy, or if an answering machine picks up, at which time the telephone number is automatically disconnected and put back into the queue to be dialed again.

Preview Dialer - A preview dialer automatically presents the phone service agent with contact information prior to the phone system dialing the number. The agent has complete control over the dialing process and can inform the phone system if and when the call is to be placed. If the agent does not wish to proceed with the call, the phone system can present another contact for the agent to review.

Queue - In a call center, the queue is where callers are held who are not connected immediately with a live call center representative. Callers are connected with the next available person depending on where they are placed in the queue.

Service level - In the context of a call center, service level is the percentage of incoming calls that are answered live in an specified amount of time.

Voice Mail – An automated phone-messaging system. It allows a caller to leave a message for someone who is on a call or otherwise unavailable. The person being called can then retrieve and review the message at their convenience, and follow up as necessary

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) - is a technology that allows you to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line...

Posted by: Sales & Marketing Team
Call Centers India Inc.
http://www.callcentersindia.com