Call center terminology can be an intimidating group of terms and abbreviations so we've created a list of commonly used terms specific to the industry to help you.
Call Center
Call center is a general industry term referring to many different types of call center facilities. Typically this is a center that handles one or many different types of services such as help desk, lead generation, emergency response, telephone answering services, outbound telemarketing, direct response, and customer service, among others.
Abandoned Call
A call where the caller disconnects before having reached an agent.
Agent
A call center staff member handling outgoing or incoming calls. There are a variety of names that a call center agent may be known as such as CSR (Customer Service Representative), operator, or communicator, to name just a few.
ANI
A Call center uses ANI (Automatic Number Identification) to keep track of phone numbers of people calling in to the call center. This is particularly useful in reporting crank callers or threats from callers to the appropriate authorities. Caller ID is the phone company version of ANI.
Answering Services
Call center service focused on taking calls on behalf of a person or business during break periods or after hours. Typically, a simple message is taken and relayed back to the client enlisting the call center answering service.
Auto Answer Greeting
Pre-recorded customized greeting played at the beginning of a call answered by the system. This greeting can be created by a call center staff member, or directly by the call center client, and played to the caller before the call is routed to an agent.
Call Distribution
In a call center environment where there are many different types of calls, it is important to ensure that each of the calls goes to the most appropriate call center agent to handle the specifics involved. This is set up by using a call distribution list, which tells the telephony software which agent can handle the call type.
Direct Response
Direct response is the process of measuring the results of direct media. This can be anything from a mail drop to television spots (DRTV), and everything in between. A contact number, usually a toll free number, is provided via the media source and people call in regarding the reason of the direct marketing. Types of calls that fall under the direct response umbrella include reservation bookings, lead capture, surveys, coupon redemption, catalog order entry, dealer locate, fundraising and donation lines, information and referral, mail order fulfillment, market research, merchant processing, and many more.
Dispatch
Dispatch calls are simply the calls that require a call center agent to take a message directly from the caller and relay the information to the person who the message was intended for. Commonly, dispatch calls are sent via text to a pager or as a text message to a cellular phone, or any other means of electronic text transfer.
DNIS
Dialed Number Identification Service. A string of numbers passed from the telephone network to identify what number the caller dialed. The system can then report on the number dialed to track various user/client defined specifics.
Emergency Response
Emergency Response calls generally refer to calls requiring specific and immediate handling by the call center agent. The caller supplies the reason of their call and the call center agent escalates the information to the appropriate person, as supplied by the client, to relay the information to. Usually, the client supplies the contact information for an on-call person, and several backup on call people in the event the scheduled on call person cannot be reached to handle the situation.
Handling Time
The time a call center agent spends connected to the caller combined with the time the call center agent spends handling the requirements of the call after the caller has disconnected.
Help Desk
Help Desk calls coming in to a call center are typically referring to calls for product usage and support or problems. Help desk calls often refer to but are not limited to computer software packages or hardware configurations.
Inbound
Call center services are generally broken down into two basic categories-inbound and outbound. Inbound calls are the calls received by the call center on behalf of a client. They consist of help desk calls, direct marketing calls, emergency response calls, answering service calls, and any number of other types of calls where the caller dials a number that connects to the call center.
IVR
Interactive Voice Response. IVR is often used to provide an interactive menu message, providing the caller with keypad options for directories of information or call direction. It is a common feature used in larger business to direct callers to the department that best suits their needs. IVR can also be used to log the answers to survey questions by instructing the caller to press specific buttons on the telephone keypad which would correspond with programmed answers.
Monitoring
This is a particularly useful way to ensure the quality of calls handled by call center agents. Constant evaluation of how a client's account is handled greatly reduces the chance of mishandled situations. In fact, for DRTV or direct response clients, it more often results in higher conversions of information only to specific desired call types.
Outbound
Call center services are generally broken down into two basic categories-outbound and inbound. Outbound calls are the calls made by call center agents on behalf of the client. They consist of various types of telemarketing such as not for profit and fundraising calls, contact list cleaning and updating, verification services, and selling products or services to name a few.
Paging
Paging is a common method of delivering a message to a client. It can be a text message being sent to a pager unit or cell phone, or it could be faxed or even emailed.
Personal Broadcast
Broadcasting recorded information to an entire calling database has become a very popular method of reaching people with a particular message. Although it falls under the outbound category, no live call center agent is involved in the process. The client or a call center staff member records the desired message and an automatic dialer calls all of the phone numbers in a database supplied by the client and relays the message.
Pre-announce
A pre-announce is a recorded informational or instructional message that is played to people who call in on a client's account. The line is answered by the system and the message is played before routing the call to a live call center agent.
Predictive Dialing
Once again, falling under the category of Outbound Call Center Services, predictive dialing is a process whereby a database of phone numbers is loaded into the system and is then automatically dialed. Once a call connection is made, the system sends the live call to an outbound call center agent to handle. When a predictive dialer detects there is no answer, or the line is busy or an answering machine, it disconnects and puts the number back into the queue to be dialed again.
Queue
The queue is where the system holds callers who are not connected with a live call center agent. When someone calls in and there are no live agents available to take the call, the call is then placed in queue until an agent becomes available to take the call.
Service Level
Service level is the percentage of incoming calls that are answered live in an established reasonable amount of time. For example, 96 out of 100 calls are answered in 30 seconds or less would result in a 96% Service level.
Talk Time
The time that a call center agent spends on the phone with a caller is known as talk time. Talk time includes everything from the time the agent greets the caller, to the time they make their closing statement and disconnects the call.
Toll-Free Numbers
Toll free numbers allow callers to reach a call center no matter of location, without incurring long distance charges. Typically, toll free numbers begin with 800, 888, 866, and 877.
Vanity Numbers
Vanity numbers are unique in the sense that they usually spell out a word which forms the phone number (usually a toll free number). If you look at the telephone key pad, you will notice that there are letters that correlate with each number. These letters are used to make a phone number easy to remember, or to represent the name of a company or a service or product they offer.
Web Services
Web services include live on-line sales and order entry, e-commerce transaction support, live on-line inquiry handling, live on-line technical support, and one-to-one relationship marketing, to name a few.
The Salk Marketing Group · 2300 West Sample Road,
Ste. #306 Pompano Beach, Florida 33073 ·
info@salkmarketing.com
954.968.1234 phone · 954.301.2223
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