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Call center terminology can be a strange group of
terms and abbreviations so we've created a resource 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 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
our 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. Many companies have vanity toll-free numbers such as
1-866-mshantz
(1-866-674-2689)
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.
For more information about our services and
capabilities, email us at
info@northerncom.com or
call toll-free 1-800-461-3317. |
