Glossary of Terms

At CallScripter, we believe in transparency. We try to keep our industry jargon to a minimum so that our partners and customers can focus on the benefits that our scripting solution can offer. For those that would like to learn more about the terminology used in the contact centre industry, we have put together a glossary of terms. Think we’ve missed something? Let us know.

 

ACD – Automatic Call Distributer. The telephone system that takes all the calls either coming into (or going out) of a centre and directs each call to the right person or team to answer, queuing the calls where necessary.

 

AHT – Average Handling Time. How long an agent is dealing with one interaction and therefore unable to accept a new work item.

 

API – Application Program Interface. A set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications.

 

Automated Speech Recognition – A solution to automate some or all parts of a customer call. It allows the caller to interact with your call centre, using their natural language, without the involvement of an Agent.

 

BPO – Business Process Outsourcing; Enlisting another company to deliver a business task.

 

CIC – Customer Interaction Centre. An Interactive Intelligence product offering an all-in-one, unified application suite to manage business communications on a single platform.

 

CRM – Customer Relationship Management. CRM systems organise the customer interactions of an organisation from sales and marketing through to customer service and technical support.

 

CTI – Computer Telephony Integration. Technology which keeps interactions on a telephone and a computer coordinated, this is sometimes referred to as a screen pop.

 

Cloud computing – the ability to offer a system, service or solution using a Wide Area Network (WAN) or more locally using a Local Area Network (LAN).

 

FCR – First Call Resolution. A measure of success for an individual interaction.

 

IceLib – Interaction Center Extension Library. An internal and 3rd party API used to communicate with Session Manager.

 

IVR – Interactive Voice Response. This technology prompts callers to press a numerical key on their telephone pad to route them to the best agent to handle their call.

 

Knowledge Management System – A single place that records potential customer queries.

 

Multi-skilling – the ability to handle different types of tasks e.g. inbound and outbound campaigns.

 

Outsourcing – The sharing of contact centre activities with a third party, such as overflow calls or out of hours services.

 

Predictive Dialler – Specialist telephony equipment for managing outbound calls. The dialler will phone the telephone number of the customers you want to contact, and only when a person answers the phone, will the call then be directed to an agent to answer.

 

ROI – Return on Investment. A measure of probability dependent on the performance of an operation.

 

SaaS – Software as a Service. The remote delivery of an item of software or a system by a provider to a subscriber or user base.

 

SIP – Session Initiated Protocol. This signalling system enables a range of applications such as voice, data, video and pictures to be integrated allowing the user to switch between one mode and another.

 

Talk time – the amount of time an agent spends on a call to a customer.

 

Unified Communications – the blending of interaction types.

 

Unified Desktop – A Desktop Application which amalgamates other systems or interfaces and accepts both voice and electronic communications. A Unified Desktop may also populate an underlying (CRM) system with interaction or customer data, in real-time.