Contact Center Software & Industry Definitions

ACD – Automatic Call Distributor:  A type of contact center software phone system can perform functions such as answer incoming calls, gets information and instructions from a database to relay to an agent and uses that information or, pre-set rules to, determine the best way to handle the call.  >Learn More.

Artificial Intelligence:

1 : A branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers.
2 : The capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.

ASR– Answer-Seizure Ratio:  The answer–seizure ratio (ASR) is the percentage of telephone calls which are answered, a measure of network quality and call success rates in telecommunications.

Blended Agent:  A contact center employee who is able to modify their time spent between multiple communication channels. Inbound, outbound and multi-channel (such as SMS, voice, email etc.)  >Learn More.

Call Center Software: Is a business telephony software centralizes communication channels and aims to boost customer engagement.  >Learn More.

Call Center CRM: (Customer Relationship Management) are software solutions that help call center agents to access the right information and knowledge about a customer’s history to improve the overall customer experience.  >Learn More.

Cloud Call Center: Available via the web and hosted with My Call Cloud in a Tier 3 secure facility is an internet server, that enables all inbound and outbound customer communications to be handled. Email, social media and voice interactions can be accessed from anywhere through the virtual contact center and cloud technology.   >Learn More.

CTI – Computer Telephony Integration: CTI enables contact center agents to easily manage phone calls from their computers using softphone technology. CTI is not just limited to answering and making phone calls but also, computer telephony integration can assist call center representatives to take a data-driven approach with customer service needs.  >Learn More.

DNC – Do Not Call: DNC is a registry that includes consumer phone numbers that have been marked “do not call” for outbound and soliciting phone calls. My Call Cloud can assist call center companies looking to comply with DNC lists without losing productivity.  It is vital that all outbound calling lists are “scrubbed” against any DNC lists to avoid large fines.   >Learn More.

Expected Wait Time: The time a customer typically for inbound contact center agents, can expect to wait until their turn to be answered by a live agent.  Often alleviated by IVR and Queued Callback or, Virtual Wait.  >Learn More.

Earlang’s Theory:

The concepts and mathematics introduced by Agner Krarup Erlang have broad applicability beyond telephony. They apply wherever users arrive more or less at random to receive exclusive service from any one of a group of service-providing elements without prior reservation, for example, where the service-providing elements are ticket-sales windows, toilets on an airplane, or motel rooms. (Erlang’s models do not apply where the service-providing elements are shared between several concurrent users or different amounts of service are consumed by different users, for instance, on circuits carrying data traffic.)

The goal of Erlang’s traffic theory is to determine exactly how many service-providing elements should be provided in order to satisfy users, without wasteful over-provisioning. To do this, a target is set for the grade of service (GoS) or quality of service (QoS). For example, in a system where there is no queuing, the GoS may be that no more than 1 call in 100 is blocked (i.e., rejected) due to all circuits being in use (a GoS of 0.01), which becomes the target probability of call blocking, P_b, when using the Erlang B formula.

There are several resulting formulae, including Erlang B, Erlang C and the related Engset formula, based on different models of user behavior and system operation. These may each be derived by means of a special case of continuous-time Markov processes known as a birth-death process. The more recent Extended Erlang B method provides a further traffic solution that draws on Erlang’s results.

First Contact Resolution (FCR): The ability to address the customer’s need the first time they call or connect with an agent, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second interaction  >Learn More.

Geographical Localization: Connecting with a customer via their geographical location as identified by self-declared information and utilizing that information to update customer profiles and deliver better, more localized customer expereiences   >Learn More.

Hosted Contact Center: A call center or, contact center that is delivered via cloud technology, lowering the traditional overhead costs associated with server-based call centers. A more efficient way to deliver contact center operations to both the agent and the customer.    >Learn More.

IVR – Interactive Voice Response: A type of contact center software that can be programmed to interact with callers on an inbound and outbound basis to gather information via touch-tone phones and voice responses.  >Learn More.

Customer Journey: The length of time and the number and type of interactions a customer typically has with a brand over the course of lead to customer and during their customer lifetime.  No longer considered a linear trajectory.  >Learn More.

KPI: A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs to evaluate their success at reaching targets.

Latency:  the delay between the sender and the receiver decoding it, this is mainly a function of the signals travel time, and processing time at any nodes the information traverses. My Call Cloud uses as many diverse paths as possible on the network layer to reduce latency when at all possible.   >Learn More.

Lead Lists: For contact centers, a lead list is typically comprised of customer information such as phone number, and a name but can also be detailed including buying history and other information related to identifying the customer to close sales ratios.   >Learn More.

Lead Vendor:  Is a Vendor that provides leads; leads are individuals or organizations with an interest in what you are selling. The interest is expressed by sharing contact information, like an email ID, a phone number, or even a social media handle. Lead vendors such as Landfall Data, Cole Information, and Giant Partners  can assist in getting leads for your call center.

Multi-Channel: Includes customer experience platforms that integrate multiple touchpoints including, but not limited to, text, social, email, chat and web.  A multi-channel cloud call center can be accessed from anywhere enabling greater agent and customer access and flexibility.   >Learn More.

NPS (Net Promoter Score): NPS (Net Promoter Score) – Both a loyalty metric and a discipline for using customer feedback to fuel profitable growth in call center operations.  NPS  is a macro metric based on a single question and has been adopted by leading companies worldwide as the standard for measuring and improving customer loyalty.  >Learn More.

Omnichannel Contact Center: Engaging a customer over multiple touch points through the customer journey to final sale and, retention. Can include text, chat, email, web and voice.  >Learn More.

PBX: Private Branch Exchange (private telephone switchboard). Is a telephone system within a business that switches calls between company users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines. (The dialer can simply act as a simple PBX in some cases)

Predictive Dialer: Is a type of outbound calling system that can auto-dial from a list of telephone numbers.  The predictive dialer dials automatically and is used to screen for busy signals, disconnected phone numbers, voicemail, and live-human answers.  >Learn More.

Preview Dialer: Stop wasting time on dropped calls, a true annoyance to the telemarketer, customer service operator and the customer. Connect to the customer immediately using contact center preview dialer technology.  >Learn More.

Queue Callback: When inbound call center volumes approach capacity or, preset limits, enabling queue callback gives customers the option to be contacted by an agent at their next earliest convenience.  >Learn More.

Ringless Voicemail No Dial (TM):  No Dial™ ringless voicemail works by “dropping” the phone message directly to a customers voicemail server, without ever ringing the phone.  >Learn More.

Ratio dialing is a setting in the outbound calling campaign of My Call Cloud that sets outbound calls based on a ratio related to the number of agents in the campaign. Example 4 to 1 ratio would be 4 lines calling for 1 agent, 2 to 1 ratio would be 10 lines calling for 5 agents. Line to agents ratio.

Screen Pops: Integrated with your call center preferred CRM, My Call Cloud custom screen pops can be programmed to populate customer information based on the number calling or, dialed. >Learn More.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a communications protocol that is commonly used for managing voice communication sessions to provide open voice path for call center agents calls. SIP is one of the protocols that enable (Voice over Internet Protocol) VoIP. 

Sales Per Hour (SPH)
A simple measure of productivity in a success per call, typically a sales-oriented call center. It can be calculated by dividing Sales by Phone Time. If an agent makes 10 sales in 5 hours, they have an SPH of 2.0.

Text-To-Speech: Text-to-speech ringless voicemail is patent pending and a unique technology offered to business partners of My Call Cloud.  Call centers can further optimize the popular ringless voicemail drop software and amplify contact center agent efforts with text-to-speech. >Learn More.

Uptime: Uptime is a metric that represents the percentage of time that hardware, an IT system or device is successfully operational. It refers to when a system is working, versus downtime, which refers to when a system is not working.

Virtual Contact Center: Clear up physical space for more agents, drastically decrease overhead costs and have your contact center hosted virtually through My Call Cloud and Tier 3 security facilities. >Learn More.

VoIP (Voice Over IP): Control and update your cloud-based phone system in real-time from any Internet-enabled device, enjoy a robust feature set with VoIP softphone dialer system. Organize your contact center and business communication better.  Unify your workforce and engage hosted flexibility through VoIP software. >Learn More.

Workforce Optimization: Workforce optimization is a strategy used to integrate siloed technologies and automate processes in order to reduce operational costs and to better manage employee performance, resulting in greater efficiency and higher customer satisfaction. >Learn More.