Definition of Terms
- Abandoned Call: A caller that hangs up before talking to an agent.
- Adherence to Schedule: Refers to how well agents adhere to their schedules. Includes talk time, waiting for calls, other work and breaks and lunches.
- After Call Work: Referred to as “wrap-up” and “post call processing”. This is the work that is necessary to complete a call and immediately follows the call. The agent is unavailable to take calls.
- Agent Group: Also referred to as Splits, Groups, Queues or Skills Group. Agents that share a common set of skills.
- All Trunks Busy: Reports will indicate how many times all trunks were busy and the length of time this occurred. Callers will receive a busy signal or recorded message. On some ACD reports this is referred to as “deflected call”.
- Answered Call: A call is counted as answered when it reaches an agent.
- Auto Available: An ACD feature to automatically put agents into available after they finish talk time and disconnect calls.
- Auto Wrap-Up: An pre-programmed ACD feature that automatically puts agents into ”not ready” mode based on a specified amount of time.
- Automated Attendant: A voice prompting system to give callers choices as to where the call will be directed.
- Automatic Call Distributor (ACD): The type of system used for in-bound call centers. The system answers calls, queues calls, distributes calls to agents, plays delay announcements, routes and overflows calls. Automatically routes calls to the agent that is idle the longest.
- Automatc Call Sequencer (ACS): A system that is less sophisticated than an ACD but does have some ACD functionality.
- Automatic Number Identification: A telephone features that passes the phone number the caller is using. ANI is delivered from long distance companies. Caller ID is the local phone company version of ANI.
- Available State: Agents who are logged on to the ACD and waiting for calls to arrive.
- Average Delay of Delayed Calls: The average delay of calls that are delayed. It is the total delay for all calls divided by the number of calls that had to wait in queue.
- Average Handle Time: The average talk time and after call work.
- Average Speed of Answer: The amount of delay before calls are connected to agents.
- Average Time to Abandon: The average time callers wait in queue before abandoning.
- Base Staff: The minimum number of agents required to achieve service level for a specified time period.
- Benchmark: Comparing products, services and processes with other organizations.
- Best in Class: A term used to identify organizations that excel in a category.
- Blocked Call: A call that cannot enter the queue based on programming thresholds in the ACD.
- Busy Hour: A telephone traffic term referring to the hour that a trunk group carries the most traffic during the day.
- Call Blending: Combination of both inbound and outbound calls. A system that is capable of call blending automatically puts agents into either mode based on the incomimg call load.
- Call Forcing: An ACD feature that automatically delivers calls to agents who are available and ready to take calls. They hear a notification that the calls has arrived, and do not have to press a button to answer the call.
- Call Load: Call load is average talk time, average after call work times call volume for a given period.
- Calls in Queue: A real-time statistic indicating the number of calls on hold waiting to speak to an agent.
- Central Office: Refers either to a telephone company switching center or type of telephone switch used in a telephone company center.
- Circuit: A transmission path between two points in a network.
- Computer TElephone Integration: Software, hardware and programming required to integrate computers and telephones to work together.
- Delay Announcements: Recorded announcements while callers are in queue.
- Dialed Number Identification: A string of digits the telephone network passes to the ACD to indicate which number the caller dialed.
- Erlang: One hour of telephone traffic in an hour of time.
- Erlang, A.K.: A Danish engineer who worked for the Copenhagen Telephone Company in the early 1900s and developed Erlang B, Erlang C and other telephone traffic formulas.
- Erlang B: A formula used to determine the number of trunks required to handle call load during a one hour period. The formula assumes if callers get a busy signal they will not retry. Because some callers do retry, this formula can underestimate trunks required. The formula is accurate when there a few busy signals.
- Erlang C: Calculates predicted waiting times based on the number of agents, the number of callers, and the average amount of time it takes to handle the calls. This formula assumes no lost calls, busy signals and callers will wait forever in the queue, thus tends to overestimate staff required.
- Full-Time Equivalent: A term used in scheduling and budgeting, whereby the number of scheduled hours is divided by the hours in a full workweek.
- Grade of Service: “x” number of calls answered in “y” seconds, expressed as a percentage, i.e. 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds.
- Historical Reports: Reports that track call center and agent activity over a period of time.
- Index Factor: In forecasting a proportion used as a multiplier to adjust another number.
- Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN): Provides an end to end digital network, out of band signaling and greater bandwidth than older telephone services. The two standard levels of ISDN are Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate interace (PRI).
- Local Exchange Carrier (LEC): Telephone companies responsible for providing local connections and service.
- Logged On: Indicated that an agent has signed into the ACD system, but may or may not be ready to take calls.
- Longest Delay: Indicates the caller who waited the longest before either connecting to an agent or abandoning.
- Monitoring: Listening to agents’ telephone calls for purpose of quality.
- Network Interflow: The process of integrating sites to efficiently distribute calls.
- Noise Canceling Headset: Headsets equipped with technology that reduces background noise.
- Occupancy: The percentage of time agents handle calls versus waiting for calls to arrive.
- Offered Calls: Calls that either are answered by an agent or abandoned from the queue.
- Overflow: Calls that flow from one ACD group to another ACD group.
- Queue: A place to hold calls until an agent is available to take the call.
- Random Call Arrival: The normal random variation in how incoming calls arrive.
- Readerboards: Also called External Display Boards, Wall Boards. A visual display generally mounted on a wall to display call center stastics.
- Real-Time Adherence Software: Software that tracks how agents conform to their schedules.
- Real-Time Data: Information on current events in the call center, such as number of calls in queue, longest wait time, agent activity, etc.
- Rostered Staff Factor: Shrink Factor, Shrinkage, a numerical factor indicating the minimum staff required on schedule over and above base staff required to achieve service level and respons time objectives. It is calcualted after base staffing is determined and before schedules are organized, and accounts for breaks, absenteeism and ongoing training.
- Skills Based Routing: An ACD capability that matches a caller’s specific needs with an agent that has the skills to handle that call.
- T1 Circuit: A high speed digital circuit used for voice, data or video. T1 circuits offer the equivalent of twenty-four analog voice trunks.
- Talk Time: The time an agent spends with a caller.
- Tie Line: A private circuit that connects two ACDs or PBXs across a wide area.
- Uniform Call Distributor (UCD): A system that distributes calls to a group of agents but does not provide the sames features as an ACD.
- Voice Response Unit (VRU): Also referred to as Interactive Voice Response Unit (IVR). This is a system that responds when a caller either enters digits on the key pad of their telephone set or through speech commands.
- Workforce Management Software (WFM): Software systems that forecast call loads, calculate staff requirements and provide agent schedules.
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