Call Center
Glossary of Terms
Like many others, the Call Center industry has a language of its own. We’ve provided a glossary in case some of the terms are unfamiliar.
Menu Levels
Number of Menu Choices
Agent Voice Connection | VoIP Best Effort | VoIP Managed QoS* | PSTN Any Phone
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Database Integration
Agent Desktop Integration
Hold music
Historical Reporting
Real-time Supervisor Display
Export Statistics to Excel
Reason Codes
Agent to Agent Transfer Notes
Call Disposition Codes
Live Call Monitoring
Call Recording
Supervisor to Agent Chat
Call Messaging / Voice Mail
Web Chat
Email Routing
Carrier-class Fault Tolerance / Recovery
Software Upgrades
Support
Menu Levels
When a caller is presented with a menu of choices, such as” Press 1 for sales, press 2 for services” this is a menu level. In many interactive voice response applications a choice at one level will result in the caller being presented with another menu, which represents a second level of menus. In the example above the caller who presses 1 for sales might be presented with a second level menu requesting that they “press 1 for bamboo steamers, press 2 for ginzu knives”.
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At every level of a menu the caller will be presented with a set of choices. The number of choices is limited by the number of numeric keys on the standard telephone keypad (0-9). The keys will correspond to the choices presented in the selection announcement (“press 1 for sales, press 2 for service, etc. The * and # keys can also be used but are usually either undefined or used for special functions like return to the previous menu for * and enter for #.
Sometimes an application may define an action for a key that in not mentioned in the announcement. This is a hidden option and is used to provide access to “hidden” functions such as access to a log-in script for field sales employees.
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Agent Voice Connection | VoIP Best Effort | VoIP Managed QoS* | PSTN Any Phone
In coming callers are connected to the CVCC hosting center using the public switched telephone network (PSTN) usually using the familiar 800 numbers. The CVCC system then connects the caller to an agent by placing a call to the phone the agent is using. This can be any telephone or directly to the users PC.
There are several choices in how this connection is made with different costs and call quality.
The PSTN is the highest quality and most reliable but also carries the highest per minute costs, though these have been dramatically reduced in recent years.
A voice connection over the internet, referred to as a VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol connection is the alternative and can be free or also have a per minute charge for higher quality connections made by a VoIP carrier. VoIP carriers act like their PSTN counterparts by providing high quality and very reliable connections and charge a per minute fee for the service. VoIP carriers manage the calls from end-to-end (hence the term managed quality of service (QoS).
Best effort VoIP is free of per minute charges but also subject to intermittent quality problems because of unpredictable congestion in the public internet.
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Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
If you have ever called an 800 number and gotten a recorded menu of choices (press 1 for sales ,press 2 for service) you have used an IVR system, also sometimes called a voice response unit (VRU).
IVR systems are also used to provide more sophisticated applications for callers because in addition to allowing users to select menu items from a list, IVR systems can take numeric information from the caller such as their account number or flight number and look that information up in a database and speak the resulting account balance or flight arrival time.
IVR systems can even write information into a database so callers can conduct complete transactions directly with the IVR system without interacting with a human agent. Since the cost per minute for the IVR system is much less that that of a human agent companies try to satisfy as many callers with the automated system as possible thus saving money and reserving their agents time for truly valuable transactions. This is sometime referred to a “caller self service”.
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Database Integration
When and IVR system needs to access information in a company database to present to the user, the agent or to make routing decisions it need s to know how to access the database and how the information is organized. The process of linking the IVR system to the information in the database is called integration.
In recent years the process of database integration has become much faster, easier and much les expensive through the adoption of standards for interacting with databases by all of the major vendors. ODBC or Open Database Connectivity is an example of the most often used standard.
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Agent Desktop Integration
As a part of the initial call processing callers are often asked to provide their account number or other pertinent identifying information. If the call is later transferred to an agent it is helpful to make this information available to the agent thus preventing the caller form becoming annoyed by having to given the number a second, or third, time.
The most automated version of this is when the account number is inserted in the customer service application on the agents PC by the IVR system and the customer records are automatically retrieved at the same time the call is being presented to the agent on their phone. Some applications even permit the IVR system to specify which of several screens of data are presented to the agent so that the agent knows immediately that the caller is interested in ginzu knives and not bamboo steamers.
The automatic population of the agents screen in this manner is often referred to as an agent screen pop.
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Hold Music
This is the music the caller hears while they are waiting in queue for an agent to answer the call and when the caller is placed on hold by the agent. It can be music of the companies choice or it can contain music with company specific announcements included to promote the company or its products.
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Historical Reporting
Call center systems collect data on everything that happens in the center and maintains this in a database. The information on past activity is extremely valuable to supervisors and managers who need to be able to assess the performance of the center, the agents and the various marketing campaigns that direct callers to the center. It is also useful for predicting staffing needs and identifying the causes for long delays in responding to callers or discrepancies in the number of callers handled by various agents or teams.
CVCC has a comprehensive set of reports that allow the user to select the information and level of detailed required. Reports can be requests as needed or they can be scheduled to be run on a regular basis such as a weekly call summary report.
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Real-time Supervisor Display
Incoming call volume and the readiness of agents is a very dynamic activity. Supervisors can keep on top of the ever changing situation by observing one or more real time reports on their PC. The real time reports will show the actual state of the callers, teams and agents at any point in time. They are usually updated every few seconds and contain both graphical and tabular information.
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Export Statistics to Excel
Electronic spreadsheets are the ubiquitous method for analyzing information. While CVCC maintains a comprehensive set of reports to cover most needs there are often needs to analyze call center data beyond the historical reports.
To answer this need CVCC provides the ability for managers and supervisors to retrieve their historical data in spreadsheet formats for further analysis.
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Reason Codes
During a normal shift for an agent or supervisor there are time when they are not available to take calls, such as meetings, training, breaks, and lunch. CVCC has been designed to maintain the data necessary for time and attendance systems by allowing the agents/supervisors to log-in at the beginning of their shift and make maintain their readiness to process calls (the ready state). When they are in the not ready state the system can collect the reason and keep this information in the database for reporting purposes.
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Agent to Agent Transfer Notes
An agent can enter information about a caller before transferring a call that will help the next agent process the call more efficiently.
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Call Disposition Codes
Each call into the center has some result or disposition. It could have been a sale, a successful service call or maybe the call needed to be transferred to another department. Disposition codes allow the system to collect this information form the agents at the time of the call and present this information in reports.
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Live Call Monitoring
CVCC provides several means but which a supervisor can listen live to a call. The supervisor can select the agent they wish to monitor and listen in one of three modes:
- Listen only: the caller and the agents cannot hear the supervisor and are unaware that the call is being monitored.
- Coaching: the agent can hear the supervisor but the caller cannot. Using coach mode the supervisor can tell the agent what to do next without the caller knowing. This is an excellent tool for training.
- Conference: The caller and the agent can hear the supervisor.
The supervisor can change from mode to mode as required during the call and can also pull the call from the agent if necessary.
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Call Recording
No, any telephone that can be called with a 10-digit number will work.
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Supervisor to Agent Chat
This is an instant messaging type application where the agent and supervisor can exchange instant messages (but not agent to agent).
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Call Messaging / Voice Mail
Callers can be offered the option of leaving a voicemail message
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Web Chat
A text messaging system where an outside user requests a text messaging or “chat” session with an agent. The “caller” and agent interact via text message windows on their PC’s in much the same way they would on the phone.
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Email Routing
Emails to company mailboxes can be directed to qualified agents for a response much the same way calls are distributed. Because emails are not a real time activity they can be processed during low call volume periods to make the most efficient use of an agent's time.
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Carrier-class Fault Tolerance / Recovery
Call centers are mission critical applications for most businesses that use them so they must be available all the time and be able to keep running in the event of a fault in the systems or infrastructure. CVCC has been designed to provide the same kind of reliability and fault tolerance that we are accustomed to receiving from the traditional phone companies or carriers.
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Software Upgrades
Additional of new features and other improvements to a system over time. This usually takes the form of a software upgrade or new load of the application. This can create complexity and disruption in a traditional call center systems environment. With CVCC the software upgrades are all managed in the hosting center and the user operations are never impacted.
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Support
Answering questions about the operation of the application, reporting software problems or requesting changes in operations. Support is provided to CVCC customer via the online help and Frequently asked Questions (FAQ), email questions and live call support.
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* If within service area of VoIP partner
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