Common BPO terminologies

A: Abandoned Call: It is also known as lost call. This is call in which the call hungs up before it reaches an agent.

Adherence to schedule: It is general term which is used for an agent to refer that how well he/she has taken a call during a shift, time spent on handling calls, time spent on waiting for calls to arrive i.e availability of calls and the specific time the agent was available to take calls.

After Call Work: This is also known as wrap-up or post call processing(PCP).It is followed by an inbound transaction, this often includes data entry work, completion of forms, making outbound calls if necessary for completion of transaction. During this mode the agent is unavailable to take calls.

Agent: This is the person who handles inbound and outbound calls. He/ she is also known as customer service representative (CSR), telephone sales or service representative (TSR) or customer service professional.

Agent Group: It is also known as skills, queue or split group. It refers to the group of agents that share a common set of skills such as able to handle calls for customer support services.

Agent Call Out: This is an outbound call placed by an agent.

Agent Status: This refers to the status of an agent he or she is into like unavailable, after call work, talk time.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): It is one of the underlying factors for any call center distribution. ACD is a method for distributing incoming calls efficiently and equally among all call center agents. With the help of ACD the calls can be directed to the idlest agent within the group of agents. The agents in the ACD environment are assigned to a hunt group. In a hunt group the agents are trained to take calls on a specific topic. This is useful when high amount of calls is expected.


Answer Supervision: This is the signal sent by ACD or other device to the local or long distance carrier to accept a call. If the long distance charges apply then the billing starts for either for the agent or for the call center.

Audiotex: It is voice process facility that enables callers to automatically access the pre-recorded calls.

Auto Wrap-up: It is one of the features of ACD that automatically puts the agents into After Call Work (ACW) after they finish taking calls or disconnect the calls.

Automated Attendant: It is a voice processing capability that automates the function of the attendant It is kind of system that prompts the callers to respond to different choices like press one for sales,two for support etc. This is a automated program then coordinates with ACD and send the callers to the specified location.
Automatic Number Identification (ANI): This is one of the features of telephonic network that passes the number of the phone the caller is using in the call center. It is actually North American term and an alternative term for Calling Identification Number (CIN).

Auxiliary Work State: It is state when the agent is not taking calls, typically not associated with handling of calls.

Average Delay of Delayed Calls: This is the total delay for all calls divided by the number of calls that had to wait in queue.

Average Handling Time (AHT): The sum of average talk time and average after call work for a specified time period:


Average Speed of Answer (ASA): It is the total delay divided by total number of calls. It is also known as average delay.

Average Time to Abandonment: This is the average time the callers wait in queue before disposing a call.


B:

Base Staff: This is also called seated agents. This is the minimum number of agents required to achieve the required level of services and response time objectives for a given period of time. Seated agent calculations assume that the agents will be in their seats for the given time frame. There will fixed schedules which will add in extra agents to make up during the break time, absenteeism and other factors that can hamper the taking of calls.


Beep Tone: It is an audible notification that a call has arrived. It is also known as zip tone.

Blockage: These are the calls blocked from entering the queue.

Blocked calls: It is the call that cannot be connected immediately because no circuit is available at the time calls arrive.

Call Blending: This combines the total inbound and outbound agent group into one group of agents who are responsible for handling calls. It is system which is capable of blending the calls automatically; it puts the agents who are making outbound calls into inbound mode and vice versa.

Call by Call Routing: This is the process of routing each call to the desirable destination according to real time conditions.

Call Forcing: It is one of the features of ACD that automatically delivers calls to the agent who are available and ready to take calls. The notification is through a beep tone but do not have to press the button to hear the call.

Call Vectoring: It is versatile method for routing incoming calls that can be combined with automatic call distribution to improve the efficiency. A call vector is series of call processing steps like providing ring tones, busy tones, music, announcements and queuing calls that define how calls can handled and routed. These steps are vector commands as it determines the type of processing those calls will undergo. The vector commands can direct the calls on the premises and off the premises to any skill group or hunt group. With the combination of different vector commands, the incoming callers can be treated differently depending on the time/date, importance of the call, the expected wait time or some other criteria.

Calls in queue: It is real time report that refers to number of calls received by the ACD system but is not yet connected to the agent.

Centum Call Seconds (CSS): It is a unit of telephone traffic measurement. The first C is the Roman numeral for 100. Here, 1 hour=1 Erlang= 60 minutes=36 CCS

Collateral Duties: This refers to the non phone tasks like data entry and is flexible in nature. This can scheduled for periods when the call load is slow.

Conditioning Routing: This is the capability of the ACD to route calls depending on the current situations. It works on “If then” programming statements.

D:

Data base call handling: It is an application, whereby the ACD works in sync with the database computer to process calls based on the information in the database.

Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS): It is the string of digits that the telephone network passes to the ACD to indicate the number the caller has dialed. The ACD can then process and report on that type of call according to the user defined criteria. One trunk group can have many DNIS number.

Dual -Tone Multifrequency (DTMF): It is a signaling system that sends pair of audio frequencies to represent digits on a telephone keypad. It is also used for the term touchstone (an AT&T trademark).

Dynamic Answer: This is a feature of ACD that automatically reconfigures the number of rings before the system answer calls based on the real time queue information. This feature helps in saving money for call centers.

E:

Envelope Strategy: A strategy where enough agents are scheduled to handle inbound call load and other types of work. Here the priorities are based on inbound call load. When the inbound call load is more, all agents handle calls but when the call flow is less, some agents are reassigned some work which do not have a fixed time frame.

Erlang: An Erlang is a number between 0 and 1 that indicates how busy a telephone facility over a period of time. An erlang of 1 applied to a particular telephone circuit indicates that the phone is 100% busy of the time. An erlang can be applied to the group of lines in a telephone trunk line.


Erlang B: It is a formula developed by A. K Erlang which is widely used to determine the number of trunks required to handle the known calling load over a period of one hour. The formula assumes that if callers get busy signals, those calls go forever. This formula is generally accurate in situation where there is few busy signals.

Erlang C : This formula calculates predicted waiting times which are based on three things, these are number of servers, the number of people waiting to be served and the average amount of time it takes to serve each person. It can also predict the resources which are required to keep the waiting times within the target. Erlang C assumes that no call has been lost so that it can overestimate the staff required.


Error Rate: This refers to the number of defective transactions or defective steps during a transaction.

Escalation Plan: A plan that specifies actions to be taken when the queue begins to build beyond acceptable levels.

F:

Fax on demand: A system that enables agent to request for document using the keypads of their telephone. The selected documents are delivered to the fax number they specify.

Full- Time Equivalent (FTE): This is term used in scheduling and budgeting, in which the numbers of scheduled hours are divided.

G:

Grade of Service: The probability that a call will not be connected to system because all trunks are busy. The grade of service is represented by "p.01" which meand that 1% of calls will be "blocked."

H:

Handled Calls: It is the number of calls received and handled by the agent or by the peripheral equipment. It does not include the calls that receive busy signals or are abandoned.

Handling Time: This is the time spend by an agent in talk time after call work like handling a transaction. It can also refer to the time it takes for a machine to proess one transaction.

Help Desk: It refers to a call center which is set up to handle queries regarding the product installation, usage or problems. The term is used in the context of computer hardware and software support centers.

S:

Screen Monitoring: The capability of system that enables a supervisor or manager to remotely monitor the activities of an agent.


Service Level: It is also known telephone service factor. This is actually the percentage of incoming calls that are answered within a specific time i.e “A% of calls in B seconds”.

Speech Recognition: The capability of voice processing system to decipher the spoken words and phrases.


T1 Circuit: It is high speed digital circuit used for video, data, and voice with a band width of 1.544 megabits per second. It is the equivalent of twenty four (24) analog voice trunks.


Talk Time: The time an agent spends with a caller during a transaction.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) : It is protocol that governs the exchange of sequential data. This protocol was developed by US department of defense to link dissimilar computers across other kinds of network. It has since become a common standard for all commercial equipment and applications.

Trunk: This is a telephone circuit linking two switching systems. It is also called a line, circuit or exchange line.

Trunk Group: It is a collection of trunks associated with single periphery and used for common purpose.


Virtual Call Centre: It is a distributed call center that acts as a single site to handle calls and reporting purposes.

Voice Processing: It is a blanket term that refers to the combination of voice processing technologies. These include Voice Mail, Automated Attendant, Voice Response Unit (VRU), Audiotex and Faxback

Voice Response Unit (VRU): This is also known as Interactive Voice Response Unit (IVR) or Audi Response Unit (ARU). A VRU responds to the digits entered by the caller or the speech recognition. This is in the same way as that of a conventional computer which responds to keystrokes or clicks of mouse. When VRU is integrated with database computers, the callers can interact with the database to check the current information that is account balance and complete the transaction that is to make transfers between accounts.