Industry Terms
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(Creativyst™ Glossary)
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1. In the context of inbound call centers, an abandoned call is a call from someone who hung up while waiting to be served by an agent (presumably because he or she had to wait too long on hold).
2. In an outbound context an abandoned call is a call dialed by the predictive dialer that no agent was available to take. This is sometimes referred to as a nuisance call because the called party gets hung up on the instant he or she answers the phone. For this reason, many local authorities have mandated maximum rates for outgoing abandoned calls. Typically these mandated rates are around 5 percent.
Note: Statistics reported for abandoned calls include the number of calls abandoned in a given time period or by a given agent group (this hour, this shift, this month, etc.), or the percentage of the total number of calls taken that are abandoned (the "rate" or abandonment rate).
The label "abandoned calls" is sometimes shortened to ABAN or ABN in places where space is at a premium (such as call center readerboard systems).
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Calls in Queue
Queue
Oldest Call Waiting
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Automatic Call Distributor - System for automatically routing an incoming call to the next available AGENT or REP. There are many software and hardware systems on the market, which effectively handle these functions.
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PBX
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Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction - Or Algebraic CELP - A compression technique for converting analog speech into a digital data stream. It represents an improvement in latency and other QoS attributes over CELP.
ACELP is used to improve bandwidth utilization in audio codecs, such as G.723.1.
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CS-ACELP
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Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability - ACID is an acronym and mnemonic used to express the four primary attributes required of transactions performed within transaction-based systems such as databases.
The ACID concept, as it applies to databases, is described in ISO/IEC 10026-1:1992 Section 4.
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Database
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Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development - An XML dialect for integrating transaction streams among agents, partners, and carriers in the insurance industry.
ACORD XML is a set of nearly 600 standard messaging formats for executing transactions and exchanging policy information in three areas of insurance: property/casualty, life, and re-insurance.
ACORD was designed to help bring about two important goals of the insurance processing industry: straight-through processing, which eliminates the need for manual intervention to manipulate data by integrating systems; and Single Entry Multiple Company Interface (SEMCI), which lets data be keyed in once and sent to multiple recipients regardless of platform.
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FIXML
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Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation - A technique for converting analog speech into a digital data stream. It is an improvement on PCM that is able to compress analog voice signals to use about half the digital bandwidth used by plain PCM.
ADPCM is used to improve bandwidth utilization in many codecs, such as G.722, G.722.1, and G.726.
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G.711
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Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line - A type of DSL in which the incoming and outgoing data-rates are different. Hence the name "asymmetrical". An option for different data-rates allows subscribers to tailor the available bandwidth to best suit their needs. For example, a web host typically requires much more outgoing bandwidth than incoming bandwidth. ADSL allows such a hosting service the option to commit most of their available bandwidth to outgoing traffic.
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DSL
SDSL
xDSL
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Advanced Encryption Standard
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AES - The cryptographically stronger successor to the Data Encryption Standard (DES); the selection of the AES algorithm involved submissions from around the world and was overseen by the US government's National Institute of Standards (NIST). It was adopted by NIST in May of 2002.
AES can be 128, 192, or 256 bit, depending on how much security is needed. Even in its least secure configuration (128 bit) It is much more secure than DES.
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Cryptography
Encryption
Data Encryption Standard
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ACW - Work that is required of an agent immediately following an inbound call. This often includes entering data, filling out forms and making outbound calls necessary to complete the transaction. The agent is considered unavailable to receive another inbound call while in this mode. This is also known as "Wrap-up" and "Post Call Processing" (PCP).
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A person manning the phones at a call center. Besides answering the phone to talk with clients and customers, an AGENT may perform any of a number of tasks depending on the industry s/he works in. Some tasks agents perform include product support, pre-sales support, help with problems, order taking, and client counseling.
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Rep
Agent Group
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A group of call center agents that share a common set of skills, such as being able to handle product inquiries, or that can be reached via a common (set of) called number(s). The terminology may differ slightly based on the ACD manufacturer and the application. This term may also be referred to as a DN, Gate, Split, Skills Group, or just Group. It is sometimes called a 'queue', referring to the ACD queue of incoming calls waiting to be served by a particular agent group.
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Agent
Calls In Queue
Queue
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A method of digitally encoding analogue signals that is used mostly in the USA. It is similar to another encoding scheme called uLaw, but uses different amplitude table mappings making it incompatible with uLaw encoding.
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American National Standards Institute
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American Standard Code for Information Interchange
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Automatic Number Identification – A telephone network feature that passes the number of the phone the caller is using to the call center, real-time. ANI may arrive over the D channel of an ISDN PRI circuit (out-of-band signaling), or before the first ring on a single line (inband signaling). ANI is delivered from long distance companies. Caller ID is the local phone company version of ANI, and is delivered inband. ANI is a North American term, and Calling Line Identification (CLI) is an alternative term used elsewhere.
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CLI
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American National Standards Institute: One of the main standards bodies in the United States. ANSI oversees many of the telecommunications standards in America, including ASCII and X3.64 extensions.
2. Sometimes the X3.64 extension to ASCII (for controlling character mode screen writes) is generically referred to as ANSI as well. In fact, non-standard extensions to X3.64 are sometimes called FANSI.
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ASCII
X3.64
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Application Program Interface
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Application Programming Interface
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API - A set of programming "calls" for programmers in which the calling syntax is well documented. Some APIs have been written for many platforms and also boast the advantage of allowing programmers to write code that does not have to be re-written for each of the platforms supported. When calls to an APIs can be recompiled to run unchanged across multiple platforms, they are sometimes referred to as Call Level Interfaces, or CLIs.
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CLI
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A computer that handles all operations between a company’s back-end applications or databases and the users’ computers’ Web browsers.
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Application Service Provider
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An organization that hosts software applications on its own servers allowing customers to access the application through private lines or through the Internet.
In other words, a company that provides software functionality over the Internet or a private network for a fee. This is sometimes thought of as software rental, because it is purchased based on time.
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Software applications that are intended for end-users, such as database programs, word processors, and spreadsheets. Application software runs on top of system software.
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American Standard Code for Information Interchange (pronounced ASS-key): An 8-bit standard for coding western characters into computer readable binary words. The ASCII code is a standard produced by ANSI and is known there as ANSI standard X6.4. There are two other identical international codes: the 7-Bit ISO 646, and Alphabet No. 5 of CCITT.
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ANSI
X3.64
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Asynchronous Transfer Mode
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ATM - A high-speed cell switching network technology for LANs and WANs that handles data and real-time voice and video. It combines the high efficiency of packet switching used in data networks, with the guaranteed bandwidth of circuit switching used in voice networks. It is currently used mostly by large WANS such as telephone companies or as backbones in large LAN installations. It was once thought that ATM would become popular to the desktop but its expense, coupled with tremendous improvements in Ethernet technology took ATM out of the running. ATM is widely implemented by telephone companies in their fiber loops, such as Synchronous Optical Network, ATM provides "bandwidth on demand" so customers can be charged for the amount of data they send rather than fixed-cost digital lines that often go underutilized.
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A component of ACID; Atomicity is a property of a unit of work (e.g., a transaction) such that the separate operations of the unit of work are either all performed, or none of them are performed. Simply put, atomicity means "all or nothing".
A transaction that exhibits atomicity is said to be atomic.
In other words, an atomic group of sub-tasks, --no matter how many individual tasks the group is composed of-- will be atomic if all the sub-tasks in the group are handled as a single group-task. The group-task is only completed when all the member tasks are successfully performed. If one or more of the member-tasks are not performed successfully, then the system will left in the same state it would be in if NONE of the member tasks had been performed.
Example: if entering a credit card sale is composed of three distinct steps (1. swipe, 2. key in PIN, 3. accept amount) then the transaction should be performed atomically. That way, if the swipe machine shuts off after the first step (swipe) is complete, the transaction will not be performed at all. Thus, there will be no partially completed transaction in the database tables to deal with.
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Consistency
Isolation
Durability
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The process of determining whether someone or something is, in fact, who it is declared to be; commonly done through the use of logon passwords or digital certificates.
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An early name for what is now known as an Interactive Voice Response system or (IVR).
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IVR
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An early name for what is now known as an Interactive Voice Response system or (IVR).
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IVR
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Automated Speech Recognition
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Automatic Call Distributor
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Automatic Number Identification
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ASA - Also called Average Seconds to Answer or Average Time to Answer (ATA). The average of the amount of time that has been taken to answer all calls in a given period (e.g. the last 15 minutes, today, this month). It is the total amount of time all calls waited to be answered divided by the total number of calls. It is often expressed in seconds.
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Content: © Copyright 2000-2001 John Repici (all rights reserved)
Unique Terms: 47 Double entries: 40