Glossary

The proportion of queued calls that callers end before reaching an agent.

ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) routes incoming calls to agents according to configured policies.

Tasks an agent performs immediately after an interaction ends.

Tracking contact-centre agents' metrics, availability and, where permitted, live conversations.

The share of an agent's available working time spent handling customer interactions.

Model-generated suggestions presented to an employee during or after a customer interaction.

Technology that estimates whether a call was answered by a person or an answering machine.

A property whereby repeating an operation has no additional unintended effect.

A secret or identifying key supplied by a client when calling an application programming interface.

An automated call flow asking recipients to confirm attendance at a scheduled event.

A transfer in which the current agent first speaks with the intended recipient before connecting the caller.

A chronological record of significant actions taken by users and software systems.

Automated calling is the process of placing outgoing calls from a prepared list using predefined rules and call flows.

An automatically placed call delivering recorded or synthesised information.

A voice reminder placed automatically according to a schedule or business event.

Assigning call categories through rules or an analytical model.

Technology that automatically recognises words in spoken language.

Average interaction handling time, often including talk time and after-call work.

The average time callers wait before an agent answers, based on the defined set of calls.

Transferring a live call to another destination without consulting its recipient first.

A policy allowing employees to use personal devices for work activities.

Identifying the marketing source or sequence of interactions that led to a phone call.

The share of telephone interactions that lead to a defined business outcome.

Call forwarding automatically sends a call from one number or extension to another number, device or group.

A temporary pause in a telephone conversation without ending the call.

Temporarily placing an active call on hold in the system so it can be retrieved from another endpoint.

A feature allowing a user to answer a call ringing another employee or group.

A mechanism that holds incoming callers until a suitable agent becomes available.

Call recording is a telephony feature that stores audio from calls for quality assurance, training and resolving service disputes.

Rules defining how long call recordings are stored and under what conditions.

Call routing is the set of rules that determines where a phone system sends an incoming or internal call.

The marketing channel or contact point that led a customer to call a business.

A brief account of key facts, outcomes and next steps from a phone conversation.

Grouping calls by their subject, such as billing or technical support.

Call tracking is a form of marketing analytics that helps identify which advertising source generated a telephone enquiry and assess the value of different…

An unusual change in the volume, destination or cost of telephone calls.

A textual record of spoken language from a telephone conversation.

Verifying a contact or request through an agreed return telephone call.

A website component that allows a visitor to request a return call from a business.

Information identifying the calling party's number as transmitted by the telephone network.

A service that presents the calling party's number to the called party.

Sending messages across several channels in a configured sequence based on delivery outcomes.

The time from a visitor's first chat message to the first meaningful support response.

Transferring an ongoing chat from a bot or another handler to a support agent.

A distinct exchange between a visitor and an agent or bot within a chat channel.

A feature that starts a telephone call when a user clicks a number in an application or website.

A website control that initiates a telephone interaction when a visitor clicks it.

A process in which a company follows up on feedback and acts on identified problems.

A cloud contact centre is a hosted platform that helps an organisation handle customer enquiries by phone and, depending on the solution, other channels.

A chronological history of calls, messages and other contacts with a customer.

A long SMS split into multiple transmitted segments and reassembled on the recipient device.

The number of simultaneous calls supported by a phone number or its associated channels.

The legal basis or notification process associated with recording telephone conversations.

A live dashboard displaying key contact-centre operational metrics.

An estimate of future interaction volumes based on history and relevant factors.

Identifying and merging duplicate contact records in a CRM.

The stored sequence of messages and events within a customer interaction.

Words and phrases used to identify topics within telephone conversations.

Measuring periods of silence during a conversation.

An authorised company number shown as the caller identity for employees' outbound calls.

Using company mobile connectivity outside an employee's home network or country.

A SIM card allocated to an employee for company mobile communications.

Average advertising expenditure per acquired phone enquiry.

A telephone prefix identifying a country or numbering area in the international numbering plan.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a system for organising customer information, interaction history and the stages of sales or service processes.

A record of a specific sales opportunity, including its value, stage and owner.

An event or condition that starts an automated action in a CRM or connected system.

CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) connects software applications and telephone systems so they can exchange call events and control functions.

A metric assessing the effort a customer expended to resolve an issue.

A CRM record containing customer contacts, interaction history and related business information.

A measure of satisfaction with a particular service or interaction.

A status report about message delivery returned by a network or messaging platform.

A dial plan is a set of rules defining extension numbers, prefixes and how telephone calls are routed.

Information indicating the number a caller dialled, useful for distinguishing inbound destinations.

DID (Direct Inward Dialling) lets an external telephone number route an incoming call directly to a specified employee, extension or department within a business…

Routing inbound calls according to the direct dial-in number the caller reached.

DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) is the signalling method used to represent telephone keypad presses as pairs of audio frequencies.

Routing incoming calls based on touch-tone digits entered by the caller.

Dynamic call tracking attributes telephone enquiries to website sessions by showing different tracking numbers to different visitors.

Showing different tracking phone numbers to website visitors in order to attribute incoming calls.

The international telephone-numbering format combining a country code and national number.

A digital mobile-operator profile installed on an eSIM-capable device.

An extension number is a short number assigned to an employee, group or function within a company phone system.

An alternative route used when the primary call destination cannot be reached.

A mapping between data fields used by two connected software systems.

The proportion of customer issues resolved on the first contact without a follow-up interaction.

An attribution model crediting the first known marketing interaction for a conversion.

A phone-number verification method using a short incoming call.

FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) brings corporate fixed-line and mobile communications into a shared business calling environment.

G.711 is a digital telephony audio codec using PCM speech encoding at 64 kbit/s before network overhead.

A telephone number associated with a defined geographical area code.

An identifier for a Google Ads click that may be appended to a landing-page URL.

A GSM gateway connects a mobile network with an IP PBX or another telephone system using installed SIM cards.

The flow of incoming calls reaching a company's phone numbers from outside callers.

A device notification used to alert or wake a mobile calling app for an incoming call.

An intermediate store for events exchanged asynchronously between connected systems.

Classifying the objective a customer expresses in a call or chat.

An event in which a caller enters a digit or command not recognised by the current IVR menu.

A list of network addresses permitted to access a specific service.

IP telephony is the provision of telephone calls over networks that use the Internet Protocol. It can combine VoIP, SIP connections, business numbers, a…

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is an automated phone menu that plays prompts and lets callers choose a department or action using keypad input or,…

The period during which an IVR menu waits for a caller's input.

Jitter is variation in packet arrival timing that can disrupt smooth voice playback over an IP network.

A jitter buffer is a receiver-side mechanism that smooths uneven arrival times of voice packets.

An attribution model assigning conversion credit to the last known click before the outcome.

Latency is the delay between sending data and its arrival at the destination.

A routing strategy selecting an agent with the lowest current workload.

An ordered response scale measuring agreement with a statement or level of opinion.

An employee who handles visitors' text conversations in a live chat channel.

An enquiry generated by advertising that was not handled successfully or promptly.

Inserting recipient-specific information into a reusable message template.

A predefined message structure reused for notifications or campaigns.

A CRM application or interface adapted for use on mobile devices.

A short corporate extension associated with an employee's mobile device or application.

A managed, separated environment for workplace apps and data on a smartphone.

MOS (Mean Opinion Score) is a measure of perceived speech quality, commonly reported on a scale of roughly 1 to 5.

An approach that distributes conversion credit among multiple marketing touchpoints.

A multichannel phone number can handle more than one concurrent conversation using call capacity provided by the operator.

An interactive voice menu containing multiple successive levels of options.

Audio played to callers waiting in a queue or placed on hold.

Methods that identify meaning, intent and relevant entities in text or spoken input.

A metric of customers' willingness to recommend a business based on a standard survey question.

A telephone number not tied to a specific city in the national numbering plan.

The ability to retain a phone number when changing providers under local portability rules.

An authorisation framework that enables delegated, scoped access without sharing a user's password.

A contact form shown when live-chat agents are unavailable.

A valuable action outside the website that can be associated with a digital marketing interaction.

Omnichannel communication coordinates customer contact across channels so staff can maintain context as conversations move between them.

A code or password valid for one use or for a short period.

A survey question allowing a respondent to answer in their own words.

Opus is a modern audio codec designed for speech and music across a wide range of bit rates and network conditions.

The flow of calls initiated by a company's employees or automated systems.

Packet loss occurs when some network packets fail to reach their destination.

A schedule of departmental availability configured in a business telephone system.

The ability of a telephone system to remain available when some components fail.

Concealing sensitive information in interfaces, transcripts or recordings.

A group of phone numbers allocated across a company's teams, markets or campaigns.

Collecting feedback immediately following a customer interaction.

A dialling system that automatically calls the next number when an agent is ready.

Predictive dialling is an outbound calling method that estimates agent availability and starts calls in advance to reduce waiting time between conversations.

A message proactively offering a visitor assistance before they initiate a chat.

An outbound dialling mode that initiates calls in step with agent availability.

A marketing text message advertising a promotion, product or offer.

QoS for VoIP refers to traffic-management mechanisms that prioritise delay-sensitive voice packets over less time-critical traffic.

A phone enquiry that meets predefined lead-quality criteria.

An agent quality score based on a predefined evaluation framework.

Branded business messaging based on the Rich Communication Services standard.

A horizontally browsable set of cards with content and actions inside an RCS message.

An interactive command in RCS, such as opening a link, map or phone dialler.

A predefined quick reply presented to the recipient in an RCS conversation.

Rules specifying when and how often another call attempt may be made.

A subsequent customer contact about an issue previously raised with the company.

An approach to application integration using HTTP resources and standard request methods.

Messaging that supports images, cards and other multimedia or interactive components.

Ring All is a call-distribution strategy in which an incoming call rings multiple group members simultaneously.

A ring group is a set of employees or endpoints that receive incoming calls according to a shared PBX rule.

A permission model in which access depends on an assigned user role.

A method of distributing incoming calls among group members in a rotating order.

RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) transports real-time media, including voice audio, across IP networks.

A model of the stages a prospect passes through from initial interest to purchase.

A potential customer or enquiry that still needs to be qualified.

Assessing whether an agent follows an agreed sales conversation framework.

How closely survey respondents reflect the population the research aims to represent.

A measure of how closely an agent's actual activities follow their planned schedule.

Automatically opening the matching customer record when an incoming call is received.

SDP (Session Description Protocol) is a format for describing media-session parameters such as addresses, ports and supported codecs.

A secure transport protocol for real-time audio and video packets.

Automated assessment of sentiment or emotional tone in text or speech.

A call-routing method that tries several destinations in a defined sequence.

The share of interactions handled within a defined target time.

A feature that alerts multiple endpoints or employees simultaneously about one incoming call.

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a signalling protocol used to establish, modify and end voice or video sessions over IP networks. It does not…

SIP 404 Not Found is a SIP response indicating that the requested destination or resource was not found by the responding server.

SIP 486 Busy Here is a SIP response indicating that the particular called endpoint or user is busy and cannot take the call.

SIP 503 Service Unavailable is a SIP response indicating that a server is temporarily unable to process a request.

SIP INVITE is a SIP request commonly used to initiate a call or renegotiate an existing session.

A SIP number is a telephone number whose calls are delivered to an IP telephony system through a SIP connection.

Transporting SIP signalling over a TLS-encrypted connection.

A SIP proxy is an intermediary server that receives and forwards SIP requests according to routing and policy rules.

SIP REGISTER is a SIP request that lets an endpoint register its current contact address so incoming calls can be routed to it.

Unauthorised use of SIP accounts or calling routes, often causing unwanted charges.

A SIP trunk is an IP-based connection between a telephone system and a telecom operator that uses SIP signalling for external calls. It can…

A SIP URI is an address identifying a SIP user or service, commonly written as sip:user@example.com.

Routing interactions according to agent skills, language proficiency and other competencies.

A programming interface for sending SMS and retrieving associated statuses from business systems.

Dividing messaging recipients into groups with shared characteristics or needs.

Setting the timing, frequency and sequence of SMS messages under defined rules.

Using SMS as a backup when delivery through the preferred messaging channel is unavailable.

A technical gateway connecting business applications with mobile-operator messaging networks.

A recorded recipient permission to receive a specified category of text messages.

A recipient's request to stop receiving a given category of messages.

The sender name or identifier shown to an SMS recipient when supported by the network.

A softphone is an application that lets a computer or smartphone act as a telephone endpoint instead of requiring a dedicated desk phone.

The behaviour of a VoIP calling app while it is not visible on screen.

Dividing speech audio into segments attributed to different speakers.

Speech analytics examines telephone conversations using transcription, keyword detection, topic classification and other speech-processing techniques.

Technology that converts spoken audio into text.

Static call tracking uses a fixed telephone number for each advertising source or placement to identify where calls originated.

A feature that lets a supervisor join an agent's ongoing call with a customer.

Software that automatically answers routine customer questions through text chat.

The proportion of invited people who actually respond to a survey.

The proportion of speaking time contributed by different conversation participants.

Telephony–CRM integration connects a business phone platform and customer management software so call events and customer records can be exchanged.

Technology that converts written text into synthesised speech.

A PBX rule that changes call routing according to the time of day or day of week.

A number whose incoming-call charges are usually paid by the receiving business under applicable tariffs.

A service text message tied to a specific customer transaction or event.

A survey sent automatically after a specified business event.

Verifying identity through two independent authentication factors.

An SMS containing characters requiring Unicode encoding rather than the GSM 7-bit alphabet.

A call attempt that did not result in a conversation with the intended recipient.

URL parameters that label the source, medium and campaign of a marketing visit.

Business messaging through Viber for service updates or marketing under channel policies.

An interactive element in a Viber message that opens a link or supported action.

An approved brand identity used as the sender of business messages on Viber.

A virtual PBX is a cloud-hosted business telephone system for receiving, routing and managing calls without maintaining a dedicated PBX server on site.

A queueing approach that lets callers avoid remaining on the line while waiting for an agent.

An on-screen menu for choosing service options instead of navigating only through spoken prompts.

An automated system that converses with callers through a voice channel.

A defined sequence of prompts, actions and conditions in an automated voice interaction.

A one-time verification code delivered to a user through a voice call.

A short recorded or synthetic message instructing a caller on the next action.

A service that records a caller's message when a person is unavailable.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a method of transmitting voice as digital packets over IP networks. It describes a family of technologies rather…

A protected network connection used to access phone systems remotely.

An HTTP notification sent automatically by one system to another when a specified event occurs.

A defined period of a visitor's activity on a website for analytics purposes.

A mode in which a supervisor privately coaches an agent during a call without the customer hearing.

Planning contact-centre staffing and shifts based on demand forecasts and operational constraints.

An 0800 number is a national telephone number that is usually free for callers under the applicable operator scheme, while the organisation pays for…