Decoding Contact Center Jargon: A Glossary of Common Terms and Acronyms

The contact center software world is chock full of acronyms and other industry-specific terms that professionals in the industry must understand. Unsure if you are up to speed on all of the must-know jargon? This blog is a great place to start, whether you want to test yourself or just brush up on the basics.

Contact center terminologies

• Abandoned call: This term refers to a call that is connected (whether inbound or outbound) but is disconnected before the customer speaks with an agent. 
• Call blending: The ability to handle inbound and outbound calls at the same time by implementing rules that, for example, ensure certain agents are only available for inbound calls during a specific time period.
• Customer journey: Refers to all interactions a customer has with your contact center, from the initial contact to the most recent interaction. 
• Churn rate: A number that quantifies how many customers stop doing business with your contact center during a specific time.
• Gamification: The strategy of motivating agents through incentives that resemble games, such as creating competition among agents, etc.
• Manual dialer: Rather than outbound calls being automatically assigned to an available agent, the agent must dial phone numbers on their own. Manual dialing can be useful for allowing agents more time to prep for the call. 

Contact center acronyms

• Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): Empowering more effective use of agents, an ACD system automatically sends calls to the agent most equipped to handle the presented problem.
• Application Programming Interface (API): This acronym refers to how different software programs communicate with each other to accomplish tasks. It allows users to add customizations by using the existing communications without having to build them from scratch.
• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): Sometimes, businesses hire out certain aspects of their operations to a third party. For example, a hospital might hire a company to handle certain aspects of its contact center needs. This would be referred to as BPO.
• Full-Time Equivalent (FTE): Refers to the hours that a single full-time employee works. This term is used to determine staffing needs. For instance, if a contact center has 20 full-time agents, their required FTE hours would be 800 hours per week (20 agents multiplied by 40 working hours per week).
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR): This system handles customer requests within an automated menu that provides a variety of options that they can utilize to communicate with your contact center. 
• Service Level Agreement (SLA): This term refers to the agreement two or more organizations enter into that details what work each party will provide to the other(s).

Contact center vocabulary glossary

This list is not comprehensive. In fact, it’s just a start! However, luckily for you, TCN has compiled an entire contact center software glossary that you can refer to, whether you’re looking for more information on Data Management Compliance Services, Interactive Voice Response or anything in between.