Library
96 plain-English articles on dialers, routing, answering services, compliance, and the metrics that run a contact center.
96 articles
Outbound
How many times a week do you receive a voicemail message that arrived without your phone ringing? These silent arrivals are called “ringless voicemails” or ringless voicemail drops. They are annoying as hell, but there are some legitimate uses of this form of outbound dialing. Here are 5 things you need to know about ringless…
Terms
Abandoned calls are calls that were answered by the phone system (such as the ACD) but never reached a call center agent because the caller either hung up (usually due to a long wait), the caller was interrupted, or the caller realized he/she misdialed and arrived at the wrong number. A high number of abandoned calls can…
Terms
The term “abandonment rate” relates to how many outbound autodialed or predictive dial calls are abandoned in relation to the number of calls that are answered by customers. The abandonment rate is the rate at which calls are abandoned in relation to the number of calls that are answered by customers. For example, if a…
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
Automated call distributors (ACDs) rely on call routing to make sure that inbound calls are routed to the right agent or call queue. Learn more about ACD call routing in this article.
Terms
The term “adherence” or “adherence to schedule” is a contact center term that refers to how well agents adhere to their schedules. Adherence as a metric can include both how much time contact center agents were available to take calls during their shifts, including the time spent handling calls and the time spent waiting for…
Terms
The term “After Call Work Time” (aka “ACW”) is the amount of time taken by a call center agent after hanging up a call. The After Call Work Time is the time it takes the agent to complete the record of that call. After call work time may be used to update a customer record,…
Feature
Choosing the right software for your call center can be a daunting task, especially with so many features to consider. If your call center is in a highly regulated industry, or if you need to know how your agents are interacting with their screens, you may need to consider this feature: agent screen recording. In…
Feature
Call center managers are constantly searching for ways to enhance agent performance and improve customer satisfaction. One innovative feature that has been gaining popularity in recent years is “Agent Whisper.” This call center software feature can significantly improve agent-customer interactions, leading to better outcomes for both parties. In this feature overview, we will explore the…
Terms
The term “ANI” refers to “automatic number identification”, a feature of telephone networks which allows the origination phone number to be identified on toll calls. ANI’s are traditionally used for billing purposes (to tally up the amount of minutes of usage a particular phone number should be billed for in a given period of time).…
Predictive Dialer
Answering machine detection (or “AMD”) is technology that detects whether a call has been answered by a human or by an answering machine (or voice mail). Answering machine detection is not perfect — some approaches claim to achieve a high degree of accuracy (up to 97 or 98%), but most approaches are slightly less effective…
Answering Service
Answering services for lawyers allow attorneys and law firms to focus on what they are good at — representing their clients. Virtual receptionists and answering services can handle the task of answering lawyer phone calls and making sure that your client’s calls are answered, and more importantly, that new client calls are answered and handled…
Answering Service
Some telephone answering services offer free trials. We did the research to find out more details. Contact us for the full results, but read the summary of the results here. The free trial searches We read the terms and conditions of almost 30 virtual receptionists / telephone answering services to see which ones offer a…
Feature
Contact center operations involve dozens (or even thousands) of agents interacting with customers. How do you ensure that your call center agents are handling these interactions properly? One common way to oversee these interactions is to manually perform quality assurance reviews of agent interactions. You can read more about manual call QA reviews in our…
Terms
An automatic telephone dialing system (or “ATDS”) is a special type of dialing system that has been highly regulated by the TCPA. To qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system,” a device must have the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential generator or to produce a telephone number using…
Terms
An avatar autodialer is a special type of autodialer that uses special soundboard technology where voice snippets are manipulated by a human operator to create realistic sounding dialog. Avatar autodialers are often used when the human operator has an accent or is not fluent in the language of the person called. A U.S. court described this technology…
Terms
The Average Call Value (or “ACV”) is determined by the total revenue divided by the total number of calls. Average Call Value is particularly relevant in sales call centers where the result of a successful call is a sale of some product or service having a known value. In a BPO or call center for hire,…
Terms
The Average Handle Time (or “AHT”) refers to the average amount of time that a call lasts. Typically measured from the time a call arrives at a phone switch (such as an automated call distributor) to the time that the call is dispositioned by the call center agent. For outbound calls, the AHT is generally measured from…
Terms
The term “average speed of answer” (also known as “ASA”) refers to the average time it takes to answer an inbound call. The formula for average speed of answer is the total delay divided by the total number of calls. The total delay is typically measured from the time the inbound call hits (or arrives…
Reporting
Call centers handle large numbers of interactions, including inbound and outbound calls, chats, emails, etc. Reporting metrics are critically important to properly manage a call center. Below are some of the most important call center metrics and definitions.
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
Call center recording software is an essential part of modern ACDs. Learn more about call center recordings and what features you should expect.
Feature
Wallboards are large displays that are prominently placed in call centers. Wallboards display analytics or KPI data for contact center agents and supervisors to easily see to monitor their performance during a shift.
Feature
A Call Detail Record (CDR) is a data record produced by a telephone exchange or other telecommunications equipment that documents the details of a telephone call or other telecommunications transaction (e.g., text message) that passes through that facility or device. It’s a vital tool for telecommunications operators, as it provides granular data about each call,…
Feature
When managing a call center, the efficiency of your operation is paramount, and the platform you use plays an integral role in this. A fundamental feature of most modern contact center platforms is call forwarding. This feature is more than just a nice-to-have; it’s an absolute necessity for most call centers. Brief Overview of Call…
Feature
A common feature of most modern call center platforms is the ability to monitor agent calls. Call monitoring allows supervisors and other users to listen in (or monitor) phone calls as they happen. In the past, call monitoring often required the supervisor to patch in to a call (by dialing into a special extension). Thanks…
Terms
Call origination is a telecommunications term and generally refers to an inbound call or to the party making a call (the “call originator”). Call origination is the opposite side of call termination, and includes the activities related to the call set-up, switching and connection. It is important for a call center to understand the meaning…
Terms
Call pacing is an algorithm that determines how fast (or at what “pace”) a predictive dialer makes outbound calls. A predictive pacing algorithm generally tries to predict how many customers to call. The number of customers to call is based on variables such as how many agents are available, how long calls take (to allow…
Terms
A call pop (also known as a “screen pop”) is a way for a call center to present information about a call to an agent in conjunction with the arrival of an inbound call. A call pop can also be used to present a script or a CRM record to the call center agent. Call…
Terms
Call quality has a subjective component (how did the call quality seem to the agent or to the customer?) as well as an objective component (how well did the measured call attributes score?) The objective aspect of call quality is typically measured using the mean opinion score (“MOS” score). MOS scores have been used to…
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
Call queues are an essential part of automated call distributors (ACDs). Call queueing makes sure that your customer calls are treated properly before delivering the call to an agent.
Feature
As a call center manager, you’re always looking for ways to improve your center’s performance and also comply with client and regulatory requirements. One tool that can make a significant difference in your operations is call recording. This feature, found in most all call center software solutions, can help you monitor agent performance, ensure quality…
Terms
Call termination is a telecommunications term and generally refers to an outbound call or to the party receiving a call (the “call terminator”). Call termination is the opposite side of call origination, and includes the activities related to the call set-up, switching and connection. It is important for a call center to understand the meaning…
Feature
Many call centers handle inbound calls. While not as common for inbound customer service applications, call tracking is a feature that can be quite valuable for inbound sales calls. Depending on how the feature is implemented, call tracking can provide the call center (and its clients) with a wealth of information about each call and…
Feature
Call transcription is becoming more widely used in modern call centers. Learn what call transcription is and how to choose providers that offer this feature. As an integral part of modern call center software platforms, call transcription offers a benefits that can greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your call center. Call transcription is…
Terms
CCaaS means “contact center as a service” or “call center as a service”. CCaaS platforms are cloud-hosted contact center platforms which can be delivered to contact centers over the Internet (as a service). CCaaS implementations allow call centers to quickly stand up and manage highly sophisticated customer service and sales call centers without the expense…
Predictive Dialer
Need a predictive dialer for just a few campaigns? Don’t want to spend a ton of money on it? There are some inexpensive predictive dialer software options. We review them here.
Feature
One call center feature that can help boost agent productivity is agent “click-to-call”. We discuss agent click-to-call separate from customer-initiated click-to-call because the two features solve different problems. Agent click-to-call (aka “click-to-dial”) is a feature that improves agent productivity. Customer click-to-dial is a feature that makes it easier for customers to contact you. Agent-initiated click-to…
Feature
Customer-initiated click-to-call is a common call center software feature that allows customers to directly contact a company’s call center by clicking a button, link, or specific number on a website or mobile application. This service instantly connects customers with a customer service representative, without the need for dialing a number manually. Customer initiated click to…
Feature
As the person responsible for choosing a call center software provider, you have a vital role in ensuring the smooth operation and success of your company’s call center. One feature you need to be aware of and consider when selecting a software solution is cold transfer, also known as blind transfer. A cold transfer is…
Agent
Call centers that did COVID-19 “contact tracing” have grown like crazy the past two years. The federal government, States and local communities created new call centers to handle this work. Numerous contracts were awarded. It looks like the beginning of the end for many of these centers. This week, the State of Maine decided to…
Terms
A CRM (or “customer relationship management”) is a software application that holds the points of data on an organization’s customers, sales, leads and past transactions. CRM’s are often integrated with other systems to improve efficiency. CRMs can be used by different departments within the organization. For example, sales teams use it to identify new leads…
Agent
Different retailers and businesses have different views on how to train their call center staff to handle customer service calls. Some businesses want to standardize call handling and require agents to follow fairly regimented scripts. Other businesses allow their agents to “free form” and handle customer service calls without following a customer service script. There…
Terms
A “data dip” is a database lookup that is performed when an inbound phone call arrives at an ACD. Contact centers use data dips to look up information associated with the caller in order to better handle the call. Data dips generally use information associated with the phone number of the caller (the DNIS of…
Terms
Disposition codes (sometimes called “dispo codes“) are short codes or names that are used by call center agents (or call center software) to “disposition” a call. Put more simply — dispo codes are used as shorthand to keep track of what happened on a call. Think about it — many call centers receive or make…
Terms
DNIS is an acronym for “Dialed Number Identification Service”. A DNIS is a service offered by telcos which allows the identification of the phone number that a caller dialed. For example, if you are calling a customer service call center from your home phone, the DNIS service allows the call center to see which number…
Terms
Everyone hates spam calls. The telephone network providers have banded together to create the “do not originate list“, which is essentially a blacklist that blocks some phone numbers from being used as outbound calls. Why is the do not originate list needed? Have you ever received a phone call where the caller ID claims the…
Terms
eGain is an award-winning, customer-focused contact center solutions provider that helps contact professionals and call centers deliver exceptional customer service that results in a competitive edge. The company offers the industry’s all-inclusive suite of contact center solutions, including customer self-service applications, interactive voice response systems, unified communications (UC) and multichannel messaging solutions, call center CRMs,…
Terms
Erlang is a unit that is used in telephony to measure “load” (or the volume of calls or chats) on a system (such as a call center ACD). Erlang is also a programming language developed by the telephone services provider Ericsson. For the purposes of our definition of Erlang, we will be referring to the…
News
On April 7, 2022, the FCC issued supplemental guidance for users of the reassigned numbers database. The guidance was issued as CG Docket No. 17-59 and supplements the FCC’s earlier guidance about the safe harbor available to callers that use the reassigned numbers database. The FCC’s reassigned numbers database (or “RND”) was established to address…
News
The FCC announced that it is improving the utility of the reassigned numbers database (RND) by reducing the cost to use it. On April 8, 2022, the FCC issued a new price structure for callers that choose to access the database. The updated pricing is effective April 27, 2022. Users of the RND access the…
Terms
First call resolution (also known as “FCR“) is an important call center metric that refers to how well the call center is doing in resolving customer issues on the first call. The same metric is used for other types of interactions that contact centers may handle (such as email interactions, chat interactions, etc.). The bottom…
Predictive Dialer
Read about some of the free autodialer software options that are available. If you have technical skills there are a number of good (and free!) autodialer software packages that you can use.
Terms
Think of a gold collar worker as someone that has a job that requires specific qualifications, such as education and skills. A “gold collar worker” is not a person who works with jewelry made out of gold – although I’m sure there are a few of those out there – rather, it’s a term used…
Outbound
Outbound dialing is all about contact rates. Did the person you were calling answer the phone? Were you able to get in touch with the person you needed to talk to? Your caller ID reputation may be preventing you from getting people to pick up your phone calls. If no one answers your calls, your…
Answering Service
There are many different answering services that do essentially the same thing — answer your phones. It can be difficult to sort through the different answering service prices. This guide helps you navigate the different telephone answering service costs. How Answering Services are Billed To understand the cost of an answering service, let’s first understand…
Outbound
Outbound phone calling is rough. Legitimate contact centers that make outbound calls have a hard time getting in touch with their customers. Most customers are on mobile devices and many use spam filters that block unknown calls. Branded phone calls may be a way to get your customers to answer your phone calls. What is…
Terms
Least cost routing is a term that is used to describe how phone calls are routed by phone networks or carriers to get the lowest cost for that specific phone call. Why use least cost routing? The telephone networks are made up of thousands of different routes, carriers and rate centers. A phone call’s path…
Feature
Outbound dialing is hard! Consumers don’t answer the phone with all the phone spam they receive, and contact rates are at historical lows. As a result, call center software platforms have had to evolve to try to eke out decent answer rates for outbound calls. One feature that helps improve contact rates is “local presence…
Answering Service
Medical professionals are frequent users of virtual receptionist services. This article discusses the benefits of medical answering services and how these virtual receptionist services for medical practices work. Virtual receptionist for medical practices Doctors (or their administrators) need to worry about billing, patient records and privacy, dealing with insurance providers and Medicare, etc. But not…
Terms
A “MOS” score refers to a “Mean Opinion Score”, and is a call center term that refers to a scoring system that is used to measure the quality of a voice communication (such as a phone call between a call center agent and a customer). Simple Explanation of MOS Scores In simple terms, a high…
Terms
The call center term “occupancy” is the percentage of time call center agents spend handling incoming calls or completing other work associated with those calls, compared to the total logged-in time. “Occupancy” may also be used to refer to other “productive” time, such as handling chats, emails, etc. Occupancy is a measure of the utilization…
News
The State of West Virginia relies on Suddenlink to provide cable television services to West Virginia residents. Over 133,000 residents rely on Suddenlink for services. Apparently, Suddenlink was not providing the best customer service from its call centers. In May 2021, the Public Service Commission of West Virginia met with representatives from Suddenlink to discuss…
Predictive Dialer
For some reason, no part of telephony has generated the amount of open source interest as predictive dialers. There are a number of open source software solutions that allow you to run your own predictive dialer. Read about a few of those open source dialers here.
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
Call center ACDs (or automated call distributors) have been around for many years. Learn more about the history of call center ACDs in this article.
Predictive Dialer
Confused about all the outbound calling options that many phone systems have? Want to know the difference between a preview dialer and a predictive dialer? This article reviews most of the different outbound dialer types available.
Predictive Dialer
Predictive dialers are a special type of outbound telephone dialer and, as such, they have some unique words that you should know. (For example, do you know what “pacing” in a dialer is?)
Predictive Dialer
This article answers the question: What is the difference between a predictive dialer and an autodialer? Find out when a predictive dialer may be a better application for some outbound calling campaigns.
Predictive Dialer
What do call centers, marketers, doctors, lawyers, and school districts have in common? They all have situations where they need to make outbound calls to contact lots of people. If a business needs to contact lots of different people by phone, there’s a good chance that a predictive dialer (or other automated dialer) will help.…
Predictive Dialer
If you are using a predictive dialer in the U.S., you need to know about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and what types of automated outbound calls you can (and can’t) make.
Feature
Contact center operations involve dozens (or even thousands) of agents interacting with customers. How do you ensure that your call center agents are handling these interactions properly? One common way to oversee these interactions is to perform quality assurance reviews of agent interactions. Many call center platforms include a feature commonly referred to as a…
Terms
The U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC) launched the reassigned numbers database (RND) in November 2021. The purpose of the database is to reduce the number of spam calls that a consumer receives that were intended for a prior holder of a phone number. Introduction to the reassigned number database Assume you just got a new…
Terms
Everyone hates spam calls – even the telephone industry. The CTIA (an organization representing the U.S. wireless telephone industry) has established a service called “Registered Caller” to combat spam calls. What is “registered caller”? Registered Caller is a centralized phone number database and registry that lets legitimate callers register their phone numbers to help them…
News
In July 2021, a Federal Court in Portland Oregon approved a class action settlement in a case against Ruby Receptionists (a large telephone answering service provider). The suit alleged that Ruby did not properly disclose how it would bill clients for time its virtual receptionists spent on the phone while performing answering services. The case…
Terms
The call center term “service level” generally refers to a percentage of time that contacts are answered within a certain period of time. For example, if the service level objective is 30 seconds, then the 30-second “service level” will be the percentage of calls that were answered within 30 seconds. The service level time is…
Feature
One of the best ways to ensure a positive customer experience is to make sure that customers are connected with a knowledgeable agent — one who is skilled to handle a particular call or issue. Call centers do this by using “skills-based routing”. This feature overview will dig into the details of what to look…
Artificial Intelligence
Will speech analytics revolutionize the call center? Or is it overhyped? We dig into the details and cut through the hype for you. Speech analytics has the potential to transform certain aspects of the call center business. The labor costs associated with call centers are the primary driver of a call center operation’s financial success.…
IVR
We’ve come a long way with IVR technology as well as speech recognition and natural language processing. Today’s call centers should all be taking advantage of speech enabled IVRs with natural language. IVRs with speech recognition allow you to interact with your customers or callers more cheaply and efficiently. An agent handled call is almost…
Outbound
Before we dig into the technical details of what STIR/SHAKEN is, let’s first talk about why we need it. There are literally BILLIONS of spam calls in the U.S. each year. BILLIONS. Many of those spam calls involve caller ID spoofing, where the caller displays a caller ID (or name) that makes the called party…
Answering Service
A taxi call answering service is a type of call answering service that specializes in dispatching and scheduling taxi and limo rides. If you have ever called for a taxicab after a late night out, or scheduled a ride to the airport, you have interacted with a taxi call answering service of some sort. Why…
Terms
In the U.S., the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) Safe Harbor establishes a 3% Call Abandonment Rate as a safe harbor for telemarketers. Under the TSR, it is illegal for telemarketers to “abandon” any outbound call initiated using an autodialer. Per the rule, an “abandoned call” is one that does not connect the consumer to a sales representative…
Answering Service
Telephone answering services have been around since the invention and widespread use of the telephone. This article answers questions like: how big is the telephone answering services industry? What are some of the answering services industry and trade associations? The NAICS Classification of the Telephone Answering Services Industry Telephone answering services have been in operation…
Terms
The U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is the primary federal law governing the regulation of telephone solicitations. The TCPA regulates telephone solicitations. Therefore, any person, business, or entity that conducts telephone solicitations should comply with the TCPA. The TCPA covers voice calls, faxes, VoIP calls, and text messages. The text of the law itself…
Terms
Text-to-speech processing is a form of speech processing that is used to convert words into spoken language. TTS is used in a wide variety of applications including assistive processing for the blind as well as many call center applications. Text to speech processing is commonly built into many modern call center ACDs. Text to speech…
IVR
The “Telephone Enquiry Service” — Birth of the IVR In the 1960’s, IBM sold the IBM 7770 Audio Response Unit for use by phone companies and call centers. The cutting edge system provided “audio responses to inquiries made from telephones.” The system created audio responses that were “composed from a vocabulary prerecorded on a magnetic…
Predictive Dialer
In the late 19th century, the telecommunication industry experienced a significant shift with the invention of the automatic telephone switching system by Almon Strowger, an undertaker from Kansas City, Missouri. The Automatic Telephone Switching System Above is an image of the front page of the patent issued to Mr. Strowger (you can read the whole…
Terms
UCaaS is an acronym for “unified communications as a service”. UCaaS platforms are cloud delivered communications platforms that allow users (such as small, medium or large businesses) to subscribe to communications services rather than purchase or otherwise procure on premise, dedicated services. UCaaS is different than CCaaS in that UCaaS refers to “unified” communications –…
Outbound
Phone number reputation management is a must do activity for any call center, brand or business actively doing any level of outbound calling in 2022. If you don’t proactively manage your phone number reputation, your phone number will likely be flagged as spam and you won’t be able to contact your customers – they simply…
Answering Service
When you think about phone answering services, you probably think of traditional services, like medical phone answering or services that provide a virtual receptionist to small businesses to answer after hours calls. There are lots of other more “unusual” services that telephone answering services handle. Elevator Monitoring You know that little red “Emergency Call” button…
Terms
For call center professionals (especially those involved in outbound dialing campaigns), it’s important to understand the different terms and features associated with caller ID. We’ll explore the differences between the terms “unknown caller” and “no caller ID,” as well as their implications for both callers and recipients of calls. Introduction Caller ID is a feature…
Answering Service
Its hard enough to run a small business. You have payroll issues, rent, collecting from clients. There are a million details to worry about. Why worry about answering your phones after hours (or even during business hours)? This article explores virtual receptionist services for small businesses. Answering Services for Small Businesses Many small businesses have…
Predictive Dialer
Voice broadcast dialers are used to broadcast large numbers of prerecorded messages to phones. Read about different use cases and considerations for using a voice broadcast dialer.
Feature
One essential feature of call center software is the ability to transfer calls between agents. One specific type of transfer is called a “warm transfer”. In this article, we discuss the benefits of warm transfer for businesses and customers, how it works, factors to consider when selecting a call center software provider, and tips for…
Answering Service
A telephone answering service (also known as “TAS” or a “virtual receptionist”) is a service that answers phone calls, chats and emails on behalf of other companies. Small business, law firms, medical practices, and other businesses hire phone answering services to make sure their calls, chats and emails are answered in a professional manner no…
Predictive Dialer
Autodialers are used for a number of outbound dialing applications. Find out how autodialers work as well as some of the compliance concerns you may want to know about.
Predictive Dialer
This post answers the question: What is predictive dialing? We walk through an example of an outbound dial and then discuss how predictive dialing makes some types of calls more efficient.
Answering Service
Ever wonder where the best telephone answering service near you is located? We’ve taken the time to identify almost 400 telephone answering service providers (mainly located in the US and Canada) to find their locations and to place them in a nice map that you can interact with. In the map below, zoom in to…
Terms
WFH refers to “work from home”. WFH call centers were the exception rather than the rule prior to 2019. When COVID arrived, contact center professionals were forced to quickly move their call center agents to a work from home model. Luckily, the move to WFH was made easier by the prevalence of CCaaS platforms. These…