You’re stoked! You love helping people through conversation and you just landed your first call center position! You enter your first day of training and your trainer starts saying things like ACW, AHT, BPO… and you’re lost and perhaps a little overwhelmed. Who knew call centers had so many acronyms? No need to fear, we’ve compiled a list of the most popular call center acronyms so you can be prepared before your first day.
ACW: After Call Work
Post call work after the call has ended.
AHT: Average Handle Time
Length of the average call. Perhaps one of the most popular call center acronym across the business.
ASA: Average Speed of Answer
The amount of time it takes a call center agent to answer a phone call from a customer.
ASR: Automatic Speech Recognition
Automatic speech recognition is a software that prompts caller to answer certain questions to route the caller to the appropriate agent.
ATA: Average Time to Abandonment
The percentage of inbound phone calls made to a contact center that are abandoned before being connected to an agent in real time.
BIC: Best-in-Class
A superior product or call center within a specific market.
BPO: Business Process Outsourcing
A method of subcontracting call center operations to third-party vendor. Valor Global is a contact center BPO delivering cost effective, robust 24/7, bilingual, onshore and offshore support models
BUQS: Blended Universal Queue System
Also known as a universal queue (or US for call center acronym purposes), a BUQS integrates multiple channels used for customer communications such as phone, email, chat, and social media.
CEM: Customer Experience Management
Technology that stores customer information in one place with real-time updates.
CLI: Call Line Identity
Method of inbound call are made to a contact center that identifies caller information.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management
Manages customer interactions with agents and/or company, as well as data with current and potential customers.
CSA: Customer Service Agent
Also known as the call center acronym of CSR, the customer service agent is those that engage directly with customers via phone, chat, email, or other platform.
CSAT: Customer Satisfaction
Controlled by customer’s, this is a post-engagement or post-call survey completed by customer to gage their level of satisfaction with their agent.
CTI: Computer Telephony Integration
Used in call center environments that handle a large number of incoming calls, CTI helps agents take a data-driven approach when handling customer service needs.
DMS: Document Management System
The system which holds each and every customer’s document needed to properly handle a customer’s needs.
DPC: Dollars Per Call
This is specific to those agents that work in the collections environment. DPC is referred to as dollars collected per call.
ESAT: Employee Satisfaction
Believe it or not, ESAT is a very important call center acronym. Attrition is a very important piece to BPO’s. Understanding their employee satisfaction rates help keep their attrition numbers intact.
EWT: Expected Wait Time
The length of time a customer is expected to wait to speak or engage with a customer service agent.
FCR: First Call Resolution
An important metric, FCR measures the ability of an agent to satisfy the customer’s needs based on their first interaction.
IVR: Interactive Voice Response
A technology that allows a computer or technology to interact with humans through voice or keyboard actions.
KB: Knowledge Base
A technology used to store complex or unstructured information used by a computer system.
KM: Knowledge Management
A system used to manage, create, share and use knowledge and other types of information within a company.
KPI: Key Performance Indicator
A piece or type of data used to measure performance within a company or call center.
LAN: Local Area Network
A computer network that connects devices within a group or set of buildings.
NCP: Next Call Prevention
Similar to FCR, Next Call Prevention refers to avoiding another call from a customer by satisfying their needs on first call. This metric is also used to gage a CSR’s ability to predict future needs through fact-finding.
NPS: Net Promoter Score
Measure a customer experience and potential business growth.
NSP: Network Service Provider
A company that owns, sells, and operates internet infrastructure and services.
QA: Quality Assurance
QA measures the quality of service through continuous monitoring of calls and call needs.
RFI: Request for Information
Used as the purpose to collect information from various clients or suppliers.
ROI: Return on Investment
The amount of money returned in comparison to that spent.
RTA: Real Time Adherence
A common practice from Work Force Management, RTA compares agents current work status in relation to their scheduled work time.
SaaS: Software as a Service
A software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them avaiable over the internet.
SCB: Skill-Based Routing
A strategy used by call centers to route customers to the best agent based on customer voice response (VRU).
SL: Service Level
A measurement tied to customer service satisfaction and quality of an agent. Their service level is found by the percentage of calls answered withing a targeted measurement of time.
SLA: Service Level Adherence
The Service Level Adherence is the service level target set by a customer or client in a BPO setting.
VOC: Voice of the Customer
Customer service feedback, survey response, and insights.
VPN: Virtual Private Network
Typically used within a business to enable company users to share and send data in a private network.
VRU: Voice Response Unit
An automated answering system that is blended with hardware and software to help navigate the call through a series of prerecorded messages.
WAN: Wide Area Network
A computer network in which computers are connected when distanced a half mile or more.
WFM: Work Force Management
Work Force works directly to optimize productivity of employees, forecasting labor and agent needs, as well as creating and managing agent schedules to accomplish required tasks and call volume.