Contact Center Software Glossary
TCN’s contact center software glossary defines vocabulary phrases that relate to contact center collections, healthcare, automotive, BPOs, and newspapers. These terms pertain to the overall experience of both agents and consumers. In this comprehensive list, you will find key terminology that every contact center team should be using to communicate. These keywords provide clarity about the meaning and use of common terms within the contact center software industry.
A
Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) – ARM is an industry related to collections and financial services, often associated with debt collections. ARM is also a set of policies and procedures that ensure owed payments are collected on time, in their entirety, and credited to the proper account. Whether you call it Collections or Account Receivables Management (ARM), TCN delivers the best cloud contact center technology in the industry. Our software increases revenue and recovery rates with an intelligent, predictive dialer solution.
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) – ACD is a tool that automatically distributes incoming calls to the most qualified group of agents based on customer needs, agent skill set, and availability. Proper ACD solutions using TCN software ensure routed calls get handed off to the right agent or department with precision to make sure customers get the help they need and have the best experience possible.
Auto Dialer – An outbound contact center solution that automatically dials customer telephone numbers and can deliver important information through an automated message, or connect a customer to a live agent once the call has been answered. Provide your customers with simple information and multiple options by tying proprietary phone numbers to automated script responses that can increase talk time by more than 300% with TCN’s automated messaging.
Agent Gateway – An intuitive agent interface designed to simplify and streamline all aspects of an agent’s role in the contact center. With TCN’s Agent Gateway, streamline all agent tasks through one interface that allows agent-to-manager communication and ways to simplify and improve agent performance.
Application Programming Interface (API) – An API can set functions and procedures allowing specific applications access to software or data of an operating system, application, or other services. Learn more about TCN’s integration with leading platforms — providing the best combination of contact center solutions.
B
Blended Contact Center Software – Allows an agent to handle both inbound and outbound calls as well as other omnichannel messaging applications. Increase agent productivity and eliminate downtime by automatically blending inbound and outbound agent interactions. TCN’s True Blended solution makes connections that are instant and customizable.
Business Intelligence – A contact center feature that provides analytic dashboards, data visualization, data tools, and comprehensive reports to be used to help organizations make decisions on KPIs and cost analysis. TCN’s Analytics and Reporting gives you the information you need to prepare for the future, manage performance from the enterprise to the individual, and support time-sensitive decision-making.
C
Call Recording Storage – This call recording software records and saves all voice conversations, putting them into a centralized location for easy access that is searchable and aids in compliance. TCN’s call recording software is built into the core product for your training and compliance needs. TCN records all inbound, outbound, manual, predictive, and manually approved calls without the need to export to a third party.
Cell Phone Scrubbing – Scrubbing your cell phone lists properly identify and remove cell phones or landline phone numbers that have recently been changed to a cell phone. Cell Phone Scrubbing is important to keep contact centers in compliance with TCPA regulations. TCN offers a sophisticated 2-tier system using Block Assignment Identification and Portability Identification to identify cell phones and help scrub them from your call campaigns.
D
Data Management Compliance Services – A collection of software applications built to safeguard your contact center against compliance regulation penalties and fines. TCN’s Compliance Suite is complete with tools to help your agents minimize compliance risk and follow industry regulations.
E
Email – Simple messages that are transmitted cost-effectively over the internet. Email messages can have attachments, images, and links. This channel of communication is very popular among consumers and businesses. By utilizing TCN’s non-intrusive email delivery technology, you can expect to have increased interactions for various applications such as collections, reminder calls, and other essential messages that need to be heard.
I
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) – An automated customer service solution that uses pre-recorded responses and inputs from the caller such as key presses or voice inputs to help meet a caller’s needs. IVRs can also hold your place in line and even accept payments over the phone — all without talking to an agent. Automate and scale your contact center by using TCN’s versatile IVR to dramatically improve your customer’s experience and satisfaction.
Interactive Voice Messaging (IVM) – A contact center tool that allows for full automation of entire interactions with self-serve options such as making a payment, completing a call to action, carrying out surveys, or confirming identity. TCN allows your customers to interact with an outbound dialer campaign without ever involving an agent. Automate your outbound customer service while perfectly supporting your inbound agents and contact center operations with quick customer interactions.
L
List Management Services (LMS) – LMS is a tool that visually augments, streamlines, and organizes all your data sets and lists in one place for easier visibility. Built as a simple, easy-to-use tool within TCN’s award-winning cloud contact center platform, LMS allows any contact center to interact with their data in real-time and is exclusive to TCN.
M
Manually Approved Calling (MAC) – Human intervention with a manual dial twist that allows a subset of agents to approve outgoing calls for a specific group of agents. This approach is often used when dialing cell phones to ensure certain regulatory requirements are met. With TCN’s Manually Approved Calling, agents can review and approve calls for other agents. During approval, agents are presented with third-party contact information giving them the information they need to decide if the call should be approved.
N
Natural Language Compliance – Natural Language Compliance is an industry-first designed to help contact centers and agencies to easily automate compliance and minimize risk as state and federal rules and regulations continue to change. Natural Language Compliance is a revolutionary feature for contact centers, enhancing compliance efforts in one user-friendly tool is exclusive to TCN’s software.
Notifications – Alerts that can be sent via email, SMS, or voice to inform an individual of past-due bills, promotions, announcements, or surveys. TCN Notify requires no hardware or software purchases while offering a range of features that are as effective as they are easy to use.
O
Omnichannel Communications – A multichannel approach to communications in a contact center. These channels include email, SMS, voice, and chat. Agents also have the ability to handle several channels at once based on permissions. TCN’s omnichannel features are designed to give your customers every opportunity to connect. The idea of using an omnichannel platform in your contact center is to give your customers the most convenient, intuitive, and straightforward pathway to connect with your business.
Outbound – A contact center that makes calls placed by an agent to a consumer. These messages can be done through a preview, manual, or predictive dialing campaign. These types of calls are mostly used for notifications, collections, and proactive communications. Outbound contact center solutions can provide flexibility, better connect rates, and increased sales. With TCN’s outbound solutions, access the many features available that allow your company to be more proactive in selling products, collections, customer care, streamlining agent reporting, and much more.
P
Phone Number Registration (STIR/SHAKEN) – A suite of protocols and procedure requirements, given by the FCC, and intended to combat caller ID spoofing on public telephone networks. Prevent your calls and numbers from being blocked or marked as spam by registering them across all carriers with TCN.
Predictive Dialer – A predictive dialer tool automatically calls numbers until it detects a connection, then immediately passes the call to a live agent. A predictive dialer can screen out busy signals, voicemails, fax machines, no-answers, and disconnected numbers. TCN’s Predictive Dialing technologies increase agent productivity by using a dialer to constantly dial numbers and distribute to available agents with advanced algorithms and will streamline your agent performance like never before.
Preview Dialer – Used as an outbound tool, a preview dialer presents the agent with relative information of a consumer before deciding to place the call or not. Preview dialers can provide a personalized look into each call before the agent is even connected. TCN’s Preview Dialer presents contact center agents with the information they need, improving context on every call. The tool also boosts agent performance while lowering call abandonment rates.
R
Room 303 – Manage communication with agents through an internal chat application that provides easy and seamless collaboration between managers and agents. Built directly into TCN’s contact center software, agents and managers no longer need to worry about switching applications to find answers to a caller’s question. With Room 303, collaboration becomes intuitive and easy.
S
Salesforce – A customer relationship management (CRM) platform built to help teams manage sales, service, and marketing activities. Salesforce is used to engage customers, grow your business, and scale eCommerce while providing customer service. TCN’s contact center software integration with Salesforce is native to use and designed to boost agent productivity and personalize your customer experiences. Once connected, your agents can add notes, take calls, and look up account history while never leaving Salesforce.
Short Message Services (SMS) – SMS is a quick and simple solution used to communicate with customers through their mobile phones and text messaging. With TCN’s Agent SMS powering your contact center’s mobile channel, your agents can quickly respond to customers’ needs, confirm appointments and even alert individuals of emergencies.
T
TCPA Compliance – The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) aims to eliminate repetitive, irrelevant, excessively intrusive, and unwanted telemarketing phone calls to consumers. Enacted in 1991, many rulings and clarifications have been made since then. For more updated information on TCPA Compliance visit our Complete Guide to TCPA Compliance. TCN’s platform doesn’t just safeguard contact center compliance against the TCPA, the contact center software is designed to help automate compliance and minimize risk as regulations and rulings come and go.
V
Voice Analytics – A tool that transcribes and allows for analyzing recorded inbound and outbound calls. The primary purpose of recording calls is to gain customer insights into each call and to find areas for agent training and improvement. These calls are searchable and indexable for future use. Call redaction is also a key part of voice analytics. TCN’s Voice Analytics retrieves and extracts information from customer interactions over the phone. It uses speech recognition technology that identifies certain words, phrases, and even the amount of silence on the call to help your organization understand its customers.
Vocal Direct – Direct-to-voicemail messaging that pushes prerecorded messages to a user’s voicemail. Using proprietary partnerships and software, voicemails are delivered directly to the end-user exclusively with TCN’s cloud-based software.
Voice Recording – Records all voices on a phone conversation for later use. These recordings are transcribed, redacted, stored, and flagged for future customer experience training. In addition to voice recording services, TCN can help keep your brand on point with a series of Professional IVR Recordings that deliver a clear and concise message to your customers. Let a professional record your simple or complex IVR and automated messages — helping increase your contact center’s IVR conversions with TCN’s contact center software.
W
Workforce Management (WFM) – WFM is a tool that creates forecasts for your organization’s resources such as: skills management, agent availability (call volume), and scheduling. The size of the contact center and the complexity of deployment can also have an effect on how to strategically deploy resources. Eliminate time-consuming modification processes for increasing your workforce engagement. TCN’s cloud-based platform provides a fast and streamlined approach to automated scheduling and forecasting.
Workforce Optimization (WFO) – A feature that provides a series of services that manage agent performance. WFO services are meant to improve the customer experience by capturing, recording, and evaluating each agent connection. These processes are automated to help reduce costs. TCN’s advanced, agent-level customizable reporting for your inbound contact center provides you with real-time data with which to measure agent performance and productivity.
Z
Zendesk – Zendesk is a service-built customer relation management (CRM) software platform for enterprise and small businesses focusing on customer satisfaction. TCN and Zendesk offer a seamless omnichannel communication integration for better customer experiences, agent efficiency, and performance.