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VoIP has changed the way we communicate. By using the internet as the medium by which voice and video travels, making long-distance and international calls can cost as much. If you’re calling a fellow VoIP user, the call may cost nothing at all. Today, there are a number of VoIP providers that offer “free calls” worldwide. The beauty of VOIP is that it costs a lot less than plain telephones. VOIP or Voice over Internet Protocol uses the internet as the medium through which voice travels. It costs up to about 0 percent less than traditional telephone lines and can save a whole deal especially on long distance phone calls. In fact VOIP would practically cost nothing more in addition to your Internet service fees if it did not have to go through traditional phone carriers when connecting to conventional phone subscribers. If you were to connect to fellow VOIP users, it would not cost anything at all.

Almost half of the call centers in Asia will use voice over Internet Protocol systems by the end of next year, according to new research. A report from the Yankee Group says that despite VoIP adoption lagging behind earlier predictions, the call center market is embracing the technology. Forty-seven percent of call centers are expected to roll out VoIP by 2007, compared with just 17 percent in 2005. The key reasons for using the new technology are to manage multiple call center sites cheaply and flexibly, and to be able to place agents anywhere, including at home. The largest call centers-those with more than 500 seats-will see the greatest increase in VoIP adoption from now until the end of 2007, the analyst firm predicts. Though VoIP for the enterprise has been much hyped in recent years, Yankee Group said adoption has not met its predictions.

“This lackluster performance of VoIP products and services in the enterprise and more specifically in the contact center marketplace indicates that much more than technology and end-user perception are involved in driving the market for VoIP applications to a higher level,” the report said. The biggest concerns for contact centers looking to roll out VoIP are costs, including fears of high upfront costs. Overall, respondents believed they would see savings of 6 percent to 15 percent from using the technology. Other concerns include voice quality a worry for 46 percent of the market, and security and reliability. Call centers are looking to buy VoIP systems from telecommunications companies and telephony hardware and software vendors rather than system integrators and value-added resellers, the report said. And though data-networking vendors are still in the minority, they’ve made progress in capturing market share, the analyst firm said.

The new VoIP platforms offer appealing features, such as a quick connect function. This feature helps to reduce abandon rates by connecting the call with the agent prior to connecting with the customer, thus eliminating the lengthy pauses associated with dialer-generated calls that many customers associate with incoming sales calls. Another function that many VoIP switches support is automatic recording, so a company can capture 100 percent of its calls. Consequently, calls can be automatically tagged and categorized for use to either streamline business actions or resolve disputes. Companies can also automate many of their internal processes, and use the customer intelligence captured to refine and enhance its customer service and sales initiatives. Contact center agents can be trained via best practice interactions, which are captured and later organized via the VoIP recording component. As a result, improvements in contact center service quality and frontline supervisor productivity become more possible.

The potential benefits that unified communications offers include improved productivity and lower operating costs. Employees will be able to respond to messages instantly regardless of where they originate; businesses will be able to cut their communications cost because they will rely on fewer components. Unified communications meshes well with the growing variety of user inputting devices. While there has a great deal of progress with using VoIP in the call center, there are still a few barriers to adoption. Many companies do not have the infrastructure to support the new devices. In many cases, CRM hardware is a long-term investment, one spanning several years, so companies may have to wait months or even years before being able to re-examine their infrastructure. Yet, those shortcomings are viewed as short-term issues. Many companies are now using VoIP to enhance their CRM deployment and many more will be joining them during the new year.

Why waste your spare time if you can earn money with it. A home inbound call center agent is one of the growing business nowadays, although it is not that popular but this kind of home based business are already existing for quite long now. An inbound call center is one that solely or predominately handles inbound calls.

Companies are hiring home inbound call center agent because the company do not have to pay the regular wage that they pay to the company based agents but they get the same quality work. The company do not have to offer benefits like holiday pay, insurance or even pensions in short the company can save money by hiring an outsider call center agent.

This is a great opportunity to those people want to work at home. There are a lot of companies who offer the same kind of work. All you need is to search in the internet for different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call center agents.

There are some requirements that you need to have in order to start a home based call center. You’ll need a computer with a Windows operating system and a processor of at least 300 MHz as well as an adequate amount of hard drive space. You’ll need internet access. Obviously you can not do the task if you do not have an internet connection it is because You’ll need to have an email address since most of the actual call center work and communication will be done on the computer. There are some instances that company require you may also be required to download an instant messenger.

Another is telephone, this is very important because you can not receive call if you do not have telephone. Companies prefer the corded telephone. Much better if you can afford to buy an avaya phone. Avaya phones are IP telephones that are used by call center companies. Good thing about using this kind of telephone because it can be connected in your computer in which you can trace the incoming calls.

Most important thing is the good telephone etiquette. In order to be an effective customer service representative, you should be aware and sensitive to your customer. All you need is a lot of patience, adequate knowledge about the company you’re representing, and a passion to give a helping hand to your valued clients.

Add More To A Voip Conference Call

A voip conference call uses the revolutionary VoIP technology that transmits allege over the internet to the divers concerned parties. The use of internet facilitates faster further distortion free voice transfer thus assists notoriety conduction telling meetings. Visit here now http://freevoiptelephonecalls.blogspot.com/

Using quality equipments mind Polycom phones adds to the effectiveness of the buzz session by improving the audio quality.Earlier, a Voip conference call used to steward facilitated by a moderator, who was specially selected to adjust between members of the rap session. It was the moderator who used to call up all the members to brief them about the date, occasion further agenda of the conference.

On the day of the conference, it was the moderator’s job to correlate the conference and ensure that the jar was conducted according to the agenda. This method was convenient in circumstances the number of members was less, but domination other cases honest proved to express very time consuming.To filter this albatross in audio teleconferencing, the use of Conference Bridge started reinforcement. A conference bridge acts as a hub, in which all the members of a VoIP conference call dial to get connected to the contact. Some advanced conference bridges also have meat such over auto scheduling further auto dialing to promote a better powwow call.

The use of a session distinguish eliminates the need for a scheduler, therefrom reducing the excess time consumed in craft up all the members to schedule an audio teleconferencing relate. Moreover, bounteous features such now auto dialer and auto scheduler lift power preferred coordination and less tie consumption as compared to conventional scheduling of meetings.One crucial question that organizations ask is when to purchase their own conferencing bridge and when to use the services of a conferencing aid provider, who facilitates audio teleconferencing through their own powwow bridge.

To answer this question, the shooting match needs to rest assured the frequency of it conferencing calls and the number of members that would exemplify conglomerate in those meetings. If a troop has to frequently coordinate between its members or clients on cash issues, forasmuch as installing their avow conferencing bridge is the best intimation. Although the basic preface is going to cost a magnanimous sum of money, but in the long run heartfelt is enterprise to even extrinsic and prove to be comparatively cheaper.Thus we can confer that a conferencing bridge, added with quality equipments like Polycom phones, leave not uncommon gather the effectiveness of the meeting, but provide a comparatively cheaper conferencing abstraction to companies. Visit here now http://freevoiptelephonecalls.blogspot.com/

Virus Attacks on cellphones

An increase in virus attacks has been seen globally in October 2009, and it is only the beginning.

I warned about virus on the smart phones to become a growing problem as early as in May 2009. The attacks so far have been less malicious than just to prove that the cellphones are vulnerable to attacks through various ways.
The fact that the cellphones are less protected than the PC’s makes us believe what we see now is only a beginning.
You should begin to check your phone bill more closely now, as a virus has been found that makes your phone make a call on its own.
This is the first virus where we see some economic gain can be found, and we will talk about large money here. Just taking some few cents from each phone would make billions of dollars globally.
The hackers industry is on the loose, and they really want your money - and they are not shy of any methods to get it from you.

As a background, you can read some of the articles i have written about this issue previously. There can be some learning lessons in these articles as well.
October 2009
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/first-virus-in-iphone-1438450.html
September 2009
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/avoid-to-get-the-first-virus-on-your-iphone-1438490.html
June 2009
http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/iphone-and-ipod-touch-are-vulnerable-to-hackers-and-new-viruses-950916.html
May 2009
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/hackers-will-attack-cellphones-with-sms-bluetooth-and-other-innovative-ways-be-aware-912220.html
http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/virus-on-your-cell-phone-possible-or-not-912285.html

This is how you secure your cell phone

It is totally irresponsible of any company to not install anti-virus software on their cell phones, however it goes for all of us individual users as well.
So far there has been seen as no need to install any anti-virus software on the cellphones as attacks have not been around for so long. However, there are several things you can do yourself to avoid viruses on your phone.
Turn off the bluetooth function when you are not using this function on the phone. Virus can be transferred through the bluetooth system and the probability will increase that someone will take over your phone.
Do not open files or MMS that you did not expect to get or know about in forehand.
If you surf on the internet with your cellphone, avoid pages you are not sure of or have no knowledge about at all. You have to remember that you probably are better protected visiting the same pages with your PC since it has a anti-virus software protecting you. The Cellphone is just like a PC without the anti-virus software installed.
You can buy a anti-virus software through the internet, however you can not find any proven good anti-virus software for free for your cellphone yet.

E-mail is vulnerable in particular.
You would hardly think of surfing the internet or running a email program without using a anti-virus software on your PC. However, the smart phones have become like mini-computers with an operating system and add-on software which all are vulnerable to virus attacks.
It is just here the cyber criminals have found an interest to tap into. The hackers are no longer the boys in the boys room sitting and making codes just to prove themselves. They are now part of an industry funded by major criminal organizations able to create malicious software with almost no limits any longer.
However, the problem is that most of the users do not even know how to install antivirus software on the cellphone.
This is a problem that face lots of cellphone users today, and it just indicate that if you want to have a sophisticated cellphone, then you need to become a more sophisticated and knowledgeable user. However, one can say that sellers of the hardware should take some responsibility to enhance security of the use of their product.
You do not sell a car without complying to some safety regulations and measures. And this lead back to the regulators, that they have no regulations on how safe a cellphone should be to attacks, and maybe this will wake up the legislators to demand some safety measures a hardware should comply with before it is sold into the consumer market.
No smart cellphone to be sold without any proven anti-virus technology enabling the user to feel some safety when using this product. Yes, it will increase the price of the product, but i believe the users will be willing to take this cost given the dangers he or she can be exposed to with a cellphone that is not protected at all.
So far there have not been any complaints in major scale based on the latest calling virus found on the cellphones.
So far you are responsible for any use of your cellphone number and have to pay to the provider any costs associated with your cellphone number.
This is were the conflict starts, who should be responsible to provide a secure service - the users or the provider?
There are several examples of people complaining of phone bill exceeding what they thought they could have been responsible for. However, it is almost impossible for the users to win through with these cases, as collecting evidence could only be done by the provider itself, which is part in the case. The consumer is bound to have lost. It is here the legislators should put some demands to the providers to be able to protect their users. The providers says they are not responsible for the virus attacks and can not be held responsible. On the other hand they provide a service that is prone to virus attacks, and should feel morally obliged to protect their consumer and clients.
We are having a mighty challenge at hand in the near future as these virus attacks will become more frequent and have more stealth power than today.
There are examples produced in the last few weeks of cellphones been taken over and started producing cellphone calls by itself, without any interference of the owner of the phone and the subscription. These examples shows that the phone has begun systematically calling phone The calls varies from few seconds to several minutes and will give the users an extra cost of few cents to Euros or USD pr call.
One examples shown to the public is that one cellphone made around 100 calls during a period of 2 days. It was only found since the user wanted to check why the phone bill showed a discrepancy from previous bills he had.
The evidence that this was a virus, comes from the fact that the calls did not show up on the cellphone call log at all. There is no doubt at all, the cellphone has been taken over by a virus.
This is only the beginning as the cyber criminals have found out tht it is very easier to take over your phone than your PC, as most have antivirus protection on the PC’s but not on the cellphones.
They have also found a very easy way to take money from the users as these services will be directed and used towards special phone services owned by the cyber criminals and therefore will get easy income from the users.
You might ask now, how is the phone infected in the first place?
There are several ways this can happen, but the most probable is that the owner has received a MMS with a virus infected file that takes over the phone. You might levee you open a photo, but in the background the cellphone loads a virus to be hidden on your cellphone.
Another way this method can occur is through surfing on the internet as some web pages have photos with this type of malicious code attached to it.
Another way is through the bluetooth system as files can be loaded onto your cellphone without your knowledge at all.

It is very difficult to detect these attacks and the only measure so far, is to double check your phone bill and make sure you can account for the calls made there. If not, then you should consider the fact that you have been attacked and there is a need to clean your cellphone to avoid further take over of the cell phone.

By taking over your phone, the cyber criminals will gain information on your cellphone which can be valuable, like email adresses and information inside these (sensitive information, passwords, number, accunts etc)
A virus can also make the phone to call expensive pay services abroad and the owners of these services can make a hugh amount of money on this.
Some viruses are just what it is - a virus to demonstrate a methodology or a way to contribute to the open source society amongst the cyber criminals to gain more knowledge about how to exploit your phone.

The best way to avoid attacks on your cellphone is of course to install a anti-virus program and not to open any files you have no idea were they come from.
The virus is not placed on the SIM card (as of yet not found that is), but is installed in the operating system on the phone itself.

Almost everyone has a cell phone. Most people use it as their main source of communication. When somebody is looking for a name in connection with a certain mobile number, there is now a resource that anybody can use to track down and locate these cell phone owners.. This service is a cell phone number search directory.

This kind of directory provides information way beyond what can be found searching through the free phone directories. Free services are good for what they are designed for, - namely searching listed landline numbers. But if you want to find the identification for the type of telephone number most people use these days, these directories will leave you empty handed.

If you want to get this kind of search done right the first time, what follows are some simple step by step instructions.

Cell Phone Number Search - Simple Instructions

Step 1) Choose a directory that offers a money back guarantee.

Read the site’s terms of service and find out what company they use to process their transactions. This really is the easiest way way to filter out the good directories from the bad. Pay particular attention to directories that work with Clickbank. Clickbank is the most customer friendly payment processor on the Internet.

This is because they offer any customer the ability to recapture all the money spent on any transaction within 60 days if they are not completely satisfied with the information detailed in any report he or she has purchased.

Step 2) Make sure the directory does not ask for money up front and allows entirely confidential searches.

Never pay any money until you are reasonably satisfied the directory carries a report for the number you are searching.

Step 3) Enter all 10 digits of the telephone number you are searching into an online form the directory will provide you.

Hit the “search now” button and simply wait a few seconds for the directory to find the match for your inquiry. If a match exists in the database, a screen will pop up that informs you of the city and state where the wireless number was issued and whether a complete report is available to buy.

It will also tell you what information to expect in the report. This will typically include the caller’s name, present address, a detailed map location of the present address, household members, wireless service provider, and other phone numbers the caller owns.

Step 4) Select your payment option.

While not every directory works the same, most of the better directories will give you the option of simply buying the results for the search you just performed (approximately $14) or you can decide to sign up for a yearly membership to the directory (around $39).

The membership gives customers the option of running unlimited reverse phone searches for the next 12 months. Because these directories also enable people to search other phone numbers not found anywhere else (unlisted, pager, fax, and VoIP), many people find this the best approach when purchasing from a reverse cell phone directory.

Contact center is a wider term used for the call center or it can be said that it’s newer name given to the call center. In modern contact centers, work is no more restricted to call handling as e-mail, instant messaging and online communication is also a part of it now. To ensure the business success of clients, contact center solution assists the client in promotion and selling of products. Considering the importance of new sales opportunities, the solution providers give prompt response to customer’s inquiry.

To enhance sales challenges and improve market share, contact center solutions are incorporated with modern marketing tools that are offered by experts. Today, offering World-class customer relationship management services, contact center solution provide the buzzword for success.

To provide perfect business contact center solutions to its client, availability of efficient services is a must. Like video, voice and text are key requirements for successful operation. Considering the importance of productivity and profitability, renowned solution providers provide wide array of services to its client. Well, call center solution services are available around the clock to meet the essentials of international market. Call center makes efficient use of intelligence survey to promote product presence in the market.

With the contact center solutions, it helps to gain huge reduction in initial capital expenditure. Client can enjoy mobility and flexibility of operations with contact center solutions. These solutions act as a catalyst for growth of companies in different sectors such as health care, telecoms, insurance and financial services.

In the Contact centers, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) plays an essential role to interact with agents more intimately. This is made possible through different types of endpoints devices like desktop phone, mobile phone or PC.

Helping call centers and telemarketing firms increase their effectiveness and profitability is the core objective of http://dipfees.com In an effort to better serve their customers, Dipfees has added free IVR (Interactive Voice Response) services to their portfolio. With this recent addition customers are able to free up more time and resources to effectively manage their call rooms.

According to Mark Breeze, Dipfees’ customer relationships manager, call centers and telemarketing firms are going through tough times. “First of all like any business the economic crisis has its impact in the industry. Plus telecom laws are getting stricter, especially those related to voice broadcasting, auto dialers and predictive dialers. By adding free IVR services we can take some of the workload out of our customer’s hands. We provide them with daily DNC (Do Not Call) reports, and we even take care of both the level one and level two complaints”

“Most of our customers first come to us to participate in our CNAM CallerID Revenue Sharing program, which allows them to collect CNAM dip fees they would otherwise be missing. This alone can be very profitable for these types of customers. But once they start working with us and our IVR system, often I hear that all these additional services we provide are at least as important.”, Mark Breeze added.

That is what differentiates Dipfees.com from other CNAM revenue programs. The additional value brought to the table by things like multiple state ANIs, real time control of CNAM callerID display, and fast payment is what call center managers are looking for. With the free IVRs Dipfees hopes to further cater to its customers’ needs.

In the prevailing era, there is a continuous technological development, which helps in living a comfortable life. It has revolutionized the times into a progressive one with so many new innovations and hence helped the mass to get into the new modifications coming up in the market to experience a winning life. Today, times has changed much from the past decades, and we need to be globally aware of all the happenings in the world around. Each and every field, whether its Education, Business, Medical, Army or any other, now needs to be updated with all the related facts and figures round the globe. A strong mode of communication surely strengthens its way to success and helps in combating the challenges as well.
Therefore, we now come up with the cheap International calling services. It has made the life of people more convenient, easier and much more faster than before. This is one of the lowest international calling service, which aids you to be in touch with the whole world involving a very simple procedure. It primarily involves the Internet telephony services that uses the VOIP technique or calling over the Internet, for which you just need to have a mobile phone or PC to access the Internet services. There is no more communication bills, contract deals or set-up fees, you just need to subscribe on line and get the prepaid recharge to use the benefits of this Internet calling services. This facilitates you with a friendly service indeed, with sound networking, voice clarity for 24/7.This employ the use of certain softwares like Net2Phone, Gizmo, Skype, etc. Further, it also has an added advantage of exclusive offers viz; unlimited calls, bonus minutes, trial accounts, Free minutes and so on to get the maximum of the technology.

The cost of communication all over the world has decreased enormously due to the development of science and technology. Moreover many telephone companies have sprouted up in the recent years and the competition among them also has paved a way to cheap International Calls. Calls all over the world both domestic and international calls can be made at local rates if you choose the right service provider. Cheap calls to Canada are offered by various international service providers all around the globe.

If you are going to make a cheap call to Canada, then you have to choose the calling card which offers more privilege for making calls to Canada. With some leading telecom service providers you can save yourself on overseas calls from your landline phone. These service providers offer a call saver number which has to be dialed before dialing your overseas number. You can call Canadian landline and mobile phones as cheap as 1p/min regardless of the area using this call saver method. The telecom service provider charges a very low amount to provide you a call saver number. You can save more bucks and speak endlessly with your loved ones or friends using this method of calling.

Access number calling is one of the cheapest methods to make international calls. You can pay less with access number dialing ,if you call over to Canadian major cities like Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Some of the major landline telephone service providers in Canada are Bell Canada, MTS, Nothwestel, SaskTel, Telus and Rogers Telecom. Mobile operators in Canada include Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, MTS and Telebec. Whenever a person dials an international telephone number the service providers use discount lines to connect to the local networks that are available at the destinations which save more money on your talk. Moreover some service providers enable you to call Canada at cheaper rates by bypassing more expensive service providers at Canada.

A combination of cheap internet and telephony services can be combined together for making cheap calls all over the world. IP telephones are of two types one is custom built software based phones called as soft phones and another type is specially designed hardware device like ordinary telephone. These IP phones can be used to call anywhere in the world, but they look and work same as that of an ordinary telephone. IP telephones are easy to use and can be utilized by anyone, the call rates are completely cheaper when compared with any other phones. International Calls especially calls to Canada can be made at cheaper rates using these IP telephones.

Are you new to call centers or thinking of carving a career path for yourself in the industry? Before you head out the door for your first interview, get acquainted with some of the terms and technologies you will be faced with. Call centers employ a wide variety of different technologies. This article covers the most common terms and technologies agents are expected to understand and use.

ACD (Automatic call distribution): Part of the CTI that distributes in-coming calls to a group of agents. They are used in companies that take high volumes of calls, where callers require quick service from non-specific agents. More sophisticated systems may route calls to more skilled agents, depending on the reason for the call.

ACW (After call work): Amount of time an agent spends after the call processing customer requests.

AHT (Average handling time): The average time a call takes, including greeting, conversation, wrap-up, and time the caller spent on hold.

ANI (Automatic number identification): Similar to caller ID, a service which provides the receiver of a call with the number of the calling phone. Used in call centers to forward calls to appropriate agents or geographic areas. Also used by 911 dispatchers.

ASR (Automatic speech recognition): Technology used to provide information and forward calls, which allows callers to speak entries rather than punch numbers on a keypad.

ATT (Average talk time): Average amount of time an agent spends in conversation with a caller.

Call Center: A centralized office used to receive and transmit a large volume of requests by the telephone, usually with some amount of computer automation.

Chatterbot: A program that simulates human conversation. An intelligent virtual agent is an example of a chatterbot program that serves as an online customer service representative.

Collaborative Browsing (co-browsing): A technique used by agents to interact with customers using the customer’s web browser to lead them through a situation. May use email, fax, regular and/ or internet telephone as part of the interaction.

Contact Center: A part of an enterprise’s overall CRM which manages customer contact, including letters, faxes, emails, newsletters, mail catalogues, Web site inquiries, and other gathered information.

CPH/ IPH (Calls/ inquiries per hour): Average number calls or inquiries an agent handles per hour.

CRM (Customer relationship management): A corporate level approach for managing an organization’s relationship with its clients. Generally, three components (operational, analytical, and collaborative) of a company’s program must be in place in order to effectively acquire, provide services for, and retain customers. Also called Sales force automation (SFA).

CTI (Computer telephony integration): The technology that coordinates between telephone and computer systems.

Customer Service Chat: An internet service which allows a customer to communicate with an agent using an IM (instant messaging) application.

DID (Direct inward dialing): A service used by inbound call centers to allow multiple calls to be taken at once. In DID a block of telephone numbers is rented by a company without requiring a physical line for each number. Each agent or workstation has an individual number. When all agents are busy, additional inbound calls get busy signals or the agent’s voice mailbox. This service saves the cost of a switchboard operator and makes calls go through faster.

DNIS (Dialed number identification service): A service used by 800 and 900 lines that tell which number was called. It is useful for directing calls when companies deal with multiple numbers at the same location.

DTMF (Dual tone multi-frequency): Also known as “touchtone” phone (formerly a registered trademark of AT&T), the signals that are generated when a caller presses the touch keys of an ordinary telephone. Each key generates two tones, and cannot be imitated by voice.

Fax: Material (images or text) which is scanned and transmitted over a telephone line and received using a printer or other output device.

FCR (First call resolution): A call which completely resolves the customer’s issue. (A call is considered FCR if the caller does not call back with concerns in a set amount of time, usually 3 months.)

Idle time: Percentage of time agents spend not ready to take calls.

IP telephony (Internet protocol telephony): A general term for the technologies that use the internet protocol’s packet-switched connections to exchange voice, fax, and other forms of information.

ITS (Issue tracking system): A program that follows the progress of every problem a system user identifies until the issue is solved.

IVR (Interactive voice response): A computerized system at the front-end of calling centers which uses prerecorded prompts to identify caller needs, extract necessary information, and direct calls to the appropriate agent. Whereas, callers select options from voice menus using the telephone keypad, the newest technology, or Guided Speech IVR, integrates live agents into the system. In this hybrid model, agents assist in four or more calls at a time by listening and guiding callers through the system. This allows callers to respond to open-ended questions and receive a higher quality of service. Companies see higher rates of call completion and customer satisfaction using the new technology.

LEC (Local exchange carrier): The public telephone company which provides local service in an area.

Media gateway: A device that converts data from one format to another.

Outsourcing: The practice of delegating non-core operations to an external entity.

PBX (Private branch exchange): A cost-efficient system that uses multiple phone lines (called “trunk lines”) and a computer to manage the switching of calls within a company. As the PBX is owned by the company rather than the LEC, it saves the cost of requiring a line for each user to the telephone company’s central office.

Personalization: The process of tailoring internet pages to a customer’s preferences.

Predictive dialer: A computerized system that dials telephone numbers, filtering out unanswered calls, busy signals, disconnected lines, and other unproductive calls. Using an algorithm to predict agent availability, the system saves the time an agent would spend in unproductive dialing. Smart predictive dialers use a prerecorded introductory message before connecting customers to an agent, further increasing productivity by turning over calls only to interested customers.

Predictive technology: Tools that analyze patterns and use discoveries to forecast likely future behavior.

QED (Quality and efficiency driven): Philosophy maintained by call centers that company strategies should be balanced between aims for quality and efficiency.

Queue: A line of people or calls waiting to be handled, usually in sequential order. Real Time: Level of computer responsiveness considered sufficient to the task required.

SL% (Service level percent): Percentage of calls answered within the determined time frame.

Speech/ Voice Recognition: Ability of a program to recognize and carry-out voice commands. More sophisticated software has the ability to accept natural speech, or the speech used in general conversation.

Telemarketing: A registered trademark of Nadji Tehrani, referring to the form of direct marketing using the telephone to sell products and/ or services.

TCA (Total calls abandoned): the number of calls abandoned by callers.

TPV (Third party verification): The legal requirement for some companies (e.g. long distance providers, gas, electric) to have a third party confirm that a customer has requested a change in service. Generally, the customer will be put on a three-way call and the TPV provider will confirm the order. TPV aids in billing disputes by verifying the customer actually requested the change.

TTS (Text to Speech): A system that converts normal language text into speech.

UMS (Unified messaging system): A program that enables voice, fax, and regular text messages to be held in a single mailbox and accessed by a user over email or telephone.

Virtual Call Center: A call center where the agents are geographically dispersed, either working in several small offices, or (more frequently) working from their own homes.

Virtual Queuing: A system used in inbound call centers in which a caller will be informed of the estimated wait time before an agent will be available. Caller can choose to wait on hold, or keep their place in the queue by giving their telephone number. Callers receive a call back when their turn comes up.

Voicemail: System that manages telephone messages for a large group of people.

Voice Portal: A web site or other service that a customer can reach for information such as weather, sport scores, or stock quotes.

VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol): The routing of voice conversations over the internet. Using VoIP, agents can work from home, as long as they have a fast and stable internet connection.

Web Analytics: A method of analyzing the behavior of a web site’s visitors to make changes that attract and retain more customers.

Web Self-Service: A computerized system that allows users to perform routine tasks over the internet without requiring live interaction.