Terms used across the tools, methods and research, in plain words. Where a term has its own page, the link opens it.
- Abandonment rate
- The share of callers who hang up in the queue before an agent answers. Read more
- After-contact work (ACW, wrap-up)
- What an agent does after the conversation ends and before taking the next contact: notes, updates, follow-up tasks. Usually counted in handle time.
- Agent attrition (turnover)
- The share of agents who leave in a year, usually departures over average headcount. Read more
- Automatic call distribution (ACD)
- The part of a phone system that queues calls and sends each to an available agent by set rules.
- Average handle time (AHT)
- The average time an agent spends on one contact from the moment it is answered to the moment the agent is free for the next: talk, hold and the work after the conversation. Read more
- Average speed of answer (ASA)
- The average time callers wait in the queue before an agent answers. Read more
- Backfill
- Hiring to replace an agent who left. Choosing not to backfill is one way freed capacity turns into cash.
- Capacity action
- What a center decides to do with agent time an improvement frees: avoid hiring, cut overtime, let attrition shrink the team, or redeploy people. Freed time saves money only through one of these.
- Concurrency
- The number of contacts an agent handles at once, such as several chats. Phone is one at a time.
- Containment
- The share of contacts a self-service or AI channel finishes without an agent. Vendors and centers define it in several ways. Read more
- Conversational AI (IVA, virtual agent, chatbot)
- Software that holds a conversation with a customer in speech or text to answer a question or complete a task. IVA and Conversational AI vendors
- Cost per resolution
- Cost per contact multiplied by the contacts an issue takes to resolve, so repeat contacts are counted. Read more
- Directional
- A grade on our results. Shows the direction and rough size. Something behind it is still a default, an estimate or an open choice.
- Erlang
- A unit of work: one Erlang is one hour of handling in one hour. Ten Erlangs would keep ten agents busy every moment. Read more
- Erlang C
- Erlang C is the queueing formula most contact centers use to work out how many agents a queue needs. Given the work arriving and the handle time, it gives the probability a caller waits, and from that the service level and the average wait for any number of agents. Read more
- Finance-grade
- A grade on our results. Firm enough for a finance review. The inputs behind it come from documents you attested.
- Forecast accuracy (WAPE, MAPE)
- How close the contact volume forecast came to what arrived, measured interval by interval. Read more
- Full-time equivalent (FTE)
- Paid staff counted in full-time units, so two half-time agents are one FTE.
- Generally available (GA)
- A feature released for every customer under the vendor's normal terms. Preview, beta and early access features are not yet generally available.
- Interactive voice response (IVR)
- The phone menu a caller meets first, by keypad or speech, which routes the call or completes simple tasks.
- Interval
- The block of time a contact center plans by, usually 15 or 30 minutes.
- Marginal cost
- What one more or one fewer contact actually changes in cost. Lower than the average, because fixed costs do not move with volume.
- Nesting
- The period after classroom training when new agents take live contacts with extra support before they work alone.
- Occupancy
- The share of time agents logged in to the queue spend handling contacts, against waiting for the next one. Read more
- Offered load
- The work arriving in an interval, counted in Erlangs: the number of agents who would be busy every moment if contacts arrived perfectly evenly. Read more
- Planning-grade
- A grade on our results. Firm enough to plan and budget around. It rests on your own figures; a document would make it firmer.
- Quality management (QM, QA)
- Reviewing a sample of contacts against a scorecard to coach agents and check that policy is followed. Open the tool
- Ramp
- The months a new agent takes to reach full productivity.
- Realization
- How much of a modelled saving becomes real money, given the capacity action chosen. Time freed with no action realizes nothing.
- Repeat contact
- A customer coming back about an issue that was not resolved the first time.
- Request for proposal (RFP)
- A formal document a buyer sends vendors listing requirements, asking each to say how it meets them and at what price. Open the tool
- Schedule adherence
- The share of scheduled time agents spend doing what the schedule says, at the times it says. Read more
- Seat
- One licensed agent. Named seats are tied to a person; concurrent seats cap how many are logged in at once.
- Service level (SL)
- The share of contacts answered within a set time, written as a pair: the share to answer and the time limit in seconds. Read more
- Shrinkage
- The share of paid time agents are not available to take contacts: breaks, meetings, coaching, training, time off, absence and system downtime. Read more
- Total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Everything a contact center costs to run over a period: people, technology, telephony, facilities and overhead, beyond the license price. Open the tool
- Tracking signal
- A running check on whether a forecast is consistently high or low: the sum of its errors divided by the average size of an error. Read more
- Unified communications as a service (UCaaS)
- Cloud phone, meetings and messaging for a whole company. Some vendors sell it together with a contact center.