Overview of the BPO Industry - 3

Call Center Terminologies

Abandoned Call
A call wherein the caller disconnects the line before he speaks to a call centre agent.

Automatic Number Identification
It is used by all call centers to keep a record of people who have called up with their phone numbers. It is also an effective method to detect threatening or nuisance calls and pass on the information to the relevant authorities.

Auto Answer Greeting
When the customer calls up the call center, he is greeted by a pre recorded voice message to put him on hold, till his call is answered by a call center agent This pre recorded greeting can be done by the concerned BPO itself.

Call Distribution
Many call center agents' work in one process. The experience and ability level will obviously vary from one agent to another. With this system, the call can be routed to the appropriate call center agent, taking into account his knowledge and experience.

Dispatch Calls
In this, the call center agent has to simply take the message and pass on the information to the recipient, by way of a text message to a cell phone.

Average Call Handling Time
This is the total number of minutes put in by the agent in a day, divided by the total number of calls taken by him. This gives the Average Call Handling Time (ACHT)

Help Desk
Help Desk calls basically refer to calls providing customer support services to people who have problems with software packages or hardware problems.

Interactive Voice Response
This is basically to reduce customers waiting time and provide them with quick and efficient services. When a customer calls up customer service, he will have instructions given to him, by a pre recorded voice. The customer has to follow the instructions, to ensure that his call is handled by the right person.

Service Level Agreement
This is the agreement signed by the BPO and the company, when the company has decided to hand over the operations to a BPO. The Service Level Agreement contains the guidelines which the BPO has to strictly follow. Any kind of deviation may lead to customer dissatisfaction which will make the customer go for another company. No company would want to lose its existing customers. Normally the Service Level Agreement will cover the following areas:

• Recruitment
• Training
• Quality Score
• Customer Satisfaction
• Barging

When a new agent is on a call, the quality team can hear the conversation between the agent and the customer. This is called as barging.

Script
If you are a part of an inbound or outbound process, you are given a script, which you necessarily, need to follow. The script contains details of the dialogue, to be followed by the agent, while interacting with the customers. All Voice Processes have a script.

Quality
The job of the quality team is to listen to the interaction between the customer and the agent and give them a feedback on their performance. This is done only in the case of new call center agents wherein they are given a quality score for each call and also a constructive feedback.

Quality Score
When a new call center agent takes calls he will obviously take some time to settle down before he starts performing. The initial three months when a fresher joins a BPO till he is officially made part of the team and given targets, is normally referred to as the honeymoon period. The quality team will listen to some of the calls and give him a quality score. The quality score is given in percentages. All agents who are part of the voice process need to get the qualifying quality score, even if they have over performed. This applies to all agents of a voice process, irrespective of whether they are fresh or inexperienced.

Predictive Dialing
In this a database of customers with the phone numbers are loaded in the system. The dialer will start dialing the numbers automatically and if the call is picked up, it will route it to the concerned call center agent. If the call is not picked up it will put the number back in the list for redialing.

Queue
The queue is a system wherein calls are on hold or yet to be answered by the call center agent. The number of customers in queue can be seen on the screen by the call center agent and this will help him to dispose of each call as quickly as possible depending on the queue.

Talk Time
Talk Time is the total time spent by the call center agent on the phone with one customer. The talk time starts from the moment the agent greets the customer till he finishes the call.

Toll Free Numbers
Toll Free numbers enable customers to call up the call center without incurring any charges.

Floor
Floor is the place where all call center agents, team coaches and team leaders sit.

Bay
The entire floor is divided into various sections. Each section is called a bay. Typically each bay will have a team leader and his team of agents.

Call Escalation
When a call center agent is not able to handle a customer, he will ask the customer to hold the line, and transfer the call to a senior agent or his team leader. This is known as call escalation.

Side Jack
When new agents come to the floor after they clear the training, they are made to sit with experienced call center agents. The new call center agents are given headsets which can be connected to the system. The new agents can then hear the conversation between the agent and the customer. Normally side jacking is done for three or four days. This is very effective because the agent can listen to live calls and knows how to handle various situations.

Do Not Call Registry
In the US and UK customers can register with their phone service provide and pay a fixed amount each year to ensure that their name is not put in the telephone directory. Such people are part of the DO NOT CALL LIST

Abroad each person gets around 20 telemarketing calls on an average. Customers who do not want to be disturbed register with the DNC Registry.

Since all BPO's buy databases directly from the market, there is every chance that the database contains lot of DNC numbers.

Normally many calls go to DNC customers who get very angry or irritated. They can also record the call and sue the company according to their legal laws.

Log On
When the shift is about to start, the team leader asks all the agents to log in and get ready to receive or make calls as the case may be.

Log Off
Agents normally log off from the system when their shift finishes or when their team leader wants to talk to his whole team.

Updates
When there is a change in the product, as in, if new schemes are launched by the company or new features are introduced in a model, this information is passed on to the agents who can use it effectively while interacting with the customers.