Top 30 VoIP Terms That Every Business Should Know

In the earlier days, connecting with the employees and getting in direct touch with the clients from any place around the globe was not an easy task for businesses. Being able to work from any place irrespective of the location seemed like a tough job.

Today the technology has evolved a lot. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has changed and made the work process easy for the businesses. The employees can connect with clients from anywhere at any time in the world. Agents can connect with other employees to discuss the project progress and issues which they are facing via video conferencing or conference call.

Cloud communication is a cloud-based technology that enables the business to have a conversation over the internet.

Cloud communication, however, is a broad term. Many applications and communication products that businesses are using to work on the go come under the category of cloud communication.

In these competitive times, every business dealing with customer service must know some VoIP terms. Let’s have a look at the terms.

1. Hosted PBX: Hosted PBX is a cloud-based private branch exchange. Also known as Virtual PBX, it is the IP based communication system that directs calls over the internet.

2. Traditional PBX: The traditional PBX system consists of an office setup, comprising of a physical rack of hardware and phone lines. This set up enables internal calls between the employees without a public telephone network.

3. Toll Free Number: Toll free numbers are the numbers that enable the calling party to make calls free of cost. The calling cost is borne by the organization itself.

4. Dashboard: It is a user interface that displays business key performance indicators in an organized manner. It allows business owners and managers to see an overview of their cloud telephony account.

5. Music on Hold: Music on hold is one of the key features used by businesses to fill the silence when users are put on hold.

6. IVR: IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. It is a feature of cloud communication that receives the incoming calls, gathers the necessary information, and directs the call to the concerned branch spontaneously. Callers connect by utilizing either the touch-tone keypad or voice phone input. 

7. Local Number: Local number is specific to a local area only. The company buys local numbers, but they are not charged for incoming calls. Their telecom providers charge customers for making the call. Cloud telephony providers charge businesses who buy local numbers as per their subscription plans.

8. Call Queue: Call queue is an essential feature for providing excellent customer service. It refers to the process of queuing up a customer call when the agents are busy or unavailable to answer. Instead of hearing a busy tone, callers hear the promotional messages or are informed about the products of the company.

9. Inbound Call Center: These are the call centers that receive incoming calls from customers and answer their queries.

10. Outbound Call Center: In this type of call center, the call center agents make outbound calls to the customers on behalf of the company.

11. Voice Broadcast: Voice broadcasting is communication on a big scale. It is a feature used by businesses to broadcast important messages to customers altogether. 

12. Average Call Time: It is the average time that the agents take to manage a customer call, beginning from the call initiation until the call ends.

13. AMD: AMD stands for Answering Machine Detection. It used in outbound call centers. It is a feature of a predictive dialer that detects whether a number gets connected to an answering machine or not.

14. Call Monitoring: Call monitoring is the practice that enables the managers to monitor every active call of the agents.

15. Call Hunting: Call hunting is also known as live hunting. In this process, the incoming calls are routed to multiple phone lines from a single phone number sequentially until the incoming call is responded.

16. Call Conferencing: Call conferencing is the business technique that enables the employees to connect on the call with one another whenever required.

17. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR): ASR is used to identify and process the human voice using computer software and hardware. ASR enables the customer to interact with the computer system without pressing any button.

18. Blended Call Center: It is a type of call center where both the inbound and the outbound call operations are carried out. The blended call center makes the outbound and receives the inbound calls.

19. SIP Trunking: SIP trunking is the protocol that is used to implement VoIP. It enables the bulky multimedia documents to transfer over the internet.

20. Automatic Call Distributor (ACD): ACD is the telephone device that responds and distributes the incoming call to the appropriately skilled agent in a company. 

21. Call Center Shrinkage: Call center shrinkage is the measure of the total number of agents actively attending the calls to the number of agents not present due to some reasons, hence unavailable to take a call.

22. Multiple Channel Contact Center: It is a type of call center in which the agents connect with their customers through numerous channels such as web chat, SMS, email, etc.

23. Predictive Dialer: Predictive dialer is a type of auto dialer that dials a list of phone numbers. It works on an intelligent algorithm that predicts the availability of agents.

24. Screen Pop: Screen pop is one of the features of the CTI application that automatically displays the information of the caller on the agent’s dashboard in the call center during a call.

25. Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCA): BHCA in the telecommunication refers to the maximum number of call attempts during the most active hour of the day in a call center. 

26. Automatic Call Back: With automatic call back feature, you can configure the cloud telephony system to automatically call back users whose calls were dropped due to busy lines earlier.

27. Skills-based Routing: Skills-based routing is a technique that is used in the call centers to assign the inbound call to the most suitable agent based on their skills.

28. Unified Communication: Unified communication is the technology that combines businesses with several conversation channels in a single user interface.  

29. Call Whispering: In call whispering, call center managers can take part in the live call. They can interact with the agents and correct them with the right information whenever the agents are answering with incorrect details to customers’ queries. Also, call whispering can be done without letting the customers know.

30. Call Screening: Call screening a Hosted PBX feature that is used to identify the inbound number. This helps the user to decide whether or not to pick a call. If a user doesn’t want to get a call from a specific number, he/she can put in call screening rules so that call doesn’t come again from that number in the future.

Now when every company is becoming customer-centric day by day, the cloud telephony services are the must that every business should implement in respective companies to meet the customers’ satisfaction successfully.