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PLAIN ENGLISH

The words, without the sales voice.

Every term you will hear on a call with any vendor in this market, defined in one line.

If a definition here reads like an advert for us, it is a bad definition and we would like to know.

Free for 14 days. No card asked for. Check pricing

Questions

The words

IVR
Interactive voice response — the menu a caller hears. Press one for sales. Useful two levels deep and hated at four.
PBX
The switchboard that connects calls inside a business. Used to be a box in a cupboard; now it is software.
SIP trunk
The line between your phone system and the public telephone network. If you already have one, we can use it.
DID
Direct inward dial — a phone number that reaches one person or one desk without going through a switchboard menu.
PSTN
The ordinary public telephone network. A call to a normal phone number leaves the internet and joins this at some point.
VoIP
Voice over IP — carrying calls over the internet instead of a dedicated phone line. Every product on this page is VoIP.
ACD
Automatic call distribution — deciding which waiting caller goes to which free agent. Skills routing is ACD with rules.
Wrap-up
The time after a call ends and before the agent takes the next one. Where the notes get written, or do not.
Disposition
The one-click outcome of a call: interested, wrong number, call back Tuesday.
Whisper
A supervisor speaking to the agent mid-call without the customer hearing. Barge is joining the call outright.
DNC
Do-not-call — a list of numbers you must not ring. Enforced here in the dialplan, not only in the app.
A2P
Application-to-person messaging — messages sent by software rather than typed by a human. Regulated separately.
Attempt
One try at reaching somebody. Capping attempts per day is how a number avoids being marked as spam.
Answer rate
The share of calls that get picked up. The number a flagged caller ID quietly destroys.

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