Customer Support & Outsourcing Terms

BPO — Business Process Outsourcing

The general term for handing an operational function — support, sales, back-office work — to an outside company rather than staffing it internally. VoiceSupportCrew is a BPO in the technical sense, though we would rather be described as a small dedicated support team than by the acronym.

Contact Center

A team handling customer contact across multiple channels — phone, chat, email — as opposed to a call center, which historically meant phone only. Most modern operations, including ours, are contact centers even when the word "call" is still used loosely.

Call Center

Traditionally, a team dedicated to handling phone calls, inbound or outbound. Often used loosely today to mean any outsourced support or sales operation regardless of channel.

Inbound

Contact initiated by the customer — a call they placed, a chat they opened, an email they sent. Inbound support answers demand as it arrives, rather than generating it.

Outbound

Contact initiated by the business — a call placed to a lead, a follow-up email sent proactively. Outbound work (appointment setting, B2B calling, follow-up) has different compliance obligations than inbound.

AHT — Average Handle Time

The average total time to resolve a contact, including any after-call work like notes or CRM updates. Useful for capacity planning; actively harmful as a target agents are pressured against, because it rewards rushing over resolving.

ASA — Average Speed of Answer

How long a caller waits, on average, before an agent picks up. The direct driver of whether customers feel like they are waiting.

FCR — First Contact Resolution

The share of contacts fully resolved without the customer needing to come back about the same issue. Often the single most telling quality metric, because it catches problems that speed-focused metrics miss entirely.

CSAT — Customer Satisfaction Score

A survey-based rating, usually collected right after a contact, asking how satisfied the customer was with the interaction. Meaningful in aggregate over time; unreliable at very low response volumes.

SLA — Service Level Agreement

A committed target for a specific metric — for example, answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds. A real SLA is set from your own baseline data, not copied from an industry average that may not fit your volume or complexity.

QA — Quality Assurance

Structured review of sampled conversations against written criteria, with coaching that follows from the score. The main tool for catching an agent who is technically compliant but not actually helpful.

Disposition

The tag applied to a contact once it ends, describing its outcome — resolved, escalated, booked, no answer. Consistent disposition tagging is what makes reporting trustworthy rather than guesswork.

Escalation

Moving an issue to someone with more authority, information or seniority than the agent handling it — a supervisor, a client contact, or an emergency contact for a critical issue. Governed by rules defined before go-live, not improvised in the moment.

Service Level

The percentage of contacts answered within a target time — the operational measure behind an SLA. "80/20 service level" means 80% of contacts answered within 20 seconds.

Abandonment Rate

The share of callers who hang up before being answered. A rising abandonment rate is usually the earliest sign that staffing has fallen behind demand.

CRM — Customer Relationship Management (system)

The software recording customer and lead information — HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho and similar. Agents work inside the client's own CRM using accounts the client creates, rather than a separate system of the provider's.

Helpdesk

Software for managing support tickets — Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom and similar. Distinct from a CRM in focus, though the two often integrate closely.

DID — Direct Inward Dialing

A phone number that routes directly to a specific line or extension without going through a switchboard. Relevant to telecom costs — DIDs are typically billed per number, separately from agent labour.

SIP — Session Initiation Protocol

The technology behind most modern business phone systems, carrying calls over the internet rather than traditional phone lines. SIP trunking costs are part of the telecom expenses billed separately from agent hours.

Dialer

Software that manages outbound calling — queuing numbers, dialling automatically or semi-automatically, and logging outcomes. Used on appointment-setting and B2B calling campaigns; usage is typically billed as a telecom cost.

Appointment Setting

Contacting leads, qualifying them against defined criteria, and booking a meeting for a closer or specialist — the work covered on our appointment setting service page.

Lead Qualification

Screening a lead against defined criteria — budget, authority, need, timing, whatever predicts a fit — before it reaches a salesperson's calendar.

Dedicated Agent

An agent who works exclusively on one client's campaign during their shift, as opposed to a shared or pooled agent handling several clients from a common queue. Every VoiceSupportCrew agent is dedicated to the campaign they are assigned to.

Shared Agent

An agent handling contacts for multiple businesses from a pooled queue, often reading a script for the first time that shift. Cheaper, and a genuinely different product from a dedicated agent — worth confirming explicitly with any provider.

Utilization

The share of an agent's paid time spent actively handling contacts or contact-related work, as opposed to idle or unassigned time. A planning input, not a target to maximise blindly — pushing utilization too high increases burnout and errors.

Occupancy

Similar to utilization, specifically the share of logged-in time an agent spends handling contacts versus waiting for the next one. High occupancy on a queue with uneven arrival patterns usually means customers are waiting.

Shrinkage

The gap between scheduled hours and hours actually available for contact handling — breaks, training, meetings, technical issues. Real capacity planning accounts for shrinkage rather than assuming 100% of a shift is productive.

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