Within the call center industry one cannot help but overhear a few of the slew of acronyms and odd sounding pieces of gadgetry – all scary but none too earth shattering. A few of the most common are:

• ACD
• Voice Broadcasting
• IVR
• Predictive Dialer
• Speech Recognition

What or who is ACD? Aren’t they the rock group composed of old pasty white guys that dresses up in school kid’s uniforms?  Nope. This acronym actually stands for Automatic Call Distributor.  It is a piece of hardware within your phone system/network to distribute calls according to priority to minimize queue times, or to route calls to the most appropriate parties. An ACD might also send calls to agents who are not busy. Similarly, an ACD can direct calls according to what a caller selects by pressing the telephone keypad.

Does Howard Stern use Voice Broadcasting? No. This is the process of sending out telephone messages in bulk to a pre-determined list of customers.  Think election time and those great calls from politicians that we all appreciate.

Can I get an IVR outside the hospital? Yes, this nifty technology is what is referred to as Interactive voice response and it is a piece in the chain of the technology that combines people using the phone and company databases. This technology coupled with speech recognition software allows callers to speak in their natural voice to navigate phone tree menus and conduct customer self service. IVR is at the core of many transaction processing applications today, such as automated attendants, internal/external directory assistance, and an astounding number of self-service options. Speech recognition is fast replacing the touch tone method of doing business.

What is the world is a Predictive Dialer? A predictive dialer is actually a human hand that reaches through your phone receiver and guesses the next number you are attempting to dial. No, seriously, the predictive dialer, in addition to placing outbound calls for CSRs, monitors the length of the call and creates an average call length. Once the Dialer knows the average call length, the predictive dialer can make another call and send it to an agent as soon as the first call has ended. This system maximizes the on-phone time of each agent, and the overall result is, more customers are contacted in a shorter period of time. Fun, eh?

What is Speech Recognition? Speech recognition allows callers to speak into a phone. They can use words, phrases, or utterances that can control applications. Speech recognition is used in tandem with other technologies including VoiceXML. In most cases speech recognition is used to replace touch-tone input, and make systems easier to use.