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Plain-English definitions of the voice BPO, contact centre and voice technology terms you'll come across when evaluating providers.
Agent assist refers to AI tools that support human agents in real time during calls — suggesting answers, surfacing knowledge and automating after-call notes — to improve speed, consistency and quality without fully automating the conversation.
Learn moreAHT (Average Handle Time) is the average total time an agent spends on a customer interaction, including talk time, hold time and after-call work. It is a key efficiency and staffing metric, best managed alongside quality so calls are not rushed.
An AI voice agent is an automated system that holds spoken telephone conversations with customers using natural-language understanding and speech synthesis. Unlike menu-based IVR, it understands free speech, handles multi-turn dialogue, and can resolve routine tasks such as bookings, balances and authentication end to end.
Learn moreCCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) is a cloud contact-centre platform delivered as a subscription, providing call routing, IVR, omnichannel queues, reporting and integrations without on-premise infrastructure. It lets organisations scale contact-centre capability up or down flexibly.
Contact centre outsourcing is delegating the running of a customer contact centre to a specialist provider, which supplies trained agents, systems and management to handle calls against agreed service levels — usually to reduce cost or add flexible capacity.
Learn moreConversational AI is technology that lets software understand and respond to human language in a natural, back-and-forth way. In contact centres it powers voice agents and chatbots that interpret intent, ask clarifying questions and take actions, rather than following rigid scripted menus.
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) is a metric that captures how satisfied customers are with an interaction or service, usually via a short post-contact survey on a rating scale. It is a direct, if subjective, signal of customer experience quality.
A DDI (Direct Dial-In), also called a DID, is a telephone number that routes directly to a specific person, team or line within an organisation without going through a switchboard. Businesses provision blocks of DDIs to give staff or services individual numbers.
Learn moreFCR (First Contact Resolution) is the percentage of customer issues resolved on the first interaction, without the customer needing to make contact again. It is widely regarded as one of the strongest indicators of both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
FNOL (First Notification of Loss) is the first contact an insurance customer makes to report a claim. Handling it well means capturing accurate details quickly while treating a potentially distressed customer with care — a common target for AI-assisted or outsourced handling.
Learn moreIVR (Interactive Voice Response) is an automated phone system that interacts with callers through recorded prompts and keypad or voice input, routing them to the right department or self-service option. Modern IVR can use speech recognition and skills-based routing to reduce wait times.
Learn moreNLP (Natural Language Processing) is the field of AI concerned with enabling computers to understand, interpret and generate human language. In contact centres it powers speech-to-text, intent detection, sentiment analysis and conversational voice agents.
Learn moreNumber porting is the process of transferring an existing telephone number from one provider or network to another, so a business can change supplier without changing its published numbers. In the UK it typically takes a few working days to complete.
Learn moreOmnichannel contact means handling customer interactions consistently across multiple channels — phone, email, chat, messaging and social — with shared context, so a customer can move between channels without having to repeat themselves.
The PSTN switch-off (the UK's 'big switch-off') is the planned withdrawal of the traditional analogue phone network and ISDN lines, with services moving to internet-based voice such as SIP and VoIP. Openreach has targeted completion for the end of January 2027.
Learn moreQoS (Quality of Service) refers to network techniques that prioritise voice traffic over other data so calls stay clear and uninterrupted. Proper QoS configuration is essential for reliable VoIP and SIP call quality on a shared internet connection.
Learn moreService level in a contact centre is the percentage of calls answered within a target time, commonly expressed as '80/20' — answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds. It measures accessibility and is monitored in real time to manage staffing.
SIP trunking delivers telephone calls over an internet or data connection instead of traditional ISDN lines, connecting a phone system to the public network. Capacity is measured in channels (concurrent calls) and can be scaled in software without installing physical lines.
Learn moreSpeech analytics is technology that automatically transcribes and analyses recorded or live calls to detect topics, sentiment, compliance issues and agent behaviours. It lets contact centres review 100% of calls instead of a small manual sample, supporting quality, compliance and coaching.
Learn moreUCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) is a cloud-delivered platform that combines business telephony, video, messaging and collaboration in one service. It removes on-premise phone hardware, scales on demand, and typically integrates with tools such as Microsoft Teams.
Learn moreVoice BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) is the practice of contracting an external provider to run some or all of your telephone-based customer contact — inbound support, outbound campaigns, or both — using the provider's agents, technology and quality processes on your behalf.
Learn moreVoice (call) termination is routing an outbound call from one network to its destination network so it can be completed. Wholesale providers connect to many carriers and route each call over the best path, balancing cost and quality — often called A-Z termination for global coverage.
Learn moreVoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is technology that carries voice calls as data over the internet rather than traditional phone lines. It underpins SIP trunking, hosted phone systems and softphones, and generally lowers cost while adding flexibility and integration.
A VoIP reseller sells voice services — SIP trunking, cloud telephony or call termination — to end customers under its own brand, using a wholesaler's network and platforms. White-label VoIP is the same service delivered under the reseller's brand rather than the wholesaler's.
Learn moreWholesale VoIP is the bulk supply of voice connectivity — call termination, origination and interconnects — to other providers such as carriers, resellers and ISPs rather than to end users, typically priced per minute or per channel at wholesale rates.
Learn moreNot sure which of these you need? Our team can help you map the right combination of voice BPO and technology to your requirements.
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