Glossary I-M

Imaging. A process whereby documents are scanned into a system and stored electronically.

Immutable Law. A law of nature that is fundamental, and not changeable (e.g., the law of gravity). In an inbound call center, the fact that occupancy goes up when service level goes down, is an immutable law.

Incoming Call Center Management. The art of having the right number of skilled people and supporting resources in place at the right times to handle an accurately forecasted workload, at service level and with quality.

Incremental Revenue (Value) Analysis. A methodology that estimates the value (cost and revenue) of adding or subtracting an agent.

Index Factor. In forecasting, a proportion used as a multiplier to adjust another number.

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). A set of international standards for telephone transmission. ISDN provides an end-to-end digital network, out-of-band signaling, and greater bandwidth than older telephone services. The two standard levels of ISDN are Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI). See Basic Rate Interface and Primary Rate Interface.

Inter Exchange Carrier (IXC). A long-distance telephone company.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR). See Voice Response Unit.

Interflow. See overflow.

Internal Help Desk. A group that supports other internal agent groups, e.g. for complex or escalated calls.

Internal Response Time. The time it takes an agent group that supports other internal groups (e.g., for complex or escalated tasks) to respond to transactions that do not have to be handled when they arrive (e.g., correspondence or e-mail). See Response Time and Service Level.

Internet "Call Me" Transaction. A transaction that allows a user to request a callback from the call center, while exploring a Web page. Requires interconnection of the ACD system and the Internet by means of an Internet Gateway.

Internet "Call Through" Transaction. The ability for callers to click a button on a Web site and be directly connected to an agent while viewing the site. Standards and technologies that provide this capability are in development.

Internet Phone. Technology that enables users of the InternetÍs World Wide Web to place voice telephone calls through the Internet, thus by-passing the long distance network.

Intraflow. See overflow.

Invisible Queue. When callers do not know how long the queue is or how fast it is moving. See Visible Queue.

Judgmental Forecasting. Goes beyond purely statistical techniques and encompasses what people believe is going to happen. It is in the realm of intuition, interdepartmental committees, market research and executive opinion.

Law of Diminishing Returns. The declining marginal improvements in service level that can be attributed to each additional agent, as successive agents are added.

Load Balancing. Balancing traffic between two or more destinations.

Local Area Network (LAN). The connection of multiple computers within a building, so that they can share information, applications and peripherals. See Wide Area Network.

Local Exchange Carrier (LEC). Telephone companies responsible for providing local connections and services.

Logged On. A state in which agents have signed on to a system (made their presence known), but may or may not be ready to receive calls.

Long Call. For staffing calculations and traffic engineering purposes, calls that approach or exceed thirty minutes.

Longest Available Agent. A method of distributing calls to the agent who has been sitting idle the longest. With a queue, Longest Available Agent becomes ńNext Available Agent.î

Longest Delay (Oldest Call). The longest time a caller has waited in queue, before abandoning or reaching an agent.

Look Ahead Queuing. The ability for a system or network to examine a secondary queue and evaluate the conditions, before overflowing calls from the primary queue.

Look Back Queuing. The ability for a system or network to look back to the primary queue after the call has been overflowed to a secondary queue, and evaluate the conditions. If the congestion clears, the call can be sent back to the initial queue.

Lost Call. See Abandoned Call.

Middleware. Software that mediates between different types of hardware and software on a network, so that they can function together.

Modem. A contraction of the terms Modulator/Demodulator. A Modem converts analog signals to digital and vice versa.

Monitoring. Also called Position Monitoring or Service Observing. The process of listening to agents' telephone calls for the purpose of maintaining quality. Monitoring can be: A) silent, where agents don't know when they are being monitored, B) side by side, where the person monitoring sits next to the agent and observes calls or C) record and review, where calls are recorded and then later played back and assessed.

Multilingual Agents. Agents that are fluent in more than one language.

Multimedia. Combining multiple forms of media in the communication of information. (E.g, a traditional phone call is "monomedia," and a video call is "multimedia.")