An application service provider (ASP) is a business that provides services including software utilisation to customers over a network. Hence, it is not necessary to purchase the software itself but it can be used on-demand when needed.

A telephone system that routes incoming calls automatically according to predefined rules and creates extensive statistics. Call that cannot be routed to an agent straight away will be queued in the ACD until the next agent becomes available.

An agent uses different communication channels - e.g. telephone, email, fax, sms, etc -  simultanously and switches between them seamlessly. The term 'blending' is also used to describe the switch from inbound and outbound calls and vice versa.

Call-Back is a technology that provides telephone Call-Back for websites. In that case a customers simply leave a telephone number and receives a phone call from an agent. The Call-Back functionality can be integrated within the website or  the telephone system. 

Call between agents and customers can be recorded in accordance with predefined rules. In a normal recording mode both agent and customer are recorded simultanously whereas phase recording  only records a certain section of the call and single side recording only records either the agent or the customer.

Co-Browsing, in the context of web browsing, is the joint navigation through the internet/website by two or more people accessing the same web pages at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephonehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComputerCTI (Computer Telephony Integration) is a technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated and co-ordinated. This enables the identification of a customer via the transmitted telephone number and the presentation of the respective details on screen. 

A dialler automatically dials telephone numbers and recognises status of the call. Thus the agent saves time looking up telephone numbers, dialling and waiting for a connection to be established. A dialler recognises busy tones, answering machines and network announcements and does not put these calls through to an agent.

Dialler can be operated in the following modes: predictive, power, preview, precise and agentless.

An ERP system  is an integrated computer-based system used to manage internal and external resources including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. 

The customer has the possibilty to request a fax with a specified reply. Therefore, the customer enters his/her fax number on the homepage and chooses "fack back" to receive the desired fax from the company. Just as well he/she may enter the fax number using the numbers on the telephone keypad or a speech dialogue system.

First call resolution is properly addessing the customer's need the first time they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second call.

Protocol to transmit data via a network. It is mainly used to load websites and similar data from the world wide web (WWW) into a webbrowser.

The protocol IMAP allows the access and administration of received emails. In contrast to the widely establish POP3 protocol emails remain on the email server and are only transfer to to client computer on request.

Speech module that enables an interactive dialogue by either tones sent via the telephone keypad or spoken words. The information presented can bei speech, fax or email information.

De facto standard for IT service management. Set of concepts and practices for managing processes, organisation and tools of IT.

Application protocol for querying and modifying data using directory services running over TCP/IP.

Technological information system for the management. It supplies information that helps managing and controlling the business.

Monitoring allows you to take a look at the present state of the monitored system. There are different type of monitoring: "silent monitoring", without informing the agent that he/she is monitored; "side by side", i.e. the coach or supervisor is sitting next to the agent during the phone call; "call recordings" that can be listened to afterwards.

Rule-based distribution of incoming calls and other interaction objects (email, SMS, fax, video, chat, etc.) to predefined target using one or more media channels.

A private branch exchange (PBX) is a telephone exchange that makes connections among the internal telephones of a private organisation and also connects them to the  public switched telephone network (see PSTN).

Communication system for managing all telephone calls. The telephone network establishes dedicated lines as well as switched connections.

Delivering information about business operations without any delay.

Call centres that use CTI, i.e. integration between a telephone system and an agent's PC, a screen pop is used to display information about a call that has just been sent to the call center agent.

SIP is a signalling protocol, widely used for controlling communication sessions over the internet. The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party (unicast) or multiparty (multicast) sessions consisting of one or several media streams.

See Co-Browsing.

Skill-based routing is a call-assignment strategy used to assign incoming calls to the most suitable agent, instead of simply choosing the next available agent.

Staging is an information integration process that uses a data area (stageing area) to temporarily save data to debug and transform them within that area. Afterwards the data is loaded into a target database.

As for outbound dialling, the term staging is used differently. It describes the seperation of a call into different phases. During an outbound campaign the dialler constantly checks how many agents are in which phase.

TAPI is a programming interface for telephony applications. The purpose of the TAPI specification is to provide control of telephony resources to applications.

A computer can recognise data or text and transform them to speech. TTS play an important role in modern, automated speech dialog systems.

Network protocol that, due to its importance to the internet, is also call "internet protocol". The composition of the protocol and its integration in the OSI model is explained in the TCP/IP reference model. Computers are identified via IP-addresses.

Unified Communication is the integration of synchronous and asynchronous communication services in one client. This includes telephone calls. email, fax, SMS, chat, instant messaging, blogs, and softphones.

Unified Messaging is the integration of different electronic messaging and communications media (email, SMS, fax, voicemail, video messaging, etc.) technologies into a single interface, accessible from a variety of different devices.

Voice over IP is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP (internet protocol) networks such as the Internet.