Answering Service & Call Center Industry Terminology

At AnswerFirst, we feel that it's part of our job to educate our clients about the services and products we offer and part of that process is teaching clients about some of the more technical aspects of a call center including the terminology that goes along with learning about it.  With that goal in mind, here is a list of answering service and call center industry terms with layman's definitions.  This list of terms consists of words and acronyms that we use almost every day when speaking with our current and potential clients; these definitions are useful for anyone who is new to dealing with answering services and call centers.

IVR or Interactive Voice Response: A technology that allows humans to interacts with computers through the use of voice and tone inputs.  When you call a business and a machine picks up that asks you to make choices by speaking or pressing buttons on the phone you are interacting with an IVR system.  Most callers find IVR systems to be annoying because many of these systems don't work well; this can result in substandard customer service experiences.

CSR or Customer Service Representative: These are AnswerFirst staff members that will be answering your phone calls and emails.  Our customer service representatives must have prior customer service experience; it's their job to answer all of your business communications according to the protocols you have created while being both professional and friendly.

DID or Direct Inward Dialing: Your DID is the number that is designated as your direct line in our call center.  When this number is dialed and the phone rings in our call center our agents know that these calls are for your account.

CWA or Client Web Access: This is our version of a free online customer account portal.  You can access your messages, check your invoices and change the way your calls are handled by logging in and taking advantage of the many features of CWA.

If you're currently shopping for an answering service you might also want to check out our answering service comparison chart.  Even if you decide that our services are not right for your particular business needs, we hope you feel that you've learned something about the services you were shopping for during your interactions with us.

Looking for more information? Give us a call at 1-800-645-2616, tweet or Facebook us.

Do you have an online management portal where I can access my account?

Yes, it is included at no additional cost. Our online account management portal is called Client Web Access and it was developed in-house with suggestions about design and functionality from our clients. By using CWA clients can access a wide variety of account information. Messages, performance reports, billing reports, average ring, average talk reports, recordings of all calls and much, much more is accessible 24/7 from anywhere via the internet. Data may also be queried by account and date range and if desired may be exported as a .csv file. While logged into the portal clients may also manage on-call after hour schedules or escalation protocols. Account screens and data may also be viewed and updated

Please contact us for more information about Client Web Access: 1-800-645-2616

www.answerfirst.com - Answering Service, Virtual Receptionist, Call Center & Contact Center Solutions

Answering Service uses YouTube Channel To Provide Tutorials for Client Web Interface

AnswerFirst Communications, an international telephone answering service and customer service solutions company specializing in answering & messaging services, virtual receptionist and contact center solutions, announced this week that they are utilizing a YouTube channel to educate their client base about the functionality of their proprietary client web interface known as Client Web Access.

Every AnswerFirst answering service, messaging service, call center and virtual receptionist account is coupled with a free Client Web Access (CWA) account.  CWA is AnswerFirst's client web interface that allows their clients to securely log-in to AnswerFirst's servers from any web browser to view and update real-time account data.  Clients can review their messages, check their invoices, make changes to their accounts, check web form submissions and more.

Jim Smith, AnswerFirst's Director of Inside Sales stated, "CWA offers an extremely robust set of features and functionality. The interface is very intuitive but we don't want to limit usability by not providing clear and concise instructional materials.  Using screen capture software we have created a series of videos that are instructional walkthroughs of the most useful features of CWA.  The video tutorials are available from within CWA as well as on our AnswerFirst YouTube channel.  We launched the YouTube channel for the sole purpose of featuring our CWA tutorial videos because YouTube is easily accessible to users around the globe and it is integrated with Google's search engine which makes it easier for users to find the videos. We plan to release several videos each month and, because we are always upgrading CWA features, there will always be new functionality to feature in these videos."

Steve Smith, owner of AAA Appliance Services and an AnswerFirst client, said, "Client Web Access is an account feature that you won't get from any other answering service. I've used it to review my invoices since we first set-up our AnswerFirst account but, I had no idea I could listen to all of my calls until I browsed AnswerFirst's YouTube channel and saw a video about this feature of CWA.  I'm looking forward to using the AnswerFirst YouTube channel more and learning more about the features of Client Web Access."

AnswerFirst is based in Tampa, FL and provides answering services, appointment scheduling, reservation taking, technical support, customer care, order entry and contact center solutions to businesses in any industry throughout the world.  For more information about their services visit their website.

1-800-645-2616
www.answerfirst.com - Answering Service, Virtual Receptionist, Call Center & Contact Center Solutions