One of the most controversial businesses is the call center industry. The horde of career options, possibilities, and opportunities it offers people enchants some, while others argue the validity or invalidity of outsourcing as a whole. The problem is that few people really understand the terminology used in this domain quite clearly. Two very commonly used terms will be discussed in this article: inbound call centers and long-distance waiting times (LDQs).

Inbound Contact Centre

Among the most commonly used jargons in outsourcing, this is one of the most common. Customer inbound calls to contact centers are initiated by the customer. Depending on the situation, this customer may be both external and internal. A caller might be an employee of the business, for example, if the company is providing technical support or payroll services.

It is possible to classify a customer service center as an inbound, outbound, or blended center depending on whether it receives calls exclusively or not. Most often, however, it is observed that even when a customer service center is exclusively outbound, almost all such providers are generating some outbound calls from the desk itself.

A number of metrics can be used to measure an executive's performance in inbound marketing. The queue time, the AHT, the FCR, the customer satisfaction scores, etc., might be one of them. Despite this, most customer service centers are finding soft skills to be important performance measurement criteria with the increasing sophistication of customer service in general.

A large number of inbound contact centers communicate with customers not just by voice, but also by email and chat. The service level agreements (SLAs) that most inbound centers work toward specify the service goals they will work towards achieving.

LDQ

An alternative term that business strategists often use is LDQ. There is a term called LDQ, which stands for Longest Delay in Queue. In a queue, this is the longest time period before a customer hangs up or waits for their call to be answered.

The LDQ is one of the most important parameters used in business metrics to evaluate the overall performance of contact centers. Shorter AHTs, high agent availability, or low call volumes in general might result in smaller LDQs. On the other hand, longer LDQs may indicate higher customer dissatisfaction levels, higher AHTs, and higher volumes. In addition, longer LDQs can result in a higher number of fast clear downs.

In order to use their WFM software efficiently, offshore service providers ensure there is a perfect balance between the number of available agents at any given time and predicting the number of incoming contact inquiries.

According to call center metrics, LDD can be classified as either the longest time to answer the phone or the longest time to abandon or act. An agent answers the phone within the longest delay, while a customer waits the longest time before hanging up.

The companies also provide customers with shorter LDQs and faster response times, which are appreciated by customers.