The jargon,in plain English.

Calling more numbers than you have free agents, on the bet that most will not be answered, so an agent is talking again the moment the last call ends.

On the floor

It is the fastest of the four modes and the only one that can get you in trouble, because the bet is sometimes wrong and someone answers with nobody there. Progressive dials one number per free agent, preview shows the agent the record before it dials, and manual is click to call. Most floors run predictive for cold lists and preview for anything that needs preparation.

A call that a person answered when no agent was free to speak to them. They say hello to silence, and hang up.

On the floor

This is the number regulators care about, and it is the direct cost of dialing aggressively. The FTC treats 3 percent of answered calls as the ceiling. It is worth being precise about the definition: a call nobody picked up is a no-answer, not an abandon. Only the ones where a human answered and got nothing count against you.

The outcome an agent records at the end of a call: sold, callback, not interested, wrong number, and whatever else your process needs.

On the floor

Dispositions are how a floor knows anything, and they are also the first thing to rot, because an agent under pressure will skip them. TelVox makes the outcome mandatory before the next call arrives, which is unpopular for about a week and then becomes the reason your reports are worth reading. Retry rules and lead recycling both key off these values.

A phone number you own that calls can arrive on, or that you can present as your caller ID when dialing out.

On the floor

In practice a DID is just a number in a pool. A campaign is assigned as many as you like and rotates across them, which protects any single number's reputation with the carriers. If you have ever had a number start showing as spam likely, this is the mechanism that spreads that risk.

The record of people who have asked not to be contacted, which you are legally obliged to honour.

On the floor

The trap is timing. Screening at import is not enough, because a list imported on Monday and dialed on Thursday is three days stale. TelVox screens at import and again at the moment of dialing, keeps separate lists at organisation, campaign and list level, and purges queued leads the instant a number is added, so a request made mid-campaign takes effect immediately.

The automated menu that answers an inbound call and routes it, the press 1 for sales part.

On the floor

Most IVR pain is a design problem rather than a technology one: menus built by whoever could edit the config, never revisited. Ours is a drag-and-drop builder with thirteen node types, which mainly matters because it means the person who understands the customer journey can change the menu without filing a ticket.

The queue an inbound call waits in, and the rules deciding which agent it goes to when one becomes free.

On the floor

The interesting part of a queue is never the happy path, it is what happens when nobody is free. Ours is built to fail politely rather than silently, and one detail is worth knowing: if an agent is offered a call and lets it ring out, the caller is put back with their position preserved. Nobody goes to the back of the line for someone else's missed ring.

The three things a supervisor can do to a call in progress: hear it silently, speak to the agent without the customer hearing, or join the call outright.

On the floor

Whisper is the one that changes how a floor trains. Coaching a new agent through a live call, without the customer knowing anyone else is there, beats reviewing a recording the next day. All three work from the browser in TelVox, so a supervisor does not need to be sitting on the floor.

The connection that carries calls between your phone system and the outside world, over the internet rather than physical phone lines.

On the floor

The number that matters is concurrency, how many calls it will carry at once, and traditionally resizing one meant a conversation with your carrier and a wait. On TelVox Connect trunks are self-serve: create, configure and resize them from the dashboard or the API, and point your existing carrier or softswitch at us if you would rather keep the contracts you have.

The technology that lets a browser tab make and receive real phone calls, with no software installed and no desk phone on the desk.

On the floor

For a contact centre this is mostly a procurement story rather than a technical one: no handsets to buy, no VPN for remote agents, and onboarding someone is sending them a link. The trade is that audio quality now depends on the agent's network, which is why TelVox surfaces live call-quality metrics rather than making you guess.

A monthly calling allowance shared across everyone in your organisation, rather than a fixed allowance locked to each individual seat.

On the floor

Pooling matters because floors are uneven. Ten seats with a thousand minutes each, not pooled, means your busiest three agents run out while quiet seats leave minutes unused. Pooled, the same allowance covers the same work. TelVox plans include minutes per seat that pool across the organisation and reset monthly, with overage itemised at your contracted rate rather than calls being cut off.

Missing one of those deadlines.

On the floor

A breach you discover at month end is just paperwork. The useful behaviour is the warning before it: Desk sends a reminder a configurable number of minutes ahead of the deadline, to the assignee or a named list, and escalates on the same terms afterwards. The point is to be told while it can still be fixed.

Routing a returning customer back to the person who dealt with them last time.

On the floor

It is the difference between explaining your problem once and explaining it every time. The cost is load balancing, since a popular agent accumulates returning customers, which is why it works best alongside routing by skill for everything else.

The two American rules that govern outbound calling: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, which is where the 3 percent abandon ceiling comes from.

On the floor

We are not your lawyers and this is not legal advice. What software can honestly promise is that the limits are enforced by the system rather than by someone remembering: abandon rate held mechanically, do-not-call screened at dial time, and calling hours respected in the customer's own time zone rather than yours.

Health information about an identifiable person, which American law treats as a special category. Masking means storing it obscured so it is not readable to everyone with database access.

On the floor

If you run healthcare campaigns, the question to ask is where the data is masked. Masking in the interface but not at rest satisfies a demo and not an auditor.

The contract a vendor signs when handling health data on your behalf, making them directly accountable under HIPAA rather than leaving the liability entirely with you.

On the floor

This is the cleanest test of whether a vendor's HIPAA claim means anything. A company can describe itself as HIPAA compliant in marketing and decline to sign a BAA, and if they will not sign, the claim is decoration. TelVox signs one on Enterprise agreements.

Two independent audits of how a company runs its security. SOC 2 is a report produced by an external auditor; ISO 27001 is a certification against an international standard.

On the floor

The distinction worth insisting on, from us as much as anyone: holding one of these means an auditor has examined you and issued a report. Being built to the standard means the controls are in place but the audit has not concluded. Both are legitimate, they are not the same claim, and a vendor should tell you plainly which one they mean. TelVox is engineered to SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, with certification in progress. When that changes, this entry changes.