The words, without the sales voice.

Interactive voice response — the menu a caller hears. Press one for sales. Useful two levels deep and hated at four.

The switchboard that connects calls inside a business. Used to be a box in a cupboard; now it is software.

The line between your phone system and the public telephone network. If you already have one, we can use it.

Direct inward dial — a phone number that reaches one person or one desk without going through a switchboard menu.

The ordinary public telephone network. A call to a normal phone number leaves the internet and joins this at some point.

Voice over IP — carrying calls over the internet instead of a dedicated phone line. Every product on this page is VoIP.

Automatic call distribution — deciding which waiting caller goes to which free agent. Skills routing is ACD with rules.

The time after a call ends and before the agent takes the next one. Where the notes get written, or do not.

The one-click outcome of a call: interested, wrong number, call back Tuesday.

A supervisor speaking to the agent mid-call without the customer hearing. Barge is joining the call outright.

Do-not-call — a list of numbers you must not ring. Enforced here in the dialplan, not only in the app.

Application-to-person messaging — messages sent by software rather than typed by a human. Regulated separately.

One try at reaching somebody. Capping attempts per day is how a number avoids being marked as spam.

The share of calls that get picked up. The number a flagged caller ID quietly destroys.