S

Sales. Very simply, the act of making a sale. A count of all sales made in a revenue-generating call center. Also called conversions or closes. Other terms may be used in outbound call centers where surveys are performed, and a completed survey is similar to a completed sale.

Sales Per Hour (SPH). A simple measure of productivity in a sales-oriented call center. Arrived at by dividing Sales by Phone Time. If an agent makes 30 sales in 5 hours, she has an SPH of 6.0.

Scatter Diagram. A chart that graphically depicts the relationship between two variables.

Schedule Compliance. See Adherence to Schedule.

Scheduling Exception. When an agent is involved in an activity outside of the normal, planned schedule.

Screen Monitoring. A system capability that enables a supervisor or manager to remotely monitor the activity on agents' computer terminals.

Screen Pop. A CTI capability. Callers' records are automatically retrieved (based on ANI or digits entered into the VRU) and delivered to agents, along with the calls.

Screen Refresh. The rate at which real-time information is updated on a display (e.g. every 5 to 15 seconds). Note, screen refresh does not correlate with the time-frame used for real-time calculations. See Real-Time Data.

Seated Agents. See Base Staff.

Service Bureau. A company that handles inbound or outbound calls for another organization.

Service Level. The percentage of calls answered within a certain time factor. For example,"90% of all calls were answered in 20 seconds in our call center today.

Service Level Agreement. Performance objectives reached by consensus between the user and the provider of a service, or between an outsourcer and an organization. A service level agreement specifies a variety of performance standards that may or may not include "service level." See Service Level.

Service Observing. See Monitoring.

Shrink Factor. See Rostered Staff Factor.

Silent Monitoring. See Monitoring.

Skill Group. See Agent Group.

Skill-Based Routing. An ACD capability that matches a caller's specific needs with an agent that has the skills to handle that call, on a real-time basis.

Smooth Call Arrival. Calls that arrive evenly across a period of time. Virtually non-existent in incoming environments.

Special Causes. Variation in a process caused by special circumstances. See Common Causes.

Speech Recognition. The capability of a voice processing system to decipher spoken words and phrases.
Split. See Agent Group.

Supervisor. The person who has front-line responsibility for a group of agents. Typical ratios are one supervisor to every 10-15 agents. However, help desks can have one supervisor for every 5 people, and some reservations centers have one supervisor for every 30 or 40 agents. Generally, supervisors are equipped with special telephones and computer terminals that enable them to monitor agent activities.

Supervisor Monitor. Computer monitors that enable supervisors to monitor the call handling statistics of their supervisory groups or teams.