Do you ever feel like you talk in complete shorthand during the workday? 

I do. 

I’ve written entire e-mail subject lines using acronyms, and it wouldn’t be too farfetched to send a message like this to my fellow researchers: “FWIW, the CES scores are on the CCC site.  The rest of the study will be there EOW, but I’ll be OOO on PTO by then. YWIA.”

Maybe it’s a sign of the times.  As a global population, we’re busier than ever before and the efficiencies gained through acronyms might be small but maybe make us feel like we are working faster.  But although this type of acronym alphabet soup is common across many functions, I feel like the customer service world has a very special penchant for the abbreviations.  Knowing that call centers are often a place where folks don’t intend to land (raise your hand if you majored in customer service at university), I thought it might be helpful to make a list of the more commonly-used call center specific acronyms.  Thus the first list you see below.

But the more I thought about it, I also realized that acronyms not related to call centers specifically are also becoming increasingly important for call center professionals to know.  As we move toward full integration of chat channels, surveys by mobile text messaging, and service via social media, we really ought to know our stuff!  So then I came up with the second list you see below, which is more general to the workplace and general online acronym lingo used on blogs and in chat conversations. 

HTH (Hope this helps)!

Call Center Acronyms

AHT: average handle time (measured in seconds; typically comprised of ATT, average talk time, and AWT, average wrap time; historic productivity metric)

ANI: automatic number identification (fancy caller ID; pronounced like the name “Annie”)

ASA: average speed of answer (the average delay, in seconds, to answer live phone calls; often expressed as a percentage of calls answered with X seconds—e.g., 80% in 20 seconds); benchmark here

CCC: Customer Contact Council (publisher of this blog, and producer of customer contact best practice research and advisory services)

CES: Customer Effort Score (CCC’s recommended metric for tracking customer effort, the best indicator of service’s influence on customer loyalty)

CSAT: Customer Satisfaction (commonly referring to Customer Satisfaction Scores)

CRM: customer relationship management (typically referring to the technology that houses a variety of customer information items)

CSR: customer service representative (can mean Corporate Social Responsibility to our peers in corporate communications; be careful of context!)

FCR: first call resolution originally, although now can be first contact resolution to account for non-call channels

IVR: interactive voice response (the automated phone menu everyone loves to hate)

KPI: key performance indicator (metrics tracked to measure performance at various levels across the organization)

NPS: Net Promoter Score (customer loyalty metric developed by Fred Reichheld)

NIA: next issue avoidance (the next frontier of FCR…when it’s not enough to just solve the current, stated customer problem, but to solve the next likely problem that will create repeat contacts)

SLA: service level agreement (formal contract outlining key KPI expectations)

SMS: short message service (aka, text messaging)

VOC: voice of (the) customer (commonly referring to customer survey results and verbatim)

VoIP: Voice over Internet Protocol (in other words, your phone connection is housed within the internet, not a land line)

Common around the Office

CEB: Corporate Executive Board, parent company of the Customer Contact Council

EOW: end of week (also, EOD: end of day)

EOB: end of business (also, COB: close of business)

EOM: end of message (less commonly, NFT, no further text); used as the only text in the body of an e-mail for which the subject line contains the full message

FWIW: for what it’s worth (perhaps this is the updated version of FYI, for your information, or BTW, by the way?)

HTH: hope this helps

IMO: in my opinion (also, IMHO: in my honest opinion)

NSFW: not safe for work (commonly seen in the subject line of comic e-mails from co-workers who do not want you to get fired)

NWA: not work appropriate (see NSFW above)

OOO: out of office

POC: point of contact (or SPOC, single point of contact)

PTO: paid time off

ROI: return on investment

TIA: thanks in advance

TMI: too much information

YWIA: you’re welcome in advance

Seen In Social Media

ARE: acronym-rich environment

BRB: be right back (used in chat conversations when one steps away from the monitor)

LOL: laughing out loud

LMAO: laughing my a** off (NSFW)

ROTFL: rolling on the floor laughing (or ROFL in short)

ICYMI: in case you missed it

IOW: in other words

FWIW, Twitter has its own little language.  I find this list of Top Twitter Acronyms very informative.

(Caveat: maybe it goes without saying (IGWS?), but these acronyms might not always be customer-friendly.  In other words, it’s good to know these abbreviations so you can understand customer lingo when they use it, but we should always speak the customer’s language, working from their queues and using the language appropriate to the channel). 

So…what did I miss?  What are your go-to time-saving acronyms?  Please share!

Related posts:

1. Channel Choice: More Detrimental Than You Think