Glossary

Helpful A-Z glossary listing key terms, acronyms and their definitions.

H

Handle

A handle refers to a nickname, or a public username on the internet. For example, Twitter allows users to select and customize handles or usernames while creating their social media profile, the handle always starts with the symbol @.

Handled Call

Refers to when a customer service agent receives and handles or manages a call.

Handle Time

Handle time or average handle time (AHT), is a metric used to determine the average duration of a transaction. It includes the amount of time an agent spends interacting with a customer, performing after-call work, and the time it takes for the technology to process the work.

Hashtag

Hashtag facilitates conversation on popular social networking websites like Twitter and Instagram, and can be defined as any message or phrase preceded by the hash sign or pound key (#) to indicate a trending topic, or to help users find appropriate messages or content based on a specific theme or topic.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a United States federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.

Help Desk

The term help desk refers to a company's call center or customer support departments. It is usually used to describe the customer support operation of computer software or hardware suppliers.

HIPAA

See Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Historical Reports

Historical reports are generated by the interactive voice response (IVR) solutions, and the automatic call distributor (ACD) based on historical call data. It is used to conduct performance assessments, as well as monitor and track a customer service agent's performance over a specific period of time.

Hit Rate

Hit Rate is a metric that is used to measure the performance of sales teams and marketing campaigns, and is calculated by dividing the number of products sold or orders received by the number of calls made to customers. For example, the hit rate will stand at 70%, if the agents made 10 calls and 7 customers purchase the product.

Home Agent

Home agent refers to a call center agent or representative who works from home or another location outside of a call center’s central location.

Hospital Call Center

AKA Hospital call center, A communications center that integrates human, technical and physical resources to handle incoming and outgoing phone calls in support of hospital care. Hospital call centers support various functions, such as appointment scheduling, physician or emergency help lines, patient financial services, laboratory information lines and others. Clients are managed through multiple communication channels, such as phone calls, emails, chat, text SMS and social media platforms. Hospital call centers should be compliant with healthcare guidelines and regulations including HIPAA.