Voice AI glossary
The terms you'll meet when you compare AI voice agents and AI calling tools, explained in plain English.
All terms
- After-hours answeringHandling calls outside business hours, at night, on weekends and on holidays.
- AI calling agentAn AI voice agent that makes and answers business phone calls, often used to call leads back and to answer customer calls.
- AI receptionistAn AI voice agent that answers a business's incoming calls like a front-desk receptionist.
- AI voice agentSoftware that holds a spoken phone conversation with a person, understands what they say and takes action, such as booking an appointment or taking an order.
- Answering machine detection (AMD)Detecting whether a call was answered by a person or by voicemail.
- Automatic speech recognition (ASR)The field of technology that recognises spoken words and converts them into text.
- Average handle time (AHT)The average length of a call, including any hold and after-call work.
- Barge-inThe caller's ability to interrupt the voice agent while it is speaking, and have it stop and listen.
- Call analyticsReporting on calls: volumes, outcomes, durations, conversion and trends.
- Call dispositionThe recorded outcome of a call, such as booked, not interested, call back later or wrong number.
- Call recording consentTelling callers that a call may be recorded, and handling the recording lawfully.
- Call routingSending each call to the right destination, such as a department, branch or person.
- Call transcriptA written record of what was said on a call.
- Code-mixing (Hinglish, Tenglish and more)Switching between two languages within one conversation or sentence, very common in Indian phone calls.
- Concurrent callsThe number of calls a system can handle at the same time.
- Conversational AITechnology that lets people talk or type to software in ordinary language and get useful replies.
- Conversion rateThe share of leads or calls that become customers, bookings or orders.
- CRM integrationConnecting a voice agent to a customer relationship management system so call details and outcomes are saved automatically.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)The total cost of winning one new customer, usually ad spend plus sales cost divided by new customers.
- DND and the National Customer Preference RegisterIndia's Do Not Disturb system, run by TRAI, where people register to block unwanted commercial calls and messages.
- DPDP Act, 2023India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, the law that governs how businesses collect and use people's personal data.
- DTMF (touch-tone)The tones a phone sends when keys are pressed, used by IVR menus to read the caller's choice.
- EscalationPassing a conversation to a human or a higher level of support when the agent shouldn't or can't handle it.
- First call resolution (FCR)The share of customer issues solved on the first call, without a follow-up.
- Function calling (tool use)An LLM's ability to call software functions, such as "check availability" or "create booking", during a conversation.
- GuardrailsRules and checks that keep an AI agent within safe, approved behaviour.
- Hallucination (in AI)When an AI states something that sounds plausible but isn't true.
- Inbound callingCalls customers make to a business, such as enquiries, bookings, orders and support.
- Intent recognitionWorking out what the caller wants to do, for example book, cancel, ask a price or complain.
- IVR (interactive voice response)A phone menu system where callers press keys or say simple words to choose options, such as "press 1 for sales".
- Knowledge baseThe business information a voice agent answers from, such as prices, timings, policies and FAQs.
- Large language model (LLM)An AI model trained on large amounts of text that can understand requests and generate human-like replies.
- Latency (voice response time)The delay between the caller finishing speaking and hearing the agent's reply.
- Lead qualificationFinding out whether a lead is likely to buy, using questions about need, budget, timeline and authority.
- Lead scoringRanking leads by how likely they are to convert, based on their answers and behaviour.
- Meta lead adsFacebook and Instagram ads with a built-in form, so people can send their details without leaving the app.
- Missed callA call that rang but wasn't answered.
- Multilingual voice AIVoice AI that can hold conversations in several languages, and switch between them when the caller does.
- Natural language understanding (NLU)The part of conversational AI that works out what a person means from what they say.
- Outbound callingCalls a business makes to customers or leads, such as call-backs, reminders and follow-ups.
- Predictive dialerSoftware that dials many numbers automatically and connects answered calls to available agents.
- PSTN (public switched telephone network)The worldwide network of ordinary phone lines and mobile networks that phone calls travel over.
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)A technique where an AI looks up relevant information before answering, instead of relying only on what it learned in training.
- SIP trunkingA way to connect a business phone system to the phone network over the internet.
- Speech-to-text (STT)Technology that converts spoken audio into written text, also called automatic speech recognition (ASR).
- Speed to leadThe time between a lead submitting an enquiry and the business first contacting them.
- Streaming (in voice AI)Processing audio and text in small pieces as they arrive, instead of waiting for the whole utterance.
- System promptThe instructions that set a voice agent's role, tone, rules and goals.
- Text-to-speech (TTS)Technology that turns written text into spoken audio.
- Turn detection (endpointing)Deciding when the caller has finished their turn so the agent can reply.
- Virtual phone numberA phone number that isn't tied to a physical line and can route calls to software, staff or both.
- Voice activity detection (VAD)Technology that detects when someone is speaking and when they've stopped.
- Voice botAn automated system that talks to callers by voice. Older voice bots follow scripts; newer ones are AI voice agents.
- Voice cloningCreating a synthetic voice that sounds like a specific person.
- Voice customer supportHelping customers by phone with questions, orders, complaints and changes.
- Warm transferHanding a call to a person along with the context, so the customer doesn't repeat themselves.
- WebhookAn automatic message one system sends to another when something happens, such as "new lead submitted".
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