Abandoned call: Call in which a customer hangs up before reaching a call center staffer.

ACS: Automatic call sequencer, a less sophisticated version of automated call distribution (see below), without the flexibility and the ability to track call activity.

ACD: Automatic call distribution, a programmable device that queues or routes incoming calls to contact center agents, plays prerecorded announcements, and provides real-time and historical reports on call activity.

ASR: Automatic speech recognition, technology that enables a customer to respond to recorded prompts vocally rather than by using a telephone dial pad.

Backorder: Order for which the merchandise is not available.

Chargeback: Credit-card transaction that is debited from the merchant after the sale, often because of customer dissatisfaction or fraud issues.

Cross-selling: Encouraging customers to buy additional products, often items that complement past purchases.

CSR: Customer service representative, call center agent.

CTI: Computer telephony integration, the software, hardware, and programming needed to integrate computers and telephones to provide contact center agents with immediate access to data such as customer order histories.

Gateway provider: Company that transports a customer payment transaction from the merchant to the payment processor.

ICP: Intelligent call processing, a feature of ACDs that enables them to route calls based on information from callers or retrieved from your database

IVR: Interactive voice response, software that enables call routing based on the callers' responses to recorded prompts (e.g., “To place an order, select 1. For product information, select 2.

Merchant account: Account from a credit-card issuer.

Open order: Order that has not yet been fulfilled.

Order management system: Software that receives customer order information and inventory availability from the warehouse management system and then groups orders by customer and priority, allocates inventory, and determines delivery dates; also called order processing system.

Payment processor: Company that transmits a customer's purchasing information to the bank that issued his credit card.

Shopping cart: Software that facilitates visitors’ ability to purchase products.

Shopping cart abandonment: When visitors leave a Website once they’ve started the checkout process.

Upselling: Selling a more expensive or more profitable product to a customer who has already decided to buy an item from you.