"Dial 800’s services are unbeatable. The combination of the 1-800 Brands they bring to the table and the telephone technology they’ve licensed is extremely powerful. It’s always the first call I make."
- Michael Apstein, CEO Access Brands

Glossary of 1-800 Phone Vanity Number Terms

Here at Dial800, we use a lot of technical terms to describe the technologies behind our 800 service. If you’re in doubt about what a particular term might mean, or how a technical term relates to using 1-800 phone numbers, you can use our glossary to help clear up any confusion you might have.

Whether you’re wondering what IVR systems are, or want to learn more about our call routing, we hope you will find the answers you need here.

ACD
Acronym for automatic call distribution

800 Service Agent
The representative who answers inbound calls from your 800 number. A call center may have several agents that are trained to field a range of inbound calls from numerous toll-free numbers.

Busy/No Answer
A vanity 800 number brand call routing feature.

Call Announcer
A toll free vanity number call routing feature.

Call Distribution
The process by which inbound 800 number calls are directed to the information, location or service they are looking for.

Call Recording
One of the many services found in our 1-800 toll-free call routing feature.

Call Routing
The system that determines how inbound calls to various 800 telephone numbers are handled. For example, a caller to a specific vanity phone number might be distributed to a specific location, a voice mailbox, or an automated message. Dial 800 employs an enhanced IVR call routing system.

Conditional Routing

Our 1-800 phone numbers use this as a method of call distribution.

Exclusive-by-market
Dial 800’s advanced call routing technology that enables local and regional businesses to license the rights to receive all calls to a toll free vanity number that originate in one or more selected area codes.

IVR Call Routing Systems
IVR (Interactive Voice Response Unit). IVR systems make it possible to direct calls or provide information based the caller’s touch-tone actions or by voice recognition.

Manual Routing
The process by which calls from one or more 800 toll-free numbers can be distributed by a representative based on input from the caller.

Menu
A method of call distribution used by our 800 vanity numbers.

Percentage allocation
Another term to describe percentage distribution.

Percentage distribution
A method of call distribution.

Take back and Transfer
A vanity 800 number brand call routing feature.

Uniform distribution
A method of call distribution.

Vanity numbers
Toll-free numbers that also spell names, words, acronyms or phrases.

Voice Recognition
A system that enables the caller of your 800 number to speak instead of using the touch-tone to prompt an action or select from a menu