Glossary
Customer support and AI, defined.
32 plain-English definitions for the terms support teams, store owners and AI buyers run into: what each one means, how to measure it, and the mistake people usually make with it.
- 9 AI and automation
- 11 Support metrics
- 8 Support operations
- 4 Sales and commerce
A
AI customer support agent
An AI customer support agent is software that uses a large language model to answer customer questions in natural language, grounded in a business's own content, and can take bounded actions such as looking up an order, capturing a lead or handing the conversation to a human when it cannot help.
AI and automationAppointment booking bot
An appointment booking bot is a chatbot that lets customers schedule a meeting, consultation, demo or service slot inside the conversation, usually by connecting to a scheduling tool or calendar. It removes the back-and-forth of finding a time and turns interest expressed in chat into a confirmed booking while the visitor is still engaged.
Sales and commerceAverage handle time (AHT)
Average handle time (AHT) is the average amount of time an agent spends on one customer interaction from start to finish, including talking or typing, any hold time, and the follow-up work after the conversation ends. Contact centres use it for staffing and cost planning, but pushing it down too hard can hurt resolution and satisfaction.
Support metrics
C
Chatbot
A chatbot is software that holds a text conversation with a person, usually in a website widget or messaging app. Rule-based chatbots follow scripted flows and keyword triggers; AI chatbots use language models to understand free-form questions and generate replies. In customer support, chatbots answer common questions and route the rest to people.
AI and automationConversational AI
Conversational AI is the set of technologies that let software understand and respond to human language in a back-and-forth dialogue, by text or voice. It combines natural language understanding, dialogue management and response generation, and today is usually powered by large language models. Chatbots, voice assistants and AI support agents are applications of it.
AI and automationCustomer effort score (CES)
Customer effort score (CES) measures how easy it was for a customer to get an issue resolved or complete a task, usually by asking them to rate a statement such as “The company made it easy to handle my issue” on a numbered agreement scale. Lower effort is associated with stronger loyalty, which is why support teams track it.
Support metricsCustomer satisfaction score (CSAT)
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) measures how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, usually from a one-question survey such as “How satisfied were you with this conversation?” on a 1–5 scale. CSAT is the percentage of respondents who choose the top ratings, typically 4 or 5, out of everyone who responded.
Support metrics
D
F
Fallback rate
Fallback rate is the percentage of chatbot messages or conversations where the bot could not produce a confident answer and fell back to a default response, such as “I'm not sure” or an offer to contact a person. It measures how often customers ask things the bot's knowledge or rules do not cover.
Support metricsFirst contact resolution (FCR)
First contact resolution (FCR) is the percentage of customer issues fully resolved in the first interaction, with no follow-up, transfer or repeat contact needed. It is one of the most customer-centred support metrics because having to contact a business again about the same problem is a common source of frustration.
Support metricsFirst response time (FRT)
First response time (FRT) is the time between a customer contacting support and receiving the first reply. It is usually reported as a median or average over a period. Automated acknowledgements are often excluded, because FRT is meant to show how long customers wait before someone, or something, actually starts helping.
Support metrics
G
H
Hallucination (AI)
An AI hallucination is a response from a language model that sounds confident and fluent but is false, unsupported by its sources, or invented outright. In customer support, typical hallucinations are made-up policies, prices, delivery dates or product features, and they are dangerous because customers act on them and businesses may have to honour them.
AI and automationHuman handoff (escalation)
Human handoff is the point where an automated system such as a chatbot passes a conversation to a person, ideally with the full conversation history and context attached. Good handoff rules trigger on low confidence, sensitive topics, explicit requests for a human or signs of frustration, and tell the customer what happens next and how long it will take.
Support operations
I
K
Knowledge base
A knowledge base is an organised library of help content, such as how-to articles, policies, troubleshooting steps and FAQs, that customers and support staff use to find answers. For AI support agents, the knowledge base is also the source material the agent retrieves from, so its accuracy and freshness directly limit the quality of automated answers.
Support operationsKnowledge gaps
Knowledge gaps are the customer questions that a support team's content, and therefore its AI agent, cannot answer. They show up as fallbacks, low-confidence answers, escalations and repeated rephrasing. Tracking them tells you exactly which help articles to write or fix next, making them one of the most actionable metrics in AI support.
Support metrics
L
Lead capture
Lead capture is collecting a potential customer's contact details, such as name, email or phone number, along with context about what they want, so a business can follow up. On websites it happens through forms, pop-ups and increasingly chat, where details can be gathered naturally in the middle of answering the visitor's question.
Sales and commerceLead qualification
Lead qualification is the process of deciding how likely a potential customer is to buy, and how soon, based on criteria such as need, budget, timing and fit. It helps sales teams focus on the best opportunities. In chat, a few well-chosen questions during the conversation can qualify a lead before a person gets involved.
Sales and commerceLive chat
Live chat is a support channel where customers exchange real-time text messages with a business, usually through a widget on its website or app. Traditionally the replies came from human agents; many live chat tools now put an AI agent first and bring in a person when needed, so “live” increasingly means immediate rather than necessarily human.
Support operations
M
N
O
Omnichannel support
Omnichannel support means serving customers across multiple channels, such as email, chat, phone, social and messaging apps, with a connected history, so a customer can switch channels without starting over. It differs from multichannel support, where channels exist side by side but each conversation is isolated from the others.
Support operationsOrder status lookup (WISMO)
Order status lookup is answering a customer's “where is my order?” question, known in ecommerce as WISMO, by retrieving the order's real status and tracking details from the store. It is one of the most frequent ecommerce support questions, which makes it a strong candidate for automation, provided the lookup verifies the customer's identity first.
Sales and commerce
P
R
Resolution rate
Resolution rate is the percentage of customer conversations or tickets that end with the customer's issue solved. For AI support, it usually means conversations the bot resolved without a human. Because vendors define “resolved” differently, the number is only meaningful when you know the definition behind it and check it against repeat contacts and satisfaction.
Support metricsRetrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a technique in which an AI system first searches a trusted knowledge source for passages relevant to a question, then gives those passages to a language model to write the answer. In customer support, RAG keeps replies tied to the business's current policies and help content instead of the model's general training data.
AI and automation
S
Self-service support
Self-service support lets customers find answers and complete tasks on their own, without contacting a support agent, using tools such as a help centre, FAQs, order tracking pages, account settings and AI chat. Done well, it is faster for customers and cheaper for businesses; done badly, it becomes a barrier between customers and help.
Support operationsSentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis is the automated detection of the emotional tone in text, typically classified as positive, neutral or negative. In customer support, it is applied to messages and conversations to spot frustrated customers, track how people feel about topics over time, and flag conversations for a human to review, without waiting for a survey response.
AI and automationService level agreement (SLA)
A service level agreement (SLA) in customer support is a defined commitment for how quickly a team will respond to or resolve customer requests, such as a first reply within four business hours. SLAs can be contractual promises to customers or internal targets, and are usually set per channel and priority level.
Support operationsShared inbox
A shared inbox is a single queue where a whole team can see, assign and reply to customer conversations, instead of messages sitting in one person's email. It shows who is handling what, keeps the conversation history in one place, and prevents both duplicate replies and conversations that nobody answers.
Support operations
T
Put the definitions to work.
Test an AI support agent against your own questions, or estimate what your current support volume costs.