Glossary

Customer Experience Glossary

Definitions and context for the terms that matter most in modern customer service.

AI Customer Service Agent

Software that autonomously handles customer inquiries without requiring a human agent.

Agent Utilization Rate

The percentage of time agents spend on productive work versus idle or unscheduled time.

Average Handle Time (AHT)

The average total time a support agent spends on a customer interaction, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work; a key contact center efficiency metric.

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)

A metric that measures how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, typically collected via a post-contact survey asking customers to rate their experience.

Conversational AI

Technology that enables computers to simulate natural, human-like dialogue — powering the chatbots, voice assistants, and AI agents that handle customer contacts end-to-end at scale.

Cost Per Contact

The total cost of running customer support divided by the number of contacts handled — the primary financial efficiency metric for contact centers.

Customer Churn Rate

The percentage of customers who stop doing business with a company over a defined period; the most direct measure of retention failure and a leading indicator of revenue erosion.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

A metric that measures how much effort a customer had to exert to get their issue resolved — a stronger predictor of loyalty than satisfaction alone.

Customer Journey Mapping

A visual or structured representation of the steps a customer takes when interacting with a company — used to identify friction, gaps, and opportunities across the full experience.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The total net revenue a business expects to generate from a customer over the entire duration of the relationship. This metric reframes support from a cost center to a revenue protection function.

Escalation Rate

Escalation rate is the percentage of customer service interactions that cannot be resolved at the initial point of contact and must be transferred to a higher-tier resource.

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

The percentage of customer issues fully resolved on the first interaction — a dual indicator of support quality and cost efficiency, since every repeat contact is both a cost and a loyalty risk.

First Response Time (FRT)

The time between a customer submitting a support request and receiving the first substantive reply from a human agent or AI — one of the most closely watched speed metrics in customer service.

Helpdesk vs. CRM: What's the Difference?

A helpdesk manages support tickets; a CRM manages customer relationships. The distinction matters less than most teams think — and the cost of keeping them separate is higher than most realize.

Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)

An AI design principle in which human judgment is incorporated into an automated workflow — ensuring people remain in control of decisions that exceed the AI's competence or authority.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A customer loyalty metric based on a single question around likelihood to recommend, which segments customers into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors and produces a score from -100 to +100.

Omnichannel Customer Service

A support approach in which all communication channels — email, chat, phone, social, messaging — share a unified customer record so context follows the customer across every interaction.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A formal commitment that defines expected response and resolution times for support interactions — the operational baseline against which agents, teams, and workflows are measured.

Ticket Deflection

The percentage of potential support contacts resolved through self-service before reaching a live agent — a leading indicator of self-service maturity and cost efficiency.

Workforce Management (WFM)

The processes and tools used to forecast contact volume, schedule agents, and monitor real-time adherence; the operational backbone that makes SLA performance possible at scale.

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