Customer Experience Glossary
Definitions and context for the terms that matter most in modern customer service.
AI Chatbot
An automated software agent that uses artificial intelligence to understand and respond to customer messages in natural language, without requiring a human agent for every interaction.
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AI Customer Service Agent
Software that autonomously handles customer inquiries without requiring a human agent.
Read MoreAfter-Call Work (ACW)
The wrap-up time agents spend on documentation and administrative tasks immediately after each customer interaction ends.
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Agent Assist
AI-powered tooling that surfaces real-time suggestions, information, and guidance to human agents during live customer interactions reduces handle time, improves response consistency, and accelerates the path to resolution without removing the human from the conversation.
Read MoreAgent Occupancy Rate
Agent occupancy rate is the percentage of time an agent spends handling contacts, including talk time and after-call work, relative to their total logged-in time. It is a core workforce efficiency metric that directly affects both agent burnout risk and service level performance.
Read MoreAgent Utilization Rate
The percentage of time agents spend on productive work versus idle or unscheduled time.
Read MoreAutomated Quality Assurance
The use of AI and machine learning to evaluate customer service interactions at scale, without requiring human reviewers to sample conversations manually.
Read MoreAverage 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.
Read MoreCSAT (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.
Read MoreCall Abandonment Rate
The percentage of inbound callers who disconnect before reaching a live agent. A high abandonment rate signals staffing gaps, scheduling mismatches, or IVR routing problems. Best-in-class contact centers maintain abandonment rates below 3%.
Read MoreCall Routing
Call routing is the process of directing inbound calls to the most appropriate agent, team, or automated system based on rules defined by the contact center. Effective routing reduces wait times, improves first contact resolution, and ensures customers reach someone with the right skills to help them.
Read MoreContact Center Automation
The full range of technologies used to handle customer interactions and agent workflows with reduced human effort, from IVR call routing to agentic AI that resolves complex issues end-to-end.
Read MoreContact Center vs. Call Center
The distinction between these two support delivery models comes down to channel scope: one handles voice calls exclusively while the other manages customer interactions across every channel a business supports.
Read MoreConversational 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.
Read MoreCost Per Contact
The total cost of running customer support divided by the number of contacts handled. The primary financial efficiency metric for contact centers.
Read MoreCustomer 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.
Read MoreCustomer 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.
Read MoreCustomer Experience
Customer experience (CX) is the sum of all interactions a customer has with a company across every touchpoint, from first awareness through purchase, support, and renewal. It is shaped by product quality, service responsiveness, communication clarity, and the emotional impression left at each stage of the relationship.
Read MoreCustomer Feedback Loop
A systematic process for collecting customer feedback, acting on what it reveals, and communicating back to customers about the changes made is one of the most direct pathways from customer dissatisfaction to operational improvement.
Read MoreCustomer Health Score
A composite metric that aggregates multiple signals about a customer's engagement, satisfaction, and product adoption into a single score used to predict the likelihood of renewal, expansion, or churn is one of the most operationally useful tools available to support and customer success teams. Rather than relying on a single lagging indicator like NPS or renewal date, a well-built score surfaces risk and opportunity before they become visible in financial metrics. Support and success teams use these scores to prioritize interventions and focus proactive outreach where it will have the most impact.
Read MoreCustomer 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.
Read MoreCustomer 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.
Read MoreCustomer Onboarding
The structured process of guiding new customers from initial purchase through confident, independent use of a product or service is one of the highest-leverage activities in any CX operation. Support teams that engage proactively during this window dramatically reduce early churn, decrease inbound ticket volume from new users, and accelerate the time it takes for customers to realize value. Whether managed by a dedicated success team or handled within support, the quality of the onboarding experience sets the tone for the entire customer relationship.
Read MoreCustomer Retention Rate
Customer retention rate measures the percentage of customers a business keeps over a defined time period, relative to the number it had at the start. It is one of the most direct indicators of customer satisfaction and long-term business health, with even small improvements compounding into significant revenue gains.
Read MoreCustomer Segmentation
The practice of dividing a customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics enables support teams to allocate resources strategically and deliver differentiated service experiences. Rather than treating every customer identically, segmentation allows organizations to match service levels, response times, and channel access to the value and needs of each group. The result is more efficient operations and higher satisfaction across the entire customer base.
Read MoreCustomer Service Quality Assurance
The structured process of evaluating agent interactions against defined quality standards to drive coaching, training, and process improvement. Unlike performance metrics that track output volume, QA examines the quality dimensions that aggregated numbers miss: empathy, accuracy, and compliance.
Read MoreFirst 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.
Read MoreFirst 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.
Read MoreHelpdesk 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.
Read MoreHuman-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.
Read MoreNet 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.
Read MoreNet Revenue Retention
The metric that captures how much revenue a company retains from its existing customer base after accounting for churn, downgrades, and expansion is widely regarded as the most comprehensive measure of go-to-market efficiency and CX impact. Unlike gross retention, which only counts what's kept, this calculation includes upsells and expansions, making it possible for a company to post a figure above 100% even as some customers churn. Support and customer success teams are among the most direct levers influencing where this number lands.
Read MoreSelf-Service Rate
The percentage of customers who resolve their issues through self-service channels without agent assistance, a measure of self-service infrastructure effectiveness and scalable support capacity.
Read MoreSentiment Analysis
A process in which natural language processing is used to detect the emotional tone of customer interactions at scale, providing a continuous signal of how customers feel without relying on post-interaction surveys.
Read MoreService Desk
A centralized function that acts as the primary point of contact between an organization and its internal or external users for managing incidents, service requests, and information needs is more formal in scope than a basic help desk. Rooted in ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) principles, this model emphasizes structured processes, service catalogues, and defined response commitments rather than ad-hoc issue resolution. Understanding where this model fits, and where it doesn't, is essential for any organization designing its support function.
Read MoreService 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.
Read MoreService Recovery
Service recovery is the process of addressing a customer complaint or service failure in a way that restores satisfaction and, when done well, builds stronger loyalty than existed before the problem occurred. It is a critical competency for any CX team because failures are inevitable, but how a company responds determines whether a customer churns or stays.
Read MoreSupport Ticket
A discrete record that captures a customer's request, issue, or inquiry and tracks it through to resolution is the fundamental unit of work in most support operations. Each record carries essential context: who the customer is, what they need, which channel they used, and the full history of agent and customer communication associated with that request. How teams structure, route, and resolve these records has a direct bearing on resolution speed, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
Read MoreTicket 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.
Read MoreTicket Prioritization
The process of ranking incoming support requests by urgency, business impact, and customer context so that agents address the most critical issues first.
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