Glossary
The words we use.
Thirty terms of customer service, each in one sentence.
A
- AI phone assistant
- An AI phone assistant is software that answers phone calls with a synthetic voice, understands what callers say and replies, takes messages or passes the call to a person.
- AI receptionist
- An AI receptionist is an AI agent that picks up a business’s incoming calls and messages first, greets people, answers common questions and routes or records the rest.
- API key scopes
- API key scopes are the permissions attached to an API key that limit which actions and data a program using that key can reach.
- Audit log
- An audit log is a time-ordered record of who did what in a system, such as changing settings or members, kept so actions can be reviewed and proven later.
C
- Call recording
- Call recording is saving the audio of a phone or voice call so it can be played back later for quality checks, training, disputes or record keeping.
- Call transcription
- Call transcription is turning the audio of a call into written text, usually with automatic speech recognition, so the conversation can be read, searched and summarised.
- Call whisper
- Call whisper lets a supervisor speak to an agent during a live call so that only the agent hears them, while the customer hears nothing.
- Cited answer
- A cited answer is a reply, usually written by an AI, that names the document or passage it is based on, so the reader can check it.
D
- Data residency
- Data residency is the geographic location where an organization’s data is stored and processed, often chosen to meet laws, contracts or customer expectations.
E
- Embedded Signup
- Embedded Signup is Meta’s sign-in flow that lets a business connect its WhatsApp Business account and phone number to a software provider from inside that provider’s product.
- Encryption key
- An encryption key is a secret value that an encryption algorithm uses to turn readable data into ciphertext and back, so that only key holders can read it.
F
- First reply time
- First reply time is the time between a customer’s first message and the first real reply from the team, often counted only within working hours.
I
- Instagram DM
- An Instagram DM is a private direct message sent on Instagram; businesses with a professional account can answer them from other software through Meta’s Instagram messaging API.
- Internal note
- An internal note is a message added to a customer conversation that only the team can see, used to share context, hand over work or ask a colleague.
K
- Knowledge base
- A knowledge base is a collection of a business’s documents, answers and help articles, organised so that people or AI agents can find accurate information quickly.
L
- Live call listening
- Live call listening lets a supervisor hear a call while it is happening, without the customer hearing them, to coach the agent or step in when needed.
M
- Mention
- A mention is a reference to a person, written as @ followed by their name, that notifies them and brings them into a conversation or note.
O
- Omnichannel inbox
- An omnichannel inbox is a shared inbox that brings messages from several channels, such as email, messaging apps, social media, website chat and phone calls, into one place.
P
- Per-seat pricing
- Per-seat pricing is a pricing model in which a software plan costs a set amount for each person who uses it, usually charged monthly or yearly.
S
- Service level (SLA)
- A service level is a promised time for answering or solving a customer request, such as a first reply within one hour, usually set per priority and tracked per ticket.
- Shared inbox
- A shared inbox is one inbox that a team uses to read and answer customer messages together, so everyone sees each conversation and who is handling it.
T
- Telegram bot
- A Telegram bot is a Telegram account run by software rather than a person, created with @BotFather and controlled through the Bot API with a secret token.
- Telegram business account
- A Telegram business account is an ordinary Telegram account, with its own phone number, that a company uses to talk with customers, often with Telegram Business features turned on.
- Ticket
- A ticket is a numbered record of a customer request that tracks its status, owner, priority and deadlines from the first message until it is solved.
- Two-factor authentication
- Two-factor authentication is a sign-in method that asks for two different proofs of identity, usually a password plus a code from a phone or a security key.
W
- Webhook
- A webhook is an HTTP request that one system sends automatically to an address another system chose, to report an event as soon as it happens.
- Website call
- A website call is a voice call that a visitor starts from a button on a website and holds in the browser, with no phone number on their side.
- Website chat widget
- A website chat widget is a small chat window embedded on a website that lets visitors message a business in real time while the team answers from its own tool.
- WhatsApp Business API
- The WhatsApp Business API is Meta’s official interface that lets businesses send and receive WhatsApp messages through software, such as a shared inbox, instead of a single phone.
- Working hours
- Working hours are the days and times a team is available to customers, used to decide when service-level clocks run and what happens to messages and calls after hours.