The customer support glossary, plainly defined
Thirty terms you meet running a shared inbox - each with a definition you can quote and, where one exists, the formula.
This customer support glossary defines 30 terms teams meet when they run a shared inbox or help desk - satisfaction metrics like CSAT and NPS, operational terms like triage, escalation and SLA, and newer AI concepts like human-in-the-loop and intent detection. Each entry gives a plain definition, the formula where one exists, and how to apply the term in practice.
Each entry gives a plain definition, a formula where one exists, and cited sources where they exist. Where public benchmarks exist, they are cited with a date, and where they don’t, no numbers are invented.
Metrics and targets.
The numbers support teams are measured by - and how each one can be misread.
CSAT
The per-conversation satisfaction score, and how to keep it honest.
NPS
The loyalty question - would they recommend you - scored from −100 to 100.
Customer effort score
How hard customers had to work to get their answer.
First contact resolution
Solved in one touch - the metric speed can’t fake.
Average handle time
How long a conversation takes to work, not just to answer.
First response time
How long a customer waits to hear a human is on it.
Resolution time
Open to resolved, with all the waiting counted in between.
SLA
The response-time promise, and what happens when it’s missed.
Ticket deflection
Questions your help center answers before they become tickets.
Running the inbox.
The working vocabulary of queues, ownership and hand-offs.
Backlog
The pile of open conversations - and why its age matters more than its size.
Support queue
The ordered line of waiting conversations, and how it’s ordered.
Business hours
The hours support promises to be there, and how timers respect them.
Escalation
Moving a conversation to someone with more skill or more authority.
Triage
Sorting the inbox by urgency, topic and owner before anyone replies.
Round robin assignment
Dealing conversations to teammates in turn - and its blind spot.
Help desk
The team and system of record behind a support address.
Ticketing system
Software that turns messages into tracked, ownable tickets.
Canned response
A saved reply for a repeated question - used well or badly.
Internal note
The comment your team sees and your customer never does.
Shared mailbox
One address the whole team can read - and its limits.
Distribution list
An address that copies mail to many inboxes, owned by no one.
Auto-reply
The automatic acknowledgement, and what it should actually say.
Concepts and AI.
Self-service, and the newer vocabulary of AI in the inbox.
Self-service
Customers resolving their own questions with what you’ve published.
Help center
The public library of answers on your own domain.
Human-in-the-loop AI
AI that drafts and suggests while a person decides.
Agentic AI
AI that plans and takes multi-step actions toward a goal.
AI agent
Software that reads, reasons and acts on conversations.
Intent detection
Classifying what a message wants before anyone reads it.
Omnichannel
Every channel, one conversation history.
Proactive messaging
Reaching out before the customer has to ask.
Stop defining it. Start measuring it.
CSAT, triage, collision detection and the rest - live in one shared inbox, free to start, never per seat.