Glossary
Customer service glossary
The words you meet when you run customer service, explained plainly, with where to read more.
- Assignment
- Giving a conversation or ticket to one person or team, so it is clear who is responsible for the reply. Assignment can be manual, or automatic in turn among the people who are online. Inbox and tickets
- Automatic resolution rate
- The share of conversations an AI solved with no person involved and that the customer didn’t come back about. A more honest measure than how many conversations the AI handled. Customer service metrics
- Business verification
- Meta’s check that a business is who it says it is. On WhatsApp, verification is what lets a business message more customers each day. WhatsApp customer service guide
- Canned response
- A saved reply an agent can insert with a shortcut, for answers given many times a day. Also called a quick reply.
- Complaint register
- A record of every complaint with its category, dates and outcome, kept in the form a regulator asks for. Nigerian banks report complaints to the CBN, and telecoms companies handle complaints under NCC rules. Inbox and tickets
- CSAT (customer satisfaction score)
- The share of customers who rate the help they got as 4 or 5 out of 5, usually asked at the end of a conversation. Customer service metrics
- Customer service window
- On WhatsApp, the 24 hours after a customer’s last message, when a business can reply freely. Outside it, a business can only send an approved message template. WhatsApp customer service guide
- Deflection
- A conversation that ends without reaching a person, for example because an AI or a help article answered it. Deflection only counts as success if the problem was actually solved. Bringing AI in safely
- Do-not-disturb (DND)
- In Nigeria, the NCC’s register of phone numbers that have opted out of promotional SMS and calls. Businesses must check it before sending promotional messages. Campaigns
- Escalation
- Moving a conversation to someone with more authority or knowledge, such as a supervisor or another team, because the first person can’t solve it.
- First contact resolution
- The share of problems solved in the first conversation, with no follow-up needed. Customer service metrics
- First response time
- The time between a customer’s first message and the first real reply from the business. Best reported as a median. Customer service metrics
- Handover
- Passing a conversation from an AI to a person, ideally with a summary so the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves. Also called handoff. Automatic answers
- Help centre
- A public website of answers and guides that customers can search themselves. Also called a knowledge base. Inbox and tickets
- Help desk
- Software a team uses to receive, assign, answer and track customer requests. Modern help desks combine a shared inbox for every channel with tickets and reports. Inbox and tickets
- Holdout group
- A small share of customers who are deliberately not sent a campaign, so you can measure what the campaign really changed by comparing the two groups. Campaigns
- Identity validation
- A way for a website or app to prove to the chat who a signed-in customer is, by signing their identifier with a secret key. It stops one visitor pretending to be another. Adding live chat to your website
- Internal note
- A message inside a conversation that only your team can see, used to discuss a case without leaving it.
- IVR (interactive voice response)
- A phone menu that asks callers to press keys or say what they need. An AI phone agent can replace the menu by simply asking the caller. Phone
- Live chat
- A chat window on a website or in an app where visitors message a business and get answers in real time. Live chat
- Message template
- A WhatsApp message written in advance and approved by Meta, needed to message a customer outside the customer service window. Templates are utility, marketing or authentication. WhatsApp customer service guide
- Messaging limit
- The number of different customers a business can start WhatsApp conversations with in a rolling 24 hours. It starts at 250 for new businesses and rises with verification and good quality. WhatsApp customer service guide
- NDPA
- The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, which sets how organisations may collect and use personal data, and gives people the right to see, correct and delete their data. It is enforced by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission. Security
- NPS (Net Promoter Score)
- The percentage of customers who would recommend you (9 or 10 out of 10) minus the percentage who wouldn’t (0 to 6). It runs from −100 to 100. Customer service metrics
- Omnichannel
- Serving customers on many channels (WhatsApp, calls, email, SMS, chat, social) from one place, with one history per customer, so a conversation can move between channels without starting again. Channels
- Opt-in
- A customer’s permission to be messaged by a business on a channel, such as WhatsApp. Needed before a business sends messages the customer didn’t ask for. WhatsApp customer service guide
- Pre-chat form
- A short form a website visitor fills in before a chat starts, usually name and email. Adding live chat to your website
- Procedure
- In Texa, a process written in plain words, such as how to handle a failed transfer, that Texa turns into steps and follows once your team approves it. Automatic answers
- Promised time
- The time within which a business commits to answer or solve a kind of request, often called an SLA. Regulators set promised times for some complaints, such as the CBN for banks. Inbox and tickets
- Quality rating
- Meta’s score for how customers react to a business’s WhatsApp messages, based on blocks and reports. A low rating can limit how many customers a business can message. WhatsApp customer service guide
- Reopen rate
- The share of conversations marked solved that the customer comes back about. A rising reopen rate means conversations are being closed too early. Customer service metrics
- Resolution time
- The time from a customer’s first message until their problem is solved, including any time the case spent with other teams. Customer service metrics
- Shadow mode
- A way to introduce AI where it writes a draft for every conversation and your team decides whether to send it. Customers only see what a person sent. Bringing AI in safely
- Ticket
- A record of one customer problem, with a reference, an owner, a state and a promised time, that stays open until the problem is solved, even if several conversations happen along the way. Inbox and tickets
- Webhook
- A message one system sends to another the moment something happens, such as a new conversation or a solved ticket, so the other system can act on it. Developers
- WhatsApp Business API
- The usual name for Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform, which lets many people answer from one business number through a provider, and connects WhatsApp to other systems. Channels