Glossary. Customer service, explained.

Abandoned cart

Products a shopper added to the cart but did not buy.

AI agent

Software that understands questions and answers them from your own knowledge.

Canned responses (saved replies)

Pre-written answers to frequent questions, inserted with a shortcut.

CES (Customer Effort Score)

How easy it was for a customer to get what they needed.

Chatbot

An automated conversation that answers or routes customers without a person.

CSAT (customer satisfaction)

The share of customers who were satisfied with one interaction, usually rated 1–5.

Customer retention

Keeping customers coming back after their first purchase.

First response time

How long a customer waits for the first human reply.

Help center (knowledge base)

A public library of articles that answers common questions.

Live chat

Real-time messaging between website visitors and your team.

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

A loyalty score from −100 to +100 based on how likely customers are to recommend you.

Omnichannel support

Helping customers on every channel from one place, with one shared history.

Proactive chat

Starting the conversation before the visitor asks.

Resolution time

The time from a customer’s first message until their issue is solved.

Self-service support

Letting customers solve problems themselves, without contacting you.

Shared inbox

One inbox the whole team works from, with assignment and internal notes.

SLA (service level agreement)

A promise about how fast you reply to and resolve requests.

Ticketing system

A way to track every customer request from arrival to solution.