- AI draft (draft answer)
- An answer the AI produces from the ticket and the knowledge base, for an agent to review, edit and approve before it is sent. The difference from an automatic answer is that a person stands behind every answer that goes out.
- AI form
- A contact form that shows relevant answers from the knowledge base while the customer writes their question, before the ticket is sent. The customer decides whether the answer was enough or whether the ticket should go on to an agent. The form is a route to help, not a barrier in front of the team.
- Automatic answer
- An answer sent to the customer without an agent reviewing it. Should only be used in limited flows where the material is sufficient and the controls are decided in advance, for example for questions with an unambiguous answer in the knowledge base.
- Channel
- A way for the customer to get help: help centre, form, chat, email, phone, customer portal. Channels should be alternatives, not steps every customer must pass through, and they should give the same answer whichever the customer chooses.
- CSAT (customer satisfaction)
- Customer Satisfaction Score. The share of customers who answer positively when asked how satisfied they were with the help, usually measured right after a resolved ticket on a scale from one to five. Measures the experience of a single ticket, not loyalty over time.
- Customer portal
- A signed-in page where the customer sees their own tickets, their status and the conversation with customer service, and can reply in the ticket. Because the customer is identified, personal details can be shown here, unlike in the public help centre.
- Data processing agreement (DPA)
- The agreement the GDPR requires when a supplier processes personal data on a customer's behalf. The customer is the data controller and the supplier the processor. The agreement governs, among other things, what may be done with the data, where it is stored and for how long.
- Deflection
- The share of questions answered in self-service, for example in the help centre or an AI form, that therefore never become a ticket with an agent. A measure of how much self-service relieves the team, to be read together with customer satisfaction so that customers are not simply kept from contact.
- Escalation
- A ticket being passed from one level to another: from self-service to an agent, or from first line to a specialist. A good escalation brings the context along, so the customer does not have to start over.
- First response time
- The time from a ticket arriving until the customer gets a first reply from a person or a system. Often measured as a median, since a few slow tickets would otherwise pull up the average. Differs from resolution time, which measures until the ticket is resolved.
- Grounded answers (grounding)
- An AI's answers being based on stated sources, for example the company's knowledge base, rather than on what the model has learned in general. A grounded answer can be traced to an article, and the model can say it does not know when the sources lack the answer.
- Hallucination
- When a language model writes something that sounds credible but is not true, for example a returns rule that does not exist. In customer service it is countered by letting the model answer only from a reviewed knowledge base and by having an agent review answers before they are sent.
- Help centre
- A public website with searchable help articles, often organised in categories, where the customer finds the answer themselves. The help centre shows the public part of the knowledge base and can be indexed by search engines and read by AI assistants.
- Human-in-the-loop
- A way of working where a person reviews and approves what the AI proposes before it takes effect, for example before an answer is sent to a customer. Used to build trust in the AI support and to catch errors before they reach the customer.
- Knowledge base
- The company's reviewed answers to customers' questions, written once and used in every channel. Each article has an owner, a version and a decision about who may see it: everyone, only the team or only signed-in customers. The difference from an FAQ is the structure around the content, not the number of questions.
- Knowledge gap
- A question that keeps recurring without an approved answer in the knowledge base, or with an answer that does not work. Found in searches with no hits, in the chatbot's unanswered questions and in tickets that keep arriving even though an article exists.
- Live chat
- A chat where the customer talks to an agent in real time. Often combined with an AI chat that answers first on what the knowledge base covers and hands over to the agent when needed, with the whole conversation kept.
- Opening hours (for chat)
- The times when an agent is available in live chat. Outside opening hours the chat should show the contact options, for example sending the question as a ticket, instead of a queue nobody is working.
- RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
- A technique where the language model first retrieves relevant passages from a knowledge source and then formulates its answer from them. It is how an AI chat can answer from the company's own articles instead of its general training material, and show the source.
- Resolution rate (first contact resolution)
- The share of tickets resolved in the first contact, without the customer having to come back. One of the measures that best reflects the customer's experience, and one that reveals when answers go out quickly but do not solve the problem.
- Resolution time
- The time from a ticket arriving until it is resolved, unlike first response time which only measures until the first reply. Tickets waiting for the customer should be paused in the measurement, otherwise you measure the customer's response time and not your own.
- Self-service
- The customer resolving their ticket themselves, for example in the help centre, in an AI form or in the customer portal, without an agent stepping in. Only works when the answer exists, is correct and is easy to find.
- SLA (service level agreement)
- A set level for, for example, response time or resolution time, often per channel or priority. The inbox shows how much time remains per ticket, and the follow-up shows the share of tickets kept within the level.
- Suggested answer
- See AI draft. An answer proposed by the AI and reviewed by an agent before it is sent.
- Ticket
- A customer's question or problem, registered with owner, status, labels and history so that it can be followed from start to resolution whatever the channel. A new email about the same matter should land in the existing ticket, not become a new one.
- Ticket handling
- The way of working and the system for receiving, assigning, answering and following up tickets. A shared inbox with owner, status and SLA is the simplest form; a helpdesk or customer service system is the same thing with more features.
- Ticket volume
- The number of tickets arriving in a period, often per week or month and per channel. The basis for staffing, for pricing customer service systems and for seeing which question types account for the largest share of the work.
- Zero data retention
- An operating mode with an AI provider where the content sent to generate an answer is not kept by the provider afterwards and is not used to train models. The only storage is then in your own system, with its retention periods.
Rickard Collander