Glossary
The support operations glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up when you run customer support — from SLAs and CSAT to shared inboxes and ticket deflection.
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Canned Response · Canned Response (Macro)
A saved, reusable reply for common questions — keeps answers fast and consistent across the team.
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CSAT · Customer Satisfaction Score
A metric measuring how satisfied a customer was with a specific interaction, usually surveyed right after resolution.
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Customer Effort Score · Customer Effort Score (CES)
A metric measuring how easy it was for a customer to get their issue resolved — low effort correlates with loyalty.
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Escalation
Routing a ticket to a more senior agent or specialist team when it can't be resolved at the current level.
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First Response Time · First Response Time (FRT)
The time between a customer opening a ticket and getting the first human reply — the wait customers feel most.
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Knowledge Base
A self-service library of help articles that lets customers solve common problems on their own.
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Multi-tenant Help Desk
One platform hosting many isolated support workspaces, each with its own data, branding and settings.
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Omnichannel Support
Handling conversations across email, chat, widget and portal in one unified place, with shared context.
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Shared Inbox
A single team mailbox where conversations become assignable, status-tracked items so agents don't collide or duplicate replies.
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SLA · Service Level Agreement
A commitment to respond to and resolve support requests within defined time targets, usually set per priority.
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SLA Breach
When a ticket misses its agreed first-response or resolution target — ideally warned about before it happens.
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Ticket Deflection
Resolving customer questions via self-service — a knowledge base or help center — before they turn into an agent-handled ticket.
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White-label Support
A help desk that carries your client's branding — their domain, logo, colours and sender email — not the vendor's.