Call Center and
CX Glossary

The percentage of inbound contacts where the customer disconnects before reaching an agent or completing the intended interaction.

The process of tracking, managing and reducing employee absences to protect staffing levels and service performance.

Automatic Call Distribution. A routing system that receives incoming interactions and sends them to the most appropriate agent, queue or skill group.

A workforce management measure showing how closely agents follow their assigned schedules, including login time, breaks, lunches and off-phone activity.

The work completed immediately after a customer interaction, including notes, dispositions, follow-up tasks and case updates.

AI-enabled guidance that supports live agents in real time with suggested answers, next-best actions, knowledge articles and call summaries.

The rate at which agents leave the organization or program over a defined period.

The percentage of logged-in agent time spent handling contacts or completing contact-related work.

A software system that uses AI to understand requests, make decisions and complete tasks with varying levels of human oversight.

The policies, controls and accountability structures used to manage AI quality, safety, privacy, compliance and business risk.

The use of AI to evaluate customer interactions at scale against quality, compliance, sentiment or performance standards.

The structured process of identifying, measuring, managing and governing risks created by AI systems.

The use of data, reporting and statistical methods to identify performance trends, customer patterns and operational improvement opportunities.

The percentage of offered contacts successfully answered by agents or systems.

Application Programming Interface. A technical connection that allows different systems, platforms or applications to exchange data.

Average Speed of Answer. The average amount of time customers wait in queue before an agent answers.

Average Handle Time. The average time required to complete a customer interaction, including talk time, hold time and after-call work.

A record of actions, changes or decisions in a system used for compliance, investigation and accountability.

Operational work that supports the customer journey but is not always customer-facing, such as data entry, documentation, billing, claims or order processing.

A supervisor function that allows a leader to join a live customer interaction to assist, coach or intervene.

Comparing operational performance against internal targets, industry standards or peer organizations.

An agent trained and scheduled to handle multiple contact types, such as inbound calls, outbound calls, chat, email or back-office tasks.

Business Process Outsourcing. The practice of contracting a third-party provider to operate business functions such as CX, sales support, technical support or back-office work.

A plan that enables operations to continue during disruptions such as system outages, power failures, weather events or staffing interruptions.

The process of aligning quality reviewers, supervisors and clients on how interactions should be scored.

Reducing unnecessary inbound contacts through better self-service, proactive communication, improved processes or issue prevention.

A routing model where agents handle both inbound and outbound calls based on volume, priority and availability.

Moving customers from assisted channels to self-service or digital channels when those options can resolve the issue effectively.

A code or label selected after an interaction to classify the reason, outcome or next step.

The capture and storage of voice interactions for quality, training, compliance, dispute resolution or analytics.

A feature that lets customers request a return call instead of waiting in queue.

Contact Center as a Service. A cloud-based contact center platform used to manage routing, interactions, reporting and workforce tools.

A software application that uses rules, AI or natural language processing to interact with customers through text.

Targeted feedback and development provided to agents to improve performance, behaviors and customer outcomes.

Reviewing customer interactions and operational processes to ensure legal, regulatory, contractual and policy requirements are followed.

An operation that manages customer interactions across channels such as phone, chat, email, messaging, social media and self-service.

AI technology that allows systems to understand, process and respond to human language in voice or text interactions.

The average operating cost required to handle one customer interaction.

Customer Relationship Management. A system used to store customer information, interaction history, cases, sales activity and account data.

Customer Satisfaction. A measure of how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, product, process or company.

A metric that measures how easy or difficult it was for a customer to resolve an issue or complete a task.

The overall perception a customer forms from every interaction with a company across the full journey.

The process of documenting each customer touchpoint to identify friction, drop-offs, gaps and improvement opportunities.

A visual reporting tool that displays KPIs, trends and operational status in one place.

The process of tagging or categorizing data so it can be used to train, test or evaluate AI models.

The percentage of contacts resolved or redirected away from live-agent channels through self-service or automation.

A non-voice customer interaction channel such as chat, email, SMS, social messaging, app support or web forms.

The technical and operational plan used to restore systems, data and service after a major disruption.

A numerical representation of text, images or data that allows AI systems to compare meaning and similarity.

The level of commitment, motivation and connection employees feel toward their work, team and organization.

A workforce planning formula used to estimate staffing needs based on volume, handle time and service level targets.

The transfer or elevation of an issue to a higher-skilled agent, supervisor, specialist or client contact.

Employee Satisfaction. A measure of how satisfied employees are with their role, environment, leadership and work experience.

The default action a bot or AI system takes when it cannot confidently understand or resolve a request.

The percentage of customer issues resolved during the first interaction without requiring repeat contact or follow-up.

A measure of how closely predicted contact volume, handle time or staffing needs match actual results.

Full-Time Equivalent. A staffing unit used to represent one full-time employee or the equivalent amount of labor hours.

AI that can create new content such as text, summaries, code, images, answers or recommendations based on patterns learned from data.

Controls placed around AI systems to reduce unsafe, inaccurate, non-compliant or off-brand outputs.

An AI-generated answer that sounds confident but is inaccurate, unsupported or fabricated.

The total time required to complete a customer interaction, usually including talk time, hold time and after-call work.

The transfer of a customer from one channel, agent, bot or department to another.

A model where humans review, approve, correct or supervise AI output before or after it is used.

The customer's underlying goal or reason for contacting support.

The ability of an AI or routing system to identify what a customer is trying to accomplish.

The analysis of customer conversations across voice, chat, email or messaging to detect themes, sentiment, compliance issues and performance trends.

A technique used to manipulate an AI system into ignoring safety rules, policies or intended behavior.

Interactive Voice Response. An automated phone system that lets callers use voice or keypad input to navigate menus and route their call.

A structured repository of answers, policies, procedures and troubleshooting guidance used by agents, bots and customers.

Key Performance Indicator. A measurable metric used to evaluate performance against business objectives.

The delay between a customer or system action and the response that follows.

Large Language Model. An AI model trained on large volumes of text and data to understand, generate and transform language.

A real-time digital messaging channel where customers interact with a human agent or bot.

A branch of AI where systems learn patterns from data and improve predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed for every scenario.

The decline in AI model performance over time as customer behavior, data, processes or operating conditions change.

The process of reviewing live or recorded interactions, system performance or operational metrics to manage quality and outcomes.

The ability to support customers across multiple channels, though those channels may not be fully connected.

A field of AI focused on helping computers understand, interpret and generate human language.

The post-training period where new agents begin handling real interactions with added coaching, monitoring and support.

A recommendation, often AI-assisted, suggesting the most effective next step for an agent or customer.

Net Promoter Score. A loyalty metric based on how likely customers are to recommend a company, product or service.

The percentage of available agent time spent handling customer contacts or contact-related work.

A connected customer service model where channels share context, history and continuity across the customer journey.

Work performed in the same country as the client or customer base.

Work performed in a distant country, typically to access scale, cost efficiency or specialized talent.

Contracting an external provider to manage specific business processes, functions or customer operations.

Compliance with Payment Card Industry standards for protecting payment card data.

A period of unusually high contact demand caused by seasonality, promotions, outages, billing cycles or business events.

The use of data models to forecast future outcomes such as volume, churn, staffing needs, sales likelihood or customer risk.

The instruction, question or input given to an AI model to generate a response.

The practice of designing prompts that guide AI systems toward more accurate, useful and controlled outputs.

A security risk where malicious or unintended input manipulates an AI model's behavior or causes it to ignore instructions.

Quality Assurance. The process of evaluating customer interactions against standards for accuracy, compliance, tone, resolution and customer experience.

A waiting line of customer interactions awaiting assignment to an agent, bot or workflow.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation. An AI approach that connects a language model to approved knowledge sources so responses are more grounded and relevant.

Live monitoring of whether agents are following their scheduled activities at the correct times.

The percentage of customer issues successfully resolved within a defined period or interaction set.

The ability to keep customers, employees or agents over time.

The logic used to direct customer interactions to the right agent, queue, bot, skill or department.

How well staffing schedules match forecasted demand while controlling cost and meeting service goals.

The use of AI or analytics to detect emotion, attitude or tone in customer interactions.

The percentage of contacts answered within a defined time threshold, such as 80 percent of calls answered within 20 seconds.

Paid agent time unavailable for handling contacts due to breaks, training, meetings, absenteeism, coaching or other off-phone activities.

Routing interactions to agents based on capabilities such as language, product knowledge, certification or customer type.

Service Level Agreement. A contractual or operational commitment defining expected performance levels.

Technology that analyzes voice interactions to identify topics, sentiment, compliance risks, trends and coaching opportunities.

The number of agents assigned to each supervisor or team lead.

The amount of time an agent spends actively speaking with or messaging a customer during an interaction.

A documented customer issue, request or task tracked through a system until resolution.

Data used to teach an AI model how to recognize patterns and produce outputs.

The percentage of interactions moved from one agent, queue or department to another.

The rate at which employees leave a team, program or organization during a defined period.

Unified Communications as a Service. A cloud-based platform for business communications such as voice, video, messaging and collaboration.

A measure of how effectively labor capacity is being used across productive work, available time and paid time.

An AI or automated assistant that interacts with customers to answer questions, complete tasks or route requests.

An automated voice-based system that uses speech recognition and AI to interact with callers.

A structured approach for capturing customer feedback, needs, complaints and expectations to improve business decisions.

Workforce Engagement Management. Tools and practices that support scheduling, quality, coaching, performance, learning and employee engagement.

Workforce Management. The discipline of forecasting demand, scheduling staff, managing adherence and optimizing labor coverage.

A code selected after an interaction to classify the contact reason, outcome or next action.