Thirty terms you meet running a shared inbox — each with a definition you can quote and, where one exists, the formula.
This customer support glossary defines 30 terms teams meet when they run a shared inbox or help desk — satisfaction metrics like CSAT and NPS, operational terms like triage, escalation and SLA, and newer AI concepts like human-in-the-loop and intent detection. Each entry gives a plain definition, the formula where one exists, and how to apply the term in practice.
No entry ends in a sales pitch. Where a term maps to something inrelay ships, the entry links it once and moves on; where honest public benchmarks exist, they are cited with a date, and where they don’t, no numbers are invented.
The numbers support teams are measured by — and how each one can be misread.
The per-conversation satisfaction score, and how to keep it honest.
The loyalty question — would they recommend you — scored from −100 to 100.
How hard customers had to work to get their answer.
Solved in one touch — the metric speed can’t fake.
How long a conversation takes to work, not just to answer.
How long a customer waits to hear a human is on it.
Open to resolved, with all the waiting counted in between.
The response-time promise, and what happens when it’s missed.
Questions your help centre answers before they become tickets.
The working vocabulary of queues, ownership and hand-offs.
The pile of open conversations — and why its age matters more than its size.
The ordered line of waiting conversations, and how it’s ordered.
The hours support promises to be there, and how timers respect them.
Moving a conversation to someone with more skill or more authority.
Sorting the inbox by urgency, topic and owner before anyone replies.
Dealing conversations to teammates in turn — and its blind spot.
The team and system of record behind a support address.
Software that turns messages into tracked, ownable tickets.
A saved reply for a repeated question — used well or badly.
The comment your team sees and your customer never does.
One address the whole team can read — and its limits.
An address that copies mail to many inboxes, owned by no one.
The automatic acknowledgement, and what it should actually say.
Self-service, and the newer vocabulary of AI in the inbox.
Customers resolving their own questions with what you’ve published.
The public library of answers on your own domain.
AI that drafts and suggests while a person decides.
AI that plans and takes multi-step actions toward a goal.
Software that reads, reasons and acts on conversations.
Classifying what a message wants before anyone reads it.
Every channel, one conversation history.
Reaching out before the customer has to ask.
CSAT, triage, collision detection and the rest — live in one shared inbox, free to start, never per seat.
Give your customers faster answers and your team their evenings back.
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