Growth Support Resource Library

Agent

Also known as a representative, this someone who actively performs the work of customer support directly or indirectly with customers.

Agent Effort Score (AES)

The measurement of how much effort it takes an agent to accomplish something.This could be resolving an issue, or completing an internal process. This is typically measured to spot process improvement opportunities and better the agent experience.

Average Handle Time (AHT)

The average time spent on a customer interactions across any channel, encompassing the initial contact, processing, and follow-up activities. Average handle time is the average of handle times across a specific time period or volume of interactions.

Bug

An error, flaw, or fault in a software program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

When you contract a third-party or outside resource to handle a business process such as Support, or operations.

Contact Channel

The method in which a customer comes in contact with you. Examples are, email, phone, live chat, SMS, and social platforms.

Conversation

The communication or interaction between a customer and a support agent, often encompassing multiple messages or exchanges.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

The measurement of how much effort it takes a customer to accomplish something. This could be getting their issue resolved, or a completing process within your product. This is typically measured on a scale from 1 to 7. 1 being difficult and 7 being easy.

Customer Experience (CX)

Typically, Customer Experience (CX) encompasses all aspects of a company's offering from the customer's viewpoint. It involves driving customer satisfaction and engagement at every touchpoint, from product design to marketing, sales, and post-sales support, aiming to create a positive and seamless experience throughout the customer journey.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Customer Satisfaction, or CSAT, is the measurement of how happy your customers are with specific interactions with a team, or product. This is calculated by: (Number of positive responses / Number of total responses) x 100

Customer Segment

A group of customers who share similar qualities like: needs, interests, buying habits, use case. Companies identify these groups to target their products and services more effectively. You can then break your customers into buckets based on these preferences. These would be your segments.

Customer Success

Customer Success is the role/function that focuses on proactively guiding customers to effectively use the company's products or services. It's dedicated to helping customers achieve their goals,and ralizing value. The focus is to enhance drive retention, reduce churn, and increase growth opportunities.

Customer Support

Customer Support is primarily responsible for directly assisting customers with specific issues, questions, or problems they encounter with products or services. This function focuses on providing timely solutions, handling interactions, and ensuring customers have access to necessary help and information.

Degredation

A decline in the performance, quality, or functionality of a system, service, or component, often gradually over time.

Detractor

In the context of Net Promoter Score (NPS), a Detractor is a customer who responds with a score between 0 and 6, suggesting they are unhappy and potentially likely to discourage others from using the company or product.

Escalation

When a issue or request is moved to someone with more authority or expertise for further assistance, usually because it's complex or hasn't been resolved at the initial level.

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

The measurement of issues resolved in the first interaction whether it is phone, chat, or email. Typically measured as a percent of total contacts. This is calculated by: (Number of issues resolved on fist interaction / Number of total interactions) x 100

First Response Time (FRT)

The amount of time it takes for a customer to get their first response from support after they've made a request or reported an issue. This metric helps measure how quickly a support team reacts to customers' needs.

Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)

The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a given period, excluding any additional revenue from upsells, cross-sells, or new sales. It highlights the company's effectiveness in retaining its existing revenue base.

Handle Time (HT)

The total duration spent on a customer interaction across any channel, encompassing the initial contact, processing, and follow-up activities.

Help Center

An online source of information, including FAQs, articles, and documentation, that customers can use to find answers to their questions or contact the team. While a knowledge base focuses on documentation, a Help Center introduces ways to contact your team, or see other resources as well. This is the common term for a customer-facing self-service center.

Help Desk

The team or servce that you contact for help. Generally a help desk focuses on solving things that are already going wrong.

Incident

An event in that disrupts normal operations or services, often requiring an immediate response and resolution to restore functionality or service levels.

Information Technology (IT)

The use of computers, networking, and infrastructure to create, process, store, secure, and exchange all forms of electronic data in organizational settings.

Information Technology Asset Management (ITAM)

The process of making sure that an organization's assets are accounted for, deployed, maintained, upgraded, and disposed of when the time comes.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of practices and a framework for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of the business.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

An automated and interactive experience or menu used in telephony systems to provide automated services and information to callers. i.e., press 1 for... press 2 for...

Internal Quality Score (IQS)

A customer support metric that shows how well your team is performing based on internal quality standards that you set yourself. Typically tracked by reviewing support conversations and scoring them against predefined categories.

IT service management (ITSM)

How Information Technology (IT) teams manage the end-to-end delivery of IT services to customers.

Just-in-time (JIT)

Just-in-time, or Just-in-Time Documentation, is the method of documentation that derives from manuafacturting. With this method, documentation is created as user need it, rather than pre-emptively in advance. This focuses on what they want to accomplish, rather than general information.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A type of measurement used to check how well busienss is performing in areas that are critical for success. The thing that indicates if it's going well or not.

Knowledge Base

An online source of information, including FAQs, articles, and documentation, that customers or teams can use to find answers to their questions. While a knowledge base can be internal or external, it is the more commonly used term for internal documentation

Lifetime Value (LTV)

This can mean two things in different contexts. The first being the total amount of revenue made from a customer over the course of their time with your product. Or secondly, the estimated amount that you would receive from a customer being with you over the duration of the relationship.

Live Chat

This is a type of support channel that refers to the real-time interaction between agents and customers through text. Generally this is on the website, in the product, or through the Help Center. It allows customers to share links and screenshots in real-time.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The most common metric used to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction. This is typically asked as: "How likely are you to recommend XX to a friend or colleague". This is scored on a scale of -100 to 100.

Next Issue Avoidance (NIA)

When Support tries to solve potential future problems during a customer’s current contact, so that the customer doesn’t need to reach out again soon.

Outage

A period of time when a system, service, or utility is unavailable or non-functional, often due to technical issues, maintenance, or external factors.

Passive

In the context of Net Promoter Score (NPS), a Passive is a customer who responds with a score of 7 or 8, indicating they are satisfied but not enthusiastic enough to be likely to actively promote the company or product.

Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)

A performance management process used by a company to help an employee improve their work performance. It usually includes clear goals and a timeframe for achieving them.

Priority 0 (P0)

An extremely critical issue that needs immediate attention because it can greatly affect a business, like causing a complete service outage or a major feature breakdown. Typically, everything stops until this is fixed.

Priority 1 (P1)

A high-priority issue that significantly impacts a service or a major function but doesn't completely halt the business. It requires prompt attention. Some services may still be functional while others may not.

Promoter

In the context of Net Promoter Score (NPS), a Promoter is a customer who responds with a score of 9 or 10, indicating they are highly likely to recommend the company or product to others due to their positive experience.

Quality Assurance (QA)

The process of checking whether your services are meeting your desired quality standards. This often includes monitoring and evaluating customer service calls, chats, and other interactions between your employees and your customers.

Queue

The view or list where customer issues or requests are waiting to be or are being handled by support agents.

Queue Management

The approach in which the support queue is being organized and handled, so customers get help as quickly, smoothly, and efficiently as possible.

Representative

Also known as an agent, this someone who actively performs the work of customer support dirtectly or indirectly with customers.

Salvage Offer

A special deal or dicount, that you offer a company offers a customer to fix a problem and keep them happy so that they keep using the service or buying products. This is commonly seen in cancelation flows, attempling to keep the customer subscribed instead of canceling.

Self-Service

Resources or methods allowing customers to find information and get support without direct assistance from the support team.

Sentiment

The overall feeling or attitude that people have about something like a product, service, or interaction. This can be positive, negative, or neutral.

Service Desk

The team or servce that you contact for help, not only when something is wrong, but also if you need more genral information on products or services.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A commitment between a service provider and a customer. This refers to the particular aspects of the service that are agreed upon between the service provider and the service userincluding, but not limited to: quality, availability, and responsibilities.

Support Operations

Support Operations is responsible for helping a company's support team be more productive, work more effectively, and deliver better service to their customers.

Tag

A tag is a label or identifier used to track specific topics or categorize tickets.

Taxonomy

A structured way of categorizing something. This is also commonly mentioned as a 'Tag Taxonomy' referring to the structure that your tags are categorized into.

Ticket

A formal record of a customer's issue or request, used to track and manage the process of resolving the customer's problem.

Tier -1 Support

This is a proactive or preventative level of support. It generally consists of resources designed to educate on products and services.This is not an official tier on the ITIL Support Tiering Model but is notable to mention.

Tier 0 Support

This is an educational or self-service level of support. Self-help resources designed for customers to get the help or informationn they need without contacting the team.

Tier 1 Support

Also known as 'frontline support' this would be the first place your customer would have contact with your team. Agents at this level would be able to solve known and standardized issues using SOPs or scripts. If the case requires more advanced help, they would excalate to the proper team.

Tier 2 Support

Commonly referred to as Support Specialists, agents at this level would be able to deal with unkown issues, that are loosley defined, or may required deeper investigation, or creative solutions. This level will have a deep knowledge of the product and systems, though may not have access to the code itself. This level generally takes escalations from Tier 1 agents.

Tier 3 Support

This level of Support is considered the most technical tier in the ITIL framework. Agents in this tier would have access to the source code, and would be able to update the product itself. This may include Support Engineers, Architects, or those who created the product.

Tier 4 Support

This level of support refers to vendors or third-party services. Meaning that you will need to rely on a their service or support team to resolve an issue.

Time To Value (TTV)

The amount of time it takes for a customer to realize value from a product or service after purchase or implementation.

Triage

The process of sorting cases, prioritizing them, and ensuring they go to the correct team. This can either be manual or automated.

Workforce Management (WFM)

The activity of planning the work of a company's employees to make sure the right number of people with the right skills are working at the right times. It helps ensure continuity and coverage so that a business can meet its goals and customers' needs efficiently.

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