Customer support glossary: help desk terms and metrics explained

The words support teams use every day, defined in a sentence or two. Each term has its own link you can share, and the metrics link to a free calculator.

Abandonment rate: The share of customers who leave a chat or call queue before anyone answers. It rises when waits grow, so it is an early sign that you are short-staffed.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Agentalso: Support rep, advisor: A person on the support team who answers customers. Most help desks price per agent, also called per seat.
Agent utilization: The share of a person's working time spent on tickets rather than waiting, meetings or other work. Very high utilization leaves no room for spikes.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
AI agentalso: AI support bot, virtual agent: Software that answers customer questions on its own, usually from your help articles and past replies, and hands off to a person when it can't. Check what it is allowed to do (reply only, or also refund or close) and how its answers are billed.
Auto-close: Closing a ticket automatically after a set time with no customer reply, usually from the pending status. It keeps queues short, but send a reminder first so a customer who is still waiting isn't closed out.
Auto-replyalso: Autoresponder: An automatic message sent when a ticket arrives, such as "we got your message". It sets expectations but doesn't count as a first response, because no person or AI has answered the question yet.; Work it out: After-hours auto-reply generator
Auto-responder: An automatic reply sent as soon as a message arrives, confirming receipt and setting expectations such as hours and response time. It should say what happens next, not just thank the customer.; Work it out: After-hours auto-reply generator
Average handle time (AHT): The average time an agent spends on one conversation, including any work after it such as notes or follow-up tasks. AHT is one of the two main inputs to a staffing plan, with contact volume.; Work it out: Handle time calculator
Average response time: The mean time between each customer message and the next reply. A few very slow replies can hide behind a good average, so check a percentile as well.; Work it out: Response time analyzer
Backlog: Tickets that are open and waiting for the team. A backlog that grows week after week means work is arriving faster than the team can close it.; Work it out: Support backlog calculator
Backlog age: How long the tickets in the backlog have been open. The count of open tickets says how much work is waiting; the age says how long customers have waited for it.; Work it out: Support backlog calculator
Backlog aging: The age profile of your open tickets, such as how many are older than a day, three days or a week. It shows stuck work that an overall ticket count hides.; Work it out: Support backlog calculator
Backlog burn rate: How fast the open ticket backlog shrinks, which is tickets closed minus tickets arriving. A backlog only clears when the burn rate stays above zero.; Work it out: Support backlog calculator
Bug report: A written account of something in the product that does not work as intended, with the steps to see it happen. Support turns customer messages into bug reports that engineers can act on.
Business hours: The hours your team is working. Most SLAs only count time inside business hours, so a ticket that arrives at 6pm on a Friday is not late on Saturday.; Work it out: SLA due time calculator
Business-hours response time: Response time counted only during business hours. With 9-to-5 hours, a ticket that arrives Friday at 4:55pm and is answered Monday at 9:30am took 35 business minutes, not about 64 hours.; Work it out: SLA due time calculator
Canned responsealso: Saved reply, macro, snippet: A reply written once and reused for a common question. Good ones are edited for each customer before sending.; Work it out: Customer service reply templates
Channel: The way a customer reaches you, such as email, website chat, phone or social media. More channels mean more places to watch; a team should only offer the ones it can answer well.
Chargebackalso: Payment dispute: A customer asks their bank to reverse a payment. It costs the fee and the amount, and too many can put a payment account at risk, so a quick refund is often cheaper than losing the dispute.
Chat concurrency: How many live chats one agent handles at the same time. Higher concurrency means fewer agents, but each chat waits longer between replies.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Churn: The share of customers who cancel in a period. At 5% monthly churn, one in twenty customers leaves each month and the average customer stays about 20 months.; Work it out: Churn cost calculator
Collision detection: A warning that someone else has a ticket open or is writing a reply to it, so two agents do not answer the same customer.
Confidence level: How sure you want to be that the true figure falls inside the margin of error. 95% is the usual choice; asking for 99% needs noticeably more survey responses.; Work it out: CSAT sample size calculator
Contact rate: The share of customers or orders that lead to a support contact in a period. A falling contact rate means the product and help center are answering questions before customers need to ask.; Work it out: Ticket volume forecast
Contact volume: How many tickets, chats or calls arrive in a period. Staffing plans need volume by hour, not just by month, because most queues peak at predictable times.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Content gap: A question customers ask that your help center does not answer. Searches with no results and repeated tickets on one topic point to the gaps worth filling first.; Work it out: Help center search gap finder
Cost per ticket: What it costs to handle one ticket: the cost of the team and tools for a period divided by the tickets handled in it. It is most useful as a trend, since a lower number from rushed replies can hide more reopened tickets.; Work it out: Cost per ticket calculator
CSAT sample size: The number of survey responses needed before a satisfaction score can be trusted. Small samples swing wildly, so a score from ten replies says little about the month.; Work it out: CSAT sample size calculator
Customer context: What an agent can see about the person writing in, beside the ticket: their earlier tickets, company, plan and recent orders, so they do not have to ask for what is already known.
Customer effort score (CES): A survey that asks how easy it was to get the problem solved, usually on a 1 to 5 or 1 to 7 scale. It measures the work the customer had to do rather than how they felt.; Work it out: Customer effort score calculator
Customer health score: A single number that estimates how likely a customer is to stay, built from signals such as usage, ticket volume and survey answers. Treat it as a prompt to look closer, not a verdict.
Customer journey: The steps a customer goes through from first hearing about you to becoming a long-term user. Mapping where tickets appear shows which step is causing confusion.
Customer lifetime value (LTV): The profit a customer brings before they leave: monthly price times gross margin times the average lifetime in months. Support that keeps customers longer raises it.; Work it out: Churn cost calculator
Customer onboarding: The first days after someone signs up, when they learn to use your product. Good onboarding material answers the questions that would otherwise become tickets.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): The share of survey answers that are positive, usually 4 or 5 on a 1 to 5 scale, sent after a ticket is solved. A CSAT of 90% means 9 in 10 people who answered were satisfied; it says nothing about the people who didn't answer.; Work it out: CSAT and NPS calculator
Customer-facing macro: A macro written to be sent to customers as is, as opposed to an internal note template. Good ones leave a clearly marked spot for the details of each case.
Deflectionalso: Self-service rate: A question answered without reaching an agent, for example by a help center article or an AI answer. Deflection only counts if the customer actually got their answer and didn't write in anyway.; Work it out: Ticket deflection calculator
Erlang C: A formula from telephone engineering that works out how many agents you need so a chosen share of contacts is answered within a target time. It assumes contacts arrive at random and wait in a queue rather than hang up.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Escalation: Moving a ticket to someone with more skill, access or authority, such as a specialist, an engineer or a manager.; Work it out: Escalation rate calculator
Escalation matrix: A table that says who a ticket goes to next, by topic and severity, and how long they have to respond. It stops tickets bouncing between people.
Escalation rate: The share of tickets passed to a more senior person or another team. A high rate points to gaps in training, documentation or permissions.; Work it out: Escalation rate calculator
FAQ page: A single page that answers the questions customers ask most. Grouped by topic and written in the customers' own words, it removes many tickets before they start.; Work it out: FAQ page builder
First contact resolution (FCR): The share of tickets solved in the first reply, with no back and forth. A high FCR usually means agents have the knowledge and permissions they need.; Work it out: First contact resolution calculator
First reply template: A saved opening reply that acknowledges the request, sets expectations and asks for any missing detail. It speeds up the first response without sounding like a form.; Work it out: First reply template builder
First response promise: The reply time you publish to customers, such as within four business hours. A promise you can keep builds more trust than a fast one you often miss.; Work it out: First response promise calculator
First response time (FRT): The time between a customer writing in and a person (or AI) replying for the first time. Automatic "we got your message" emails usually don't count.; Work it out: SLA due time calculator
First response time target: The time you aim to send a first reply, such as one hour in business hours. Pick one you can meet on a normal week, then publish it so customers know what to expect.; Work it out: First response promise calculator
First-line support: The people or systems that receive a customer's first message and resolve the common questions. Anything harder is passed to a specialist.
Follow the sun: A support model where teams in different time zones pass the queue along so someone is working at all hours. It depends on good handoff notes.; Work it out: Support coverage hours planner
Follow-up cadence: The schedule on which you chase a customer who has not replied, such as after two days and again after five before closing. A set cadence keeps tickets from sitting open.; Work it out: Support workload checker
Full resolution timealso: Time to resolution: The time from a ticket arriving to it being solved. It includes time spent waiting on the customer unless your help desk pauses the clock for that.; Work it out: Response time analyzer
Handoffalso: Escalation to a human: The point where an AI or a first-line agent passes a conversation to someone else. A good handoff includes what the customer asked and what has already been tried, so they don't have to repeat themselves.
Handoff note: A short summary written when a ticket moves to another person or shift: what the customer wants, what was tried and what happens next. It saves the customer from repeating themselves.; Work it out: Support handoff note generator
Help article length: How long a help article runs before readers give up. Short, single-task articles get finished and cut repeat tickets more than long guides do.; Work it out: Help article length checker
Help centeralso: Knowledge base: A public site of how-to articles customers can search. It answers repeat questions and gives AI tools something reliable to quote.; Work it out: Help center search gap finder
Help center article: One page in the help center that explains how to do a single task, with a title written the way a customer would search for it and one action per step.; Work it out: Help center article template generator
Help center gap priority: A ranking of missing help articles by how many tickets each would remove. Writing the top few first cuts volume the fastest.; Work it out: Help center gap prioritizer
Help desk: Software that collects customer messages from email, chat and other channels into one shared inbox, so a team can assign, answer and track them.
Incident status message: A short update that says what is wrong, who is affected and when you will write next. Honest, regular updates calm customers more than silence until a fix.; Work it out: Incident status message generator
Internal note: A comment on a ticket only the team can see. Used to hand over context without the customer reading it.
Knowledge basealso: KB: A collection of articles that answer customer or agent questions. When it is public it is usually called a help center. An internal one helps agents answer consistently.; Work it out: Help center article template generator
Knowledge gap: A question customers ask that your help center does not answer well. Search terms with no results and repeat tickets on the same topic are the clearest signs.; Work it out: Help center search gap finder
Known issue: A problem you have confirmed and are working on. Listing it publicly saves customers from reporting it and lets agents reply with one link.
Launch spike: A short burst of extra tickets after a release, campaign or announcement. Forecasting a low, expected and high case before launch keeps the spike from becoming a backlog.; Work it out: Ticket volume forecast
Live chat: Real-time messaging between a customer and your team, usually through a widget on your site. Replies are expected in minutes, so chats are often handled several at a time.
Loaded costalso: Fully loaded cost: What an employee costs once benefits, payroll taxes, tools and equipment are added to their salary. For a support agent it is the number to compare with cost per ticket, because pay alone understates what a seat costs.; Work it out: Support hiring cost calculator
Macro: A saved reply that can also do things, such as tag, assign or close the ticket, in one click.
Macro usage rate: The share of replies sent from a saved reply. A low rate suggests the library is hard to search or out of date; a very high rate can mean replies feel canned.; Work it out: Saved reply library audit
Margin of error: How far a survey result could be from the true figure, usually written as plus or minus a number of points. An 88% CSAT score with a 5 point margin means the real value is probably between 83% and 93%.; Work it out: CSAT sample size calculator
Merging tickets: Combining several tickets from one customer about the same problem into one, so the team answers once and the history stays together.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): A score from asking how likely someone is to recommend you, from 0 to 10. People who answer 9 or 10 are promoters, 0 to 6 are detractors. NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, so it runs from -100 to 100.; Work it out: CSAT and NPS calculator
New hire ramp plan: A week-by-week plan for a new support agent, from shadowing to handling tickets alone. A written plan gets a new hire to full speed faster and with fewer mistakes.; Work it out: New hire ramp planner
Occupancy: The share of time agents spend actually handling contacts while they're available to. Running close to 100% looks efficient but leaves no slack, so queues spike and people burn out.; Work it out: Handle time calculator
Omnichannel: Handling every channel (email, chat, phone, social) in one place, with the customer's history following them between channels.
Omnichannel support: Handling email, chat and other channels in one place so a customer's history follows them. It matters more than the number of channels offered.; Work it out: Support channel mix planner
Onboarding email: A short email sent to a new customer in their first weeks, covering one task each. Written from the questions new customers actually ask, they answer them before a ticket is needed.
One-touch resolution: A ticket solved with a single agent reply. Similar to first contact resolution, but counted per reply rather than per contact.
Out-of-office reply: An automatic message sent when your team is closed. It should say when customers will hear back and how to reach someone for urgent problems.; Work it out: After-hours auto-reply generator
Outage: A period when all or part of the product is unavailable. During one, support sends an acknowledgement, regular updates and a resolved note, and tags the tickets so everyone can be told when it ends.; Work it out: Incident status message generator
Overage: Usage billed beyond what a plan includes. For AI support it is the per-answer fee past the included amount; some tools stop the AI at the limit instead, and some bill without one.
Peak hours: The times of day or week when most tickets arrive. Staffing to the average leaves customers waiting at the peak, so shift schedules should follow the curve.; Work it out: Support coverage hours planner
Pendingalso: Waiting on customer: A ticket status meaning the team has replied and is waiting for the customer. Many help desks pause SLA clocks while a ticket is pending.
Per-resolution pricing: Charging for each conversation the AI is counted as having resolved. Vendors differ in what counts as a resolution, so ask whether it includes conversations where the customer simply stopped replying.
Priority: How urgent a ticket is, often low, normal, high or urgent. Priority usually decides which SLA target applies.; Work it out: Ticket priority matrix
Proactive support: Reaching customers before they write in, for example by emailing about a known issue or a planned change. It lowers ticket volume and shows customers you are paying attention.
Queuealso: View: A list of tickets that match a rule, such as "unassigned" or "billing, high priority", so each agent knows what to work on next.
Queue management: Deciding which tickets are worked next and by whom, using priority, age and skills. Good queue management keeps the oldest and most urgent tickets from being missed.; Work it out: Ticket priority matrix
Ramp time: The weeks or months a new agent needs before they work at full speed. During ramp they close fewer tickets, so the first-year cost per ticket of a hire is higher than the steady-state one.; Work it out: Support hiring cost calculator
Refund policy: The written rules for when customers get their money back. A clear policy shortens refund tickets because agents and customers read the same answer.; Work it out: Refund policy generator
Refund reply: The message that tells a customer whether a refund is approved and when the money will arrive. Lead with the decision, then the timing, then any next step.; Work it out: Refund request reply generator
Reopen rate: The share of solved tickets the customer replies to again because the problem wasn't actually fixed.; Work it out: First contact resolution calculator
Reopen reason: Why a closed ticket came back, such as an incomplete answer, a repeat problem or a new question in the same thread. Sorting reopens by reason shows which fix lowers the reopen rate.; Work it out: Ticket reopen reason sorter
Reply readability: How easy a reply is to read, based on sentence length and word choice. Short sentences and plain words get answers understood the first time and cut follow-up questions.; Work it out: Support reply readability checker
Reply tone: How a support reply sounds: warm, direct and plain beats formal and padded. Reading level and sentence length are simple ways to check it.; Work it out: Support reply readability checker
Reproduction stepsalso: Steps to reproduce: The exact actions that make a problem happen, in order. A bug report with reproduction steps can be tested by someone else; one without them usually comes back with questions.
Resolution: A ticket solved. Several help desks now bill AI per resolution, so check what your tool counts as one: some count any conversation the customer didn't follow up on.
Response template: A prepared reply with blanks for the details that change. Templates keep tone and facts consistent and save typing, as long as agents edit them before sending.
Response time analysis: A look at how long customers wait for replies, by hour and by day. It shows when you need more cover and whether your promised reply time is realistic.; Work it out: Response time analyzer
Response time percentile (p90): The response time that a chosen share of tickets beat. The p90 is the time 90% of tickets were answered within, so it shows how long the slowest tenth wait, which an average hides.; Work it out: Response time analyzer
Round-robin assignmentalso: Auto-assignment: Giving each new ticket to the next agent in a rotation so the work is shared evenly. Good versions skip agents who are away or already at their limit of open tickets.
Routing: Sending each new ticket to the right person or team automatically, by topic, language, customer or workload.
Sample size: The number of survey responses behind a result. A score from a handful of replies is a rough signal; a larger sample narrows the margin of error.; Work it out: CSAT sample size calculator
Satisfaction survey: A short question sent after a ticket closes asking how it went. Keep it to one question and send it quickly, or response rates fall.; Work it out: CSAT sample size calculator
Save ratealso: Retention rate on cancellation requests: The share of customers who ask to cancel and stay after an alternative such as a pause or a cheaper plan. Even a small rate is worth the time spent on a careful reply.; Work it out: Churn cost calculator
Saved reply audit: A review of your saved replies for outdated facts, broken placeholders and duplicates. Running one a few times a year keeps old answers from reaching customers.; Work it out: Saved reply library audit
Saved reply placeholder: A fill-in field such as the customer name or order number inside a saved reply. A placeholder left unfilled is the most common way a saved reply goes out looking careless.; Work it out: Saved reply placeholder checker
Saved reply time savings: The hours a team gets back by answering repeat questions with saved replies. Counting it shows whether a library is worth the time spent keeping it current.; Work it out: Saved reply time savings calculator
Seatalso: Licence: One person's paid access to a help desk. Most tools price per seat per month, and some count part-time or view-only people too, so check who needs one.
Self-service: Customers finding the answer themselves, in a help center, FAQ or AI chat, without contacting the team. It works when the articles are current and easy to search.; Work it out: Help center search gap finder
Self-service rate: The share of customers who solve their problem from your help center or an automated answer without contacting a person. It grows when articles are easy to find and answer the real question.; Work it out: Ticket deflection calculator
Sentimentalso: Customer mood: How a customer feels in a message, such as frustrated or relieved. Teams tag it by hand or with AI to find unhappy customers early, but it is a guide and not a measure of satisfaction.
Service desk: A help desk for internal requests, such as IT or HR, from colleagues rather than customers. The tools are similar, but the requests often follow fixed approval steps.
Service level: The share of contacts answered within a target time, written as "80/20": 80% answered within 20 seconds. Common for live chat and phone, where customers wait in real time.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Service level agreement (SLA): A promise about response or resolution times, such as "first reply within 4 business hours for high priority tickets". It can be a contract with customers or an internal target.; Work it out: SLA due time calculator
Service level indicatoralso: SLI: The measurement behind a service level objective, such as the percentage of first replies sent within one hour. You need a clear indicator before you can set a target.
Service level objectivealso: SLO: An internal target for a measure such as first response time. Unlike an SLA, it is a goal for your team rather than a promise to customers.
Service recovery: What you do after something goes wrong for a customer: an apology, a fix and sometimes a goodwill gesture. Done well, it can leave customers more loyal than before.
Shared inbox: One email address, such as support@, that several people work from together, with assigning, notes and a record of who replied. It is the simplest step up from everyone sharing a mailbox password.
Shrinkage: The share of paid time agents are not available to customers: breaks, meetings, training, holidays and sick days. A staffing plan has to add it back on top of the agents a queue needs.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Side conversation: A separate email thread started from a ticket with someone outside the customer, such as a supplier or a colleague in another department, kept attached to the ticket for reference.
Skill-based routing: Sending a ticket to an agent who has the right skill, such as a language or a product area, instead of the next free person. It improves first-time answers but needs clear tags to work.; Work it out: Ticket tag taxonomy builder
SLA breach: A ticket that missed its SLA target. SLA attainment is the share of tickets that didn't breach.; Work it out: SLA breach cost calculator
SLA credit: A refund or discount given to a customer when you miss a promised service level. Knowing the likely cost helps you set promises you can keep.; Work it out: SLA breach cost calculator
SLA wording: The plain-language sentence that tells customers what you promise and when. Vague wording invites disputes, so name the clock, the hours and what counts as a first reply.; Work it out: SLA wording generator
Snooze: Hiding a ticket until a chosen time, when it returns to the inbox. Used for tickets waiting on something that will not change until then, such as a promised callback.
Status page: A public page that shows whether your product is working and lists current incidents. Customers can check it instead of writing in during an outage.; Work it out: Incident status message generator
Support automation: Using rules or AI to handle parts of support without a person, such as tagging, routing and answering common questions. It works best on narrow, well-documented topics.
Support channel mix: The split of support across email, chat, phone and social. Knowing the mix helps decide which channels deserve staff and which can be answered by self-service.; Work it out: Support channel mix planner
Support cost per customer: What support costs for each active customer in a month: total support spend divided by active customers. It shows how much help your customer base needs, which cost per ticket does not, and can be set against revenue per customer.; Work it out: Support cost per customer calculator
Support coverage hours: The hours when someone is actually available to answer customers. Coverage should match when tickets arrive, not just the office day.; Work it out: Support coverage hours planner
Support email signature: The closing block on every support reply, with a name, role and a way to reach you. A consistent signature makes replies feel personal and easy to follow up.; Work it out: Support email signature generator
Support goal: A measurable target for the team, such as a first reply time or a satisfaction score. Few goals, checked each week, move numbers more than a long list.; Work it out: Support goal planner
Support hiring cost: What it costs to add a support agent, including pay, tools, training and the weeks before they are fully productive. It is the number to compare with a fixed-price help desk.; Work it out: Support hiring cost calculator
Support job ad: The posting you write to hire a support agent. A good one names the channels, hours and tools, so applicants know the real job before they apply.; Work it out: Support job ad generator
Support playbook: A short guide that sets how your team answers: tone, response targets, refund limits and when to escalate. It keeps replies consistent as the team grows.; Work it out: Customer service reply templates
Support QA scorecard: A short checklist used to score a sample of replies for accuracy, tone and completeness. Scoring a few tickets a week keeps quality steady without reading everything.; Work it out: Support QA scorecard calculator
Support reply checklist: A short list an agent checks before sending a reply, such as the answer, the next step and the tone. A checklist catches the small slips that cause follow-up tickets.; Work it out: Support reply checklist
Support reply length: How many words a typical support reply runs. Replies that are long enough to solve the problem and short enough to read get fewer follow-ups.; Work it out: Support reply length planner
Support runbook: A step-by-step guide for a recurring situation such as an outage or a refund dispute. It lets anyone on the team handle the case the same way, even on their first week.; Work it out: Support handoff note generator
Support tier: A level of support, usually starting with general questions and moving to specialists for harder problems. Small teams often use two tiers, or one with a clear escalation path.; Work it out: Escalation rate calculator
Support workload check: A quick comparison of ticket volume against the hours your team has. It tells you early if the team is stretched, before response times slip.; Work it out: Support workload checker
Survey response rate: The share of customers who answer a satisfaction survey. With a low response rate, scores lean toward people who felt strongly either way.; Work it out: CSAT and NPS calculator
Swarming: Several people working on one hard ticket at the same time, for example in a chat thread, instead of passing it up a chain of tiers. It solves hard problems faster but pulls people away from the queue.
Tag: A label on a ticket, such as "refund" or "bug", used for routing, reports and finding similar tickets later.
Tag taxonomy: The agreed list of tags a team puts on tickets, usually split into topic, type and source. A short, consistent list lets you count what customers ask about; a long one gets used differently by every agent.; Work it out: Ticket tag taxonomy builder
Ticketalso: Case, conversation: One customer request and every message about it, tracked from arrival to solved.
Ticket aging: How long open tickets have been waiting, grouped into bands such as under a day, one to three days and over a week. It shows which tickets are about to breach a target.; Work it out: Support backlog calculator
Ticket categorisation: Labelling each ticket by topic so you can route it and count it. A short, stable list of categories is easier to use than a long one.; Work it out: Ticket tag taxonomy builder
Ticket categorization: Sorting each ticket into a topic such as billing, bug or how-to. Consistent categories show what customers ask about most and where to improve.; Work it out: Ticket subject theme finder
Ticket deflection: A customer finding an answer in your help center or an automated reply instead of opening a ticket. Count it only when they did not contact you afterwards.; Work it out: Ticket deflection calculator
Ticket escalation path: The route a ticket takes when the first person cannot solve it: who it goes to, what they receive and how fast they must respond. Written down, it stops tickets bouncing between people.; Work it out: Escalation rate calculator
Ticket merging: Combining duplicate tickets from the same customer into one thread so the team answers once. Merge only when the messages are about the same problem.; Work it out: Support workload checker
Ticket ownership: A named person responsible for a ticket until it is resolved. Without an owner, tickets sit unanswered because everyone assumes someone else has them.
Ticket priority matrix: A grid that sets a ticket's priority from its impact and urgency. It gives the team one rule for what to answer first instead of arguing case by case.; Work it out: Ticket priority matrix
Ticket subject line: The first line a customer sees on a support email. A subject that names the issue and the ticket makes the reply easy to find and easy to follow up.; Work it out: Support subject line checker
Ticket tagging: Labelling tickets with a short, fixed set of tags such as billing or bug so you can count themes later. A small, agreed list beats a long one nobody follows.; Work it out: Ticket tag taxonomy builder
Ticket theme: A recurring topic across tickets, such as billing errors or login problems. Counting themes shows which fix or help article would remove the most contacts.; Work it out: Ticket subject theme finder
Ticket volume forecast: An estimate of how many tickets will arrive in coming months, usually this month's volume grown by your recent monthly growth rate, used to decide when to hire.; Work it out: Ticket volume forecast
Ticket volume forecast: An estimate of how many tickets will arrive in a coming period, based on past counts and known events such as launches or sales. Staffing plans start from it.; Work it out: Ticket volume forecast
Tier 1 support: The first line that handles common questions. Harder problems escalate to tier 2 (specialists) and tier 3 (engineers).
Tier 2 support: The second line of support: people with deeper product knowledge who take what tier 1 cannot solve, such as unusual bugs, account problems or technical set-up questions.
Tiered supportalso: Tier 1, Tier 2: Splitting support into levels. The first tier answers common questions and the next tiers take harder problems passed up through escalation. Small teams often skip tiers and use tags and assignment instead.
Time to first touch: How long it takes before a human or an AI first acts on a ticket. It can be shorter than first response time when a ticket is assigned or tagged before it is answered.
Triage: Sorting new tickets by urgency and type so the right person sees the most important ones first. Good triage takes seconds per ticket and uses a few clear rules rather than judgement calls.; Work it out: Ticket priority matrix
Trial conversion: The share of free-trial accounts that become paying customers. Support affects it directly because a fast, clear first reply often decides whether a trial user keeps going.
Voice of the customeralso: VoC: The collected feedback customers give you through tickets, surveys and reviews. Support is often the largest source, so tagging tickets turns it into product input.; Work it out: Ticket subject theme finder
Wait time: How long a customer waits between sending a message and getting a reply or being connected. Short waits matter most in chat and phone, where customers expect an answer at once.; Work it out: Response time analyzer
Weekly support report: A one-page summary of volume, response times, satisfaction and top issues for the week. A steady report makes trends and problems visible before customers complain.; Work it out: Weekly support report generator
Workforce managementalso: WFM: Forecasting ticket volume and scheduling enough people to handle it. Small teams can do it with a spreadsheet and a few honest handle-time numbers.; Work it out: Support staffing calculator
Wrap-up timealso: After-contact work: Work an agent does after a conversation ends: notes, tags, follow-up tasks. It's part of handle time.

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