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.

Agentalso: Support rep, advisor: A person on the support team who answers customers. Most help desks price per agent, also called per seat.
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: Support staffing calculator
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Internal note: A comment on a ticket only the team can see. Used to hand over context without the customer reading it.
Macro: A saved reply that can also do things, such as tag, assign or close the ticket, in one click.
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
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: Support staffing calculator
Omnichannel: Handling every channel (email, chat, phone, social) in one place, with the customer's history following them between channels.
One-touch resolution: A ticket solved with a single agent reply. Similar to first contact resolution, but counted per reply rather than per contact.
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.
Priority: How urgent a ticket is, often low, normal, high or urgent. Priority usually decides which SLA target applies.
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.
Reopen rate: The share of solved tickets the customer replies to again because the problem wasn't actually fixed.
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.
Routing: Sending each new ticket to the right person or team automatically, by topic, language, customer or workload.
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
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
SLA breach: A ticket that missed its SLA target. SLA attainment is the share of tickets that didn't breach.; Work it out: SLA due time calculator
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
Tag: A label on a ticket, such as "refund" or "bug", used for routing, reports and finding similar tickets later.
Ticketalso: Case, conversation: One customer request and every message about it, tracked from arrival to solved.
Tier 1 support: The first line that handles common questions. Harder problems escalate to tier 2 (specialists) and tier 3 (engineers).
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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