Glossary

Customer service glossary

Twenty terms that come up when you choose or run help desk and customer service software, each explained in plain words. Where ZynTrail has the thing, one more sentence says how it works there.

A to Z

Help desk terms, explained

Business hours: The hours in which a team is expected to answer, usually set per weekday, with public holidays taken out. They matter because a response target counted around the clock blames the team for the weekend. In ZynTrail the SLA clock can count business hours only and stops on holidays (Business and up), the website chat shows your offline message outside them, and on Enterprise the phone system tells callers you are closed.
Call recording: An audio file of a phone call, kept so it can be played back for quality checks, training or a dispute. In ZynTrail your company switches recording on or off itself, and a recording can be played or downloaded from the customer's timeline, their Calls tab and the call centre board (Enterprise).
Canned response: A saved reply that an agent inserts instead of typing the same answer again. In ZynTrail you type “/” in the reply box to pick one, and placeholders fill in the customer's name and email, the ticket number and the agent's name.
CSAT (customer satisfaction score): The average of the ratings customers give after their request has been dealt with, usually on a scale of 1 to 5. In ZynTrail, when an email ticket is closed, the customer gets a 1–5 survey that you word yourself in English, Bulgarian or Russian; the score shows on the ticket and as an average in Analytics (Business and up).
Department routing: Sending each new enquiry to the team responsible for it, such as sales, support or accounts, without someone sorting the inbox by hand. In ZynTrail each mailbox and each customer has a default department, so a new ticket lands in the right one; more than one department needs Business and up.
Escalation: Passing a case to a supervisor or a more experienced colleague, because it is stuck or about to miss its deadline. In ZynTrail an agent escalates a ticket to the department's supervisors with one button, and with SLA policies the owner and supervisors are warned before a deadline runs out.
First response time: How long a customer waits between sending a request and getting the first reply. In ZynTrail you set a first-response target in the SLA policy, and Analytics shows the average first reply for the company and for each agent (Business and up).
Help desk: Software that turns customer enquiries into tickets, so a team can share the work, see who is handling what and measure how quickly customers get answers. ZynTrail is a help desk with a contact centre built in: email, calls, chat apps and the website chat become tickets on one timeline per customer.
Knowledge base: A collection of written articles with the answers a team gives again and again. ZynTrail's knowledge base is for the team: articles sorted into categories, and the AI assistant drafts replies from the ones not marked internal. Writing articles needs Business and up.
Omnichannel: Handling every channel a customer uses (email, phone, chat apps, website chat) in one place, so a conversation that moves from one channel to another stays one story. In ZynTrail all of them become tickets in one queue and on one timeline per customer; see the channels.
PBX / cloud phone system: A PBX (private branch exchange) is the phone system that connects a company's numbers to its people, with extensions, queues and transfers. A cloud PBX runs in a data centre instead of a box in the office. ZynTrail Voice is our own cloud PBX, managed from inside ZynTrail, and every inbound call opens a ticket (Enterprise).
Queue: A waiting line of work. A ticket queue is the list of open enquiries a team works through; a call queue is a group of agents who answer one number, with a rule for who rings first. In ZynTrail a call queue can ring everyone at once, go round in turn, or go to whoever has been free longest.
Resolution time: How long it takes from the moment a request arrives until it is solved. In ZynTrail the SLA policy sets resolution hours per priority, and Analytics shows the average resolution time and the resolution rate (Business and up).
Round robin: Sharing work out in turn, so each person gets the next item when their turn comes. ZynTrail's automatic assignment can work round robin, giving the ticket to whoever has waited longest among people who are on shift, not on leave and not on a break (in practice Pro and up); call queues can ring round robin too.
Shared inbox: One mailbox, such as info@ or support@, that several people read and answer from. It works for a small team; with more people it gets hard to tell who is answering what, which is usually when teams move to a help desk. More in shared inbox or help desk.
Shift: A planned block of working time for one person, with a start, an end and breaks. In ZynTrail shifts are planned on a month grid by department, people can swap them with approval, and automatic assignment gives tickets only to people on shift (Pro and Enterprise).
SLA (service level agreement): The response and resolution times a team commits to, usually set by priority. In ZynTrail the SLA policy gives each ticket a deadline when it opens, agents cannot move it, and the owner and supervisors are warned before it runs out (Business and up).
Softphone: A telephone that runs as software, in a browser or an app, used with a headset instead of a handset. ZynTrail's softphone runs in the browser, in the same window as the tickets, with hold, mute and consulted transfer (Enterprise).
Ticket: A record of one customer request, with an owner, a status, a priority and the whole conversation about it. In ZynTrail every email, call, chat app message and website chat becomes a ticket, numbered by your company's own counter, with a deadline from your SLA policy.
Webhook: A message one system sends to another over the web the moment something happens, so the second one does not have to keep asking. ZynTrail turns incoming webhooks (a Shopify or WooCommerce order, a Zapier, Make or n8n flow, a web form) into tickets, and sends signed events when a ticket is created, assigned, resolved or closed, in every plan; see connecting other systems.

Guides for choosing a help desk

How to choose help desk software for a small team: the checklist and the questions to ask any vendor.
Shared inbox or help desk: the signs that a shared mailbox has stopped working.
WhatsApp for customer support: connecting WhatsApp Business to your team.

See it against your own case

Tell us how many people answer customers and which channels your enquiries come in on. We will walk you through the screens your team would actually use, with your own case in place of a demo script.

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