Remote support and customer service glossary

Average handle time (AHT) is the mean duration of a customer contact from the moment an agent takes it to the moment after-call work is finished, covering talk time, hold time and wrap-up. It is a capacity-planning input that most operations misuse as a performance target.

Augmented reality support, usually shortened to AR support, is live remote assistance in which the expert can draw onto what the camera is showing. Arrows, circles and labels stay anchored to the object in view, so both people are pointing at the same component instead of describing it.

Callback rate is the share of completed jobs that require a return visit for work that should have been finished the first time, calculated as callbacks divided by completed jobs within a defined window. It is the quality metric that sits directly behind first-time fix rate.

Customer effort score (CES) is a post-interaction survey metric that measures how much work a customer had to do to get their issue resolved, scored on a single question and used to predict whether that customer comes back. Low effort predicts loyalty better than high satisfaction does.

Co-browsing is a support technique in which an agent views, and sometimes interacts with, a customer's live browser session while the customer keeps control of their own device. The session is scoped to one website or web application rather than the whole desktop.

A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a survey metric reporting the percentage of respondents who gave a positive answer when asked how satisfied they were with a specific interaction, usually on a five-point scale straight after the event. It measures a moment, and only among people who replied.

An escalation path is the pre-agreed route a problem takes when the team holding it cannot resolve it within agreed limits. It names who it goes to next, what triggers the move, how fast the next tier must respond, and what information travels with it.

First contact resolution (FCR) is the share of customer contacts resolved during the first interaction, with no transfer, no callback and no follow-up ticket inside a defined window. It is the headline quality metric in most support operations, and the one most often measured badly.

First line support is the first tier of a support organisation: the team that takes every incoming contact, logs it, resolves the issues that have a known answer, and hands the rest to a specialist tier with the diagnosis already under way. It is defined by scope, not seniority.

A knowledge base is a structured, searchable collection of articles that answer the questions customers and agents actually ask, maintained as a byproduct of resolving contacts rather than as a separate documentation project. How it is maintained matters more than what is in it.

Product registration is the process by which an owner records their purchase with the manufacturer, linking one serial number to a named contact, a purchase date and an address. It exists so the maker can reach that specific unit later, for warranty, service or safety reasons. Most owners never complete it.

Remote assistance is any method that lets an expert help someone at another location without travelling there, working from what they can see and control through that person's device. It covers remote control of a computer and live video assistance through a phone camera.

Remote triage is the process of assessing a reported issue from a distance and deciding what happens next: resolve it remotely, request more information, or dispatch a technician. It is a decision point placed deliberately between the customer report and the schedule.

Remote troubleshooting is the process of diagnosing and resolving a fault without attending the site, using what the person standing at the equipment can tell you, show you, or do on your instruction. The quality of the outcome is set by the quality of what you can see.

Returns management is the customer facing process a business runs when someone wants to send goods back: taking the request, deciding whether it is accepted, authorising it, arranging collection or drop off, and settling the refund, replacement, or repair.

Reverse logistics is the physical and financial flow of goods travelling backwards through a supply chain, from the customer towards the seller, manufacturer, refurbisher, or recycler, together with the decision about what happens to each item that comes back.

A return merchandise authorisation (RMA) is the approval a supplier issues before a customer ships an item back, carrying a reference number that ties the returning unit to a specific fault, order and outcome. No number, no return. It is also the last cheap moment to ask whether the item needs to travel at all.

Second line support is the specialist tier that handles what first line cannot resolve: cases with no documented fix, cases needing elevated access or a system-level change, and cases where the cause has to be investigated rather than looked up. Ownership of the customer normally stays at first line.

A self-service portal is a customer-facing web area where people check status, complete routine tasks and find answers without contacting an agent, usually combining an account view, a knowledge base and a set of transactional actions. Most portals handle the start of an issue well and the end of it badly.

A serial number is a unique identifier assigned to one individual unit of a product, distinguishing it from every other unit of the same model. It is the key that links a physical item to its build date, specification, warranty entitlement and service history. One unit, one number, never reused.

A service desk is the single point of contact between a service provider and its users, responsible for capturing every incident, request and question that comes in, resolving what it can at first contact, and routing the rest to the right specialist. ITIL 4 defines it as a practice, not a team.

Service recovery is what an organisation does after it has failed a customer: acknowledging the failure quickly, fixing it, compensating in proportion where that is warranted, and changing the process that caused it. It is a defined operational practice, not an apology.

Spare parts identification is the process of determining exactly which replacement part fits one specific unit, using the serial number, the build variant and the manufacturer's parts catalogue. It replaces guesswork from a description of what the broken part looks like. Get it wrong and you ship twice.

Support triage is the practice of assessing every contact arriving at a support desk and deciding, before any work begins, how urgent it is, how much it affects, and which skill it needs. The output of triage is a priority and an owner, never a solution.

Ticket deflection is the practice of answering a customer's question through self-service so that no support ticket is created, together with the metric that counts how often that happens. The metric is measured as an absence, which is what makes it so easy to report and so easy to fake.

Visual support is the category of customer support and service methods in which the problem is shown rather than described, using the camera on a device the customer already has. It covers live video assistance and asynchronous guided capture, which behave very differently in practice.

Warranty support is the function that handles contacts about products failing inside their warranty period, decides whether the reported fault is covered by the terms, and turns a covered fault into a repair, a replacement, a part, or a refund.