Glossary

100 percent inspection is the examination of every item in a batch against the acceptance criteria instead of a sample, so each unit is individually judged conforming or nonconforming before release. It is used where one escaped defect is unacceptable, and it is less reliable than the name suggests.

Accredited inspection is inspection performed by a body whose competence, impartiality and consistency have been assessed by an independent national accreditation body against a published standard, normally ISO/IEC 17020. Accreditation is a judgement about the inspector, not about any single result.

Actual cash value (ACV) is what a damaged item was worth in the moment immediately before the loss, normally calculated as replacement cost less depreciation. It is the figure most motor and property policies settle on, and it is what the majority of settlement disputes are really about.

An adjuster is the insurance professional who investigates a claim, establishes the facts of the loss, applies the policy terms, and agrees what the insurer will pay. The title is standard in North America and covers staff, independent and public adjusters working from a desk or in the field.

Aftersales is the European and UK name for everything a dealership does for a vehicle after it has been sold: servicing, mechanical repair, parts supply, warranty work and bodyshop repair. North American dealers call the identical department fixed operations, or fixed ops.

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.

Anti money laundering, abbreviated AML, is the body of law, regulation and internal controls requiring businesses to prevent, detect and report the movement of criminal proceeds through the financial system. It is a legal obligation, not a best practice.

An annual inspection is a full condition and compliance check carried out once every twelve months, usually because a regulator, an insurer, or an internal standard requires it on that cycle. It certifies a state on a date rather than monitoring an asset over time.

Application fraud is the deliberate misrepresentation or concealment of material information when a policy is bought or renewed, so that cover is issued cheaper or issued at all. It happens at the point of quote, before any incident and before any claim exists.

Appointment show rate is the percentage of booked appointments where the customer actually arrives, calculated as appointments shown divided by appointments set in the same period. It is the only funnel number that measures a promise the customer made rather than an action your team took.

Appointment to sale ratio is the percentage of customers who show for a booked appointment and go on to buy, calculated as units sold divided by appointments shown in the same period. It is the last conversion in the sales funnel, and the one where every upstream number finally gets tested.

An apprentice technician is a trainee employed and paid by a workshop while they train, working under supervision on progressively harder jobs until they qualify as a technician in their own right. In the UK that route is a formal three year apprenticeship. In the US it is more often a college programme.

An approved repairer is a body shop or garage an insurer has vetted and contracted to carry out repairs on claims it handles, working to agreed rates, methods, parts policy and quality standards. Approval is a commercial relationship, not a public certification.

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.

Aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between the width and the height of a video frame, written as two numbers separated by a colon, such as 16:9 or 9:16. It describes the shape of the frame, and says nothing about how many pixels are in it.

An asset register is the structured record an organisation keeps of the assets it owns, finances, or is accountable for, listing each item with its identifiers, location, cost, depreciation, and ownership or security status. It answers what we have, where it is, and who has a claim on it.

Asset uptime is the percentage of scheduled operating time during which a piece of equipment is available and able to run, calculated by dividing the hours it could actually run by the hours it was scheduled to run. It is the availability half of every reliability programme.

Asset utilisation rate is the share of an asset's available time or capacity that was actually spent doing productive work, calculated by dividing hours or units of real output by the hours or units available in the same period. It measures equipment rather than people, and it is not the same thing as availability.

Asset verification is the practice of confirming that an asset genuinely exists, that it matches the identifiers and specification on the paperwork, and that it sits in the location and condition the record claims. It is a control against clerical error and against deliberate misrepresentation.

Asynchronous capture is a model for collecting visual information in which the person recording and the person reviewing are never required to be present at the same moment. A request is sent, the participant completes it whenever it suits them, and the submission is reviewed later.

Asynchronous communication is any exchange in which the sender and the receiver are not required to be present at the same moment: a message is composed, sent and stored, then read and answered whenever the other party gets to it. The gap between the two is treated as normal, not as a delay.

An audit trail is the chronological, system-generated record of who did what to a record, when they did it, and what the data looked like before and after, kept so the history of a decision can be reconstructed later by someone who was not there at the time.

Automated decision making is a decision taken about a person by automated processing alone, including profiling, with no meaningful human involvement in the outcome that person receives. Article 22 GDPR restricts it wherever the decision produces legal effects or similarly significant effects for that person.

An automotive CRM is the software a dealership uses to hold every customer and prospect record in one place: enquiries, contact history, appointments, deliveries and the follow-up tasks attached to each name. It is the system of record for the sales side of the store.

Back end gross is the profit a dealership makes from finance and insurance products sold alongside the vehicle, mainly finance reserve, service contracts and protection products. It is the second half of total gross per unit, sitting opposite the front end gross earned on the car itself.

Bay utilisation is the share of available bay hours in which a workshop bay is occupied by a vehicle having work actively performed on it. It measures the physical space as the constrained resource, calculated as productive bay hours divided by total available bay hours.

BDC stands for Business Development Center: the dealership team that answers leads, sets appointments and follows up for sales and service. Structure and KPIs.

A be-back is a dealership customer who leaves without buying and says they will come back, either later that day or after thinking it over. The term is used with heavy irony on most sales floors, because only a small share of them ever return to the store they left.

Betterment is the improvement a policyholder gains when a repair replaces a worn item with a new one, and the deduction an insurer applies to offset it. It exists because indemnity restores the pre-loss position, and a brand new part fitted to an ageing asset goes past that line.

Video bitrate explained: what Mbps means, how bitrate relates to quality and file size, and sensible settings for phone-recorded customer videos.

Blur detection is the automated measurement of how sharp an image is, producing a numeric score that is compared against a threshold to decide whether a photo is usable or should be retaken. It measures edge sharpness, not whether the picture is any good.

A borescope inspection is a remote visual inspection of the inside of a machine, vessel or structure, carried out by passing a rigid or flexible optical probe through an existing access port. It exists because the alternative, stripping the item down to look, is expensive.

Break-fix is the service model where work is carried out, and paid for, only when something fails. There is no ongoing fee and no standing commitment: the customer calls, a job is raised, an engineer attends, and the invoice covers that visit's labour, parts and travel.

A building survey is a detailed inspection of a property's construction and condition by a chartered surveyor, reporting on defects, their likely causes, the repairs required, and what happens if they are left. It is the most thorough of the standard survey types, commissioned before a purchase or a lease.

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.

A capture flow is the configured sequence of steps a participant works through when submitting visual information to an organisation, specifying what to record, in what order, with which instruction shown at each step and which questions are attached along the way.

Case management is the practice of grouping everything that belongs to one piece of work, the request, the evidence, the decisions and the correspondence, into a single record with an owner, a status and a history. It is what turns an incoming message into work somebody is accountable for.

A catastrophe claim, or CAT claim, is a claim arising from a single large event that damages many insured risks at once, such as a hurricane, wildfire or hailstorm. Insurers code these claims to one catastrophe event number so the cost of that event can be measured and reinsured separately.

In the automotive industry, the term "CDP" stands for Customer Data Platform. This is a type of software that aggregates and organizes customer data across a variety of channels, including both online and offline sources. The goal of a CDP is to provide a unified, 360-degree view of customers to help businesses improve their marketing, sales, and customer service efforts.

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.

A digital chain of custody is the documented, unbroken record of how a piece of digital evidence was captured, received, fingerprinted, sealed and handled from that moment on, supporting the traceability of the material and its handling rather than the truth of the events the material shows.

A check-in report records the condition, cleanliness and contents of a rented property on the day the tenant takes occupation, signed or acknowledged by the tenant. It is the baseline every later deposit deduction is measured against, which makes it the most consequential document in the tenancy.

A check-out report records the condition, cleanliness and contents of a rented property at the end of a tenancy and compares them line by line against the check-in report. It is the document a deposit scheme adjudicator reads first when a landlord claims a deduction.

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with you over a defined period, calculated as customers lost during the period divided by customers at the start of it. In a dealership nobody cancels, so churn has to be inferred from absence, which is why the definition does most of the work.

Claim frequency is the rate at which claims arise across a book of business, normally expressed as claims per 100 earned exposure units over a defined period. In motor insurance the exposure unit is the earned car year, so frequency is read as claims per 100 earned car years.

Claims automation is the use of software to carry out steps in the claims process that a handler would otherwise do by hand, from intake and validation through triage, decisioning and payment. The aim is straight-through handling of simple claims and faster routing of complex ones.

Claims cycle time is the elapsed time between the first notification of loss and the closure of a claim, usually counted in calendar days. It is the headline operational metric in claims, and most of the time inside it is spent waiting for information, not working the file.

Claim severity is the average cost of a claim, calculated by dividing the total amount paid over a period by the number of claims in that same period. It answers how expensive claims are, while claim frequency answers how often they happen.

A claims handler is the person who owns an insurance claim from notification to closure: validating cover, gathering evidence, instructing suppliers and experts, negotiating settlement, and keeping the customer informed. The title is standard in the UK, Ireland and most of Europe.

Claims leakage is the difference between what a claim actually cost the insurer and what it should have cost if every step had been handled correctly. It is money lost to process failure rather than fraud, and it is found only by re-auditing closed files.

A claims portal is the online interface where a claimant or their representative notifies a claim and tracks it through to settlement, holding the claim record, collecting evidence, showing status, and passing structured data into the insurer's claims system rather than into a shared inbox.

A claims reserve is the money an insurer sets aside to pay the remaining cost of a claim that has been reported but not yet settled. It sits on the balance sheet as a liability, and it is revised up or down every time better information about the claim arrives.

Claims triage is the process of sorting incoming claims by what each one actually needs, complexity, value, urgency and risk, then routing each to the right handler, channel and level of investigation before substantive work begins. It happens at or just after FNOL.

Claims validation is the set of checks an insurer runs to confirm that a reported loss is covered by the policy, that the account given matches the evidence supplied, and that the amount claimed is right, before payment is authorised. It runs on every claim, not only the ones that look wrong.

Closing ratio is the percentage of sales opportunities that end in a delivered vehicle, calculated as units sold divided by opportunities in the same period. Every store tracks it, and almost no two stores count the denominator the same way, which is why the number travels badly between rooftops.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the total gross profit a customer produces across the whole relationship rather than in one transaction. In a dealership that means the vehicle sale, every service and parts visit after it, and the next vehicle, which is where most of the value actually sits.

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 collection inspection is the condition record made at the point an asset is picked up, either by a carrier taking it away or by an owner recovering it at the end of a contract. It sets the baseline for the movement that follows and decides where a carrier's liability starts.

A comeback is a vehicle that returns to the workshop because the original repair did not fix the customer's concern, or because the work itself was wrong or incomplete. It is measured as comeback repair orders against total repair orders written in the same period.

Commissioning is the structured process of proving that an installed system performs the way it was specified to, tested and documented before responsibility passes to the operator. Installation puts the equipment in place. Commissioning proves it works, and records the proof.

Conditional logic is the branching inside a form or workflow that changes what happens next based on what has already been answered, so each person is shown only the steps that apply to their situation. It is also called branching logic, skip logic or conditional branching.

Condition grading is the practice of summarising an asset's physical state as a single value on a defined scale, so that different inspectors describing the same asset arrive at the same answer. The grade is a shorthand for an agreed set of observations, not an opinion about the asset.

A confined space inspection is an examination of a space that is enclosed or largely enclosed and carries a reasonably foreseeable risk of serious injury from conditions inside it, such as a tank, silo, sewer, flue or pit, where entering to look is itself the most dangerous part of the task.

A conquest sale is a sale to a customer who was driving a rival brand and has now switched to yours. The household is new to the marque rather than repeat, which is why manufacturers fund conquest incentives that a loyal existing owner would never qualify for.

Consent is one of the six lawful bases in Article 6 GDPR, defined in Article 4(11) as a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of a person's wishes, made by a statement or a clear affirmative action. It can be withdrawn at any time, as easily as it was given.

A contents claim is a claim made under the contents section of a household policy for movable possessions at an insured address that are damaged, destroyed, or stolen. It is settled item by item rather than as a single repair, which makes proof of ownership and value the part that decides how long it takes.

Control points are the technical signals and recorded session events that a capture system logs around a digital submission, such as device history, IP reuse, virtual camera detection and recording location. They tell a reviewer which cases deserve a closer look. They never decide whether a claim is genuine.

Cost per sale is the marketing spend it takes to deliver one vehicle, calculated by dividing total spend in a period by the units sold from that spend. It is the number that decides whether a campaign paid for itself, and it is the one most dealership marketing reports quietly leave out.

A courtesy car is a replacement vehicle a garage, dealership or insurer provides to a customer while their own vehicle is off the road for repair. It is normally a small, standard-specification car offered for the duration of the work, not a like-for-like match for the customer's own vehicle.

Cost per lead, usually shortened to CPL, is the marketing spend it takes to produce one lead, calculated by dividing total spend in a period by the number of leads that spend generated. It is the easiest number in dealership marketing to improve, and the easiest one to improve in ways that cost you cars.

Crash for cash is organised motor insurance fraud in which a collision is deliberately caused, invented or exaggerated so claims can be made against an insurer. The money comes less from the damage itself than from the personal injury, credit hire, storage and recovery costs bundled around it.

A cryptographic signature is a value computed from a document and a private key that anyone holding the matching public key can check, establishing that the holder of that key signed exactly this content and that the content has not changed since it was signed.

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.

CSI stands for Customer Satisfaction Index: the score manufacturers use to rate dealership sales and service experiences. How it works and how to lift it.

CTA stands for call-to-action: the button or line that tells the viewer what to do next. Examples for video pages, emails and dealership follow-ups.

The automotive customer lifecycle: from first enquiry to repurchase, the stages dealers can influence and where video fits in each stage.

Customer loyalty in automotive: why retention beats acquisition for dealers, how service visits drive it, and the metrics to watch.

Customer pay is the pay type on a dealership repair order for work the vehicle owner funds themselves, as opposed to work billed to the manufacturer under warranty or charged to another department internally. Dealers shorten it to CP, and it is the highest-margin of the three pay types.

Customer wait time is the time a customer spends on site at the dealership from arriving on the service drive to being handed back their keys. It is the waiting-room metric, measured only on waiter appointments, and it is the part of the service experience customers judge most directly.

A damage inspection is a condition check triggered by a specific event: an impact, a leak, a fall, a storm. It records what was damaged, how badly, and where the damage sits, so that someone who was not standing there can decide what happens next.

A damage matrix is the grid an operator uses to turn observed damage into a consistent code and a charge: panel or component down one axis, damage type and severity across the other, with a tolerance and a cost in each cell. It is what makes two inspectors reach the same number.

A damage waiver is a contractual promise by a rental or hire company not to pursue the customer for some or all of the cost of damage to the asset, in exchange for a daily fee. It is usually not insurance. It is the owner limiting its own claim against the hirer, subject to an excess and a list of exclusions.

A damp survey is a professional inspection carried out to establish where moisture in a building is coming from, how it is moving, and what will stop it. A competent damp survey identifies the cause, not just the symptom, and is carried out by someone with no financial interest in the remedial work.

Data minimisation is the GDPR principle that personal data must be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for the purpose it is processed for. In practice it is a design constraint: you decide what not to collect before the collection happens, not afterwards.

Data retention is how an organisation decides, documents and enforces the length of time each category of personal data is kept before it is deleted or anonymised. Under the GDPR the period is not a free choice: it has to be justified against the purpose the data was collected for.

Days supply is how many days of selling a dealership's current stock would cover at its recent sales rate, calculated as units in inventory divided by the average daily sales rate. It is the standard measure of whether a store is holding too much inventory or too little.

A dealer trade is the swap or outright purchase of a vehicle between two dealerships, used to get a specific car for a specific customer when the selling dealer does not have it in stock. It solves a customer order in days rather than the months a factory build would take.

Declined work is the recommended repair or maintenance a customer refuses to authorise at the point of the write-up. It is the same money as recommended work, viewed from the other side of the conversation, and it stays on the vehicle until someone else does the job or the part fails.

A deductible is the fixed amount a policyholder absorbs on a covered loss before the insurer pays anything, subtracted from the settlement on each claim. It is set at underwriting, applies per claim rather than per year, and is the same mechanism UK policies call a policy excess.

A deepfake is synthetic media generated by artificial intelligence: an image, video, audio clip or document depicting something that never happened. In claims, it means evidence with no real-world original behind it, unlike a shallowfake, which is a real file someone edited.

Defect classification is the practice of sorting inspection findings into severity classes, conventionally critical, major and minor, so that what happens next is driven by the seriousness of the fault rather than by who happened to write it up.

A delivery inspection is the condition check the receiving party carries out when an asset or consignment arrives, before signing for it. Signing without a reservation is not a formality. In carriage law it is treated as evidence that the goods arrived in the state described.

Depreciation is the accounting method that spreads the cost of a vehicle, machine, or other fixed asset across the years it is expected to earn its keep, writing down its book value each period instead of charging the whole purchase price to the year it was bought. It is cost allocation, not valuation.

A desk adjuster is a claims adjuster who handles claims from an office or remotely, working from documents, photographs, video and phone calls rather than travelling to inspect the loss in person. The role is also called an inside adjuster or a telephone adjuster.

Desking is the process of structuring and pricing a vehicle deal at the sales desk: turning the chosen car, the trade, the cash down and the customer's credit profile into one or more payment options, and setting what the salesperson is authorised to offer. The manager who does it is the desk.

Device fingerprinting is the practice of combining observable properties of a device and browser, such as screen dimensions, installed fonts, time zone, language and rendering behaviour, into an identifier that recognises the same device again without storing anything on it. It recognises devices, not people.