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Kustomer Glossary

Last Update: Nov 2022 • Est. Read Time: 17 MIN
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This glossary defines common terminology used across the Kustomer app and Settings, and throughout our help documentation.

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J   K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z


A

Administrator

An individual who has full access to everything in Kustomer.

Agent

See User.

API

The Application Programming Interface of Kustomer that you use to make changes to or read from your Kustomer site.

API Keys

Used to authorize Kustomer to send and receive data across integration touch points, enabling you to get the most out of the Kustomer platform. Managed under Settings > Security > API Keys. Learn more

App

An application installed in your Kustomer instance. Kustomer app is also used in reference to the overall Kustomer environment that your team interacts with.

App Directory

A catalog of integrations that can be installed into your Kustomer instance. Organizes system and third-party apps that are installed or upgraded, or find available integrations to install. Can be browsed or managed by selecting Apps in the navigation bar.

Application Language 

The default language that the Kustomer application uses. Changing this setting in the Personal Preferences  will automatically reload the app with that translation.

Article

A self-help document that provides answers for customers who are searching for questions or information on your Knowledge Base. Articles are used to answer common questions or educate about a product, system, or feature your organization offers. Learn more

Audit Log

A feature in Security Settings to help organizations track changes across their customers that are performed by users and system automations. The level of detail provided can help triage changes that may have happened, such as conversation assignment changes. The logs also store previous attribute data so if something is mistakenly updated, you'll be able to see the previous data entry and re-enter it. Learn more

Authentication

Sign-on methods available to your organization, which can be adjusted in the Security Settings. Kustomer offers Google and Microsoft Single Sign On options, as well as SAML. Learn more


B

Brand

Larger organizations may contain multiple brand identities that are distinct to your customers. Under Settings> Administration > Brands, you can configure these brands to offer unique experiences for customers who interact with your knowledge base or chat. Learn more

Billing

Your organization can manage payment and subscription options and view prior account statements in the Kustomer Settings.

Business Rules

A method to manage common automations and modify actions automatically when conversations are created or updated. Business Rules are a simpler and easier-to-use automation method than Workflows. Business Rules allow you to trigger changes based on Customer, Conversation, and Company attributes. Learn more

Business Schedule

In the Administrative Settings, you can define your organization's normal business hours for conversations and chat on your Kustomer platform. Multiple schedules can also be defined for each region your business provides support in. Learn more


C

Callable Workflow

A workflow that is triggered by a conversational assistant, as opposed to typical workflows that are triggered by an event. This advanced feature allows you to use data captured from a customer's interaction with a conversational assistant to return relevant data back to your customer. Learn more

Categories

An organizational tool for your knowledge base to group and organize your help content.

Channel

The method used for receiving and sending conversations. Examples include email, text, chat, SMS, and so on. Learn more

Chat

Live chat is a channel your customers can use to interact with your support team through the use of a chat widget on your website. Chat Management settings are available under Apps > Channels > Chat. Learn more

Chat Widget

An interactive Kustomer web element that can be placed on your website to give customers access to live chat support with your agents.

Collaboration User

A user type for an individual that does not need full access to Kustomer, such as internal team members that might only use the app to offer support on certain conversations. Learn more

Companies Report

One of the Standard Reports where you can view statistics on your users’ interactions with Company profiles within your Organization.

Company Timeline

A view which provides a high-level overview of all activity from customers associated with a given company. To access this, you can filter on a company from the Search view. Alternatively, when a customer is associated with a company, the company will be displayed in the toolbar next to the customer's name. Clicking the company name in the toolbar or selecting View Company Timeline from the popover will both open the Company Timeline. 

Conditional Branch

An interaction type used in Workflows, Conversational Assistants, and other Settings. This allows you to automate more complex IF/THEN interactions that produce different kinds of responses based upon various inputs.

Content Administrator

An individual who can update customers, send messages, view reports, create teams/users/searches, and manage the knowledge base.

Conversation

An inbound interaction between a customer and an agent. This may be a call, email, chat, or interaction through any other supported channel. Agents access these conversations from the timeline.

Conversation Capacity

A team setting that controls the amount of conversations a user can have in their inbox at one time. This calculation is based on conversation weight, which is defined when setting up a queue. Capacity is set in the team routing profile settings. Learn more

Conversation Classification

A prediction tool that uses machine learning and historical data to build predictions that will then be applied to incoming emails. These predictions are used to triage your queue and automate time-consuming agent tasks like flagging spam, routing messages to the correct team, and tagging urgent conversations. Conversation Classification can also improve agent efficiency by automatically predicting conversation attributes that agents would have to manually set. Configured in Settings> Kustomer IQ > Conversation Classification. Learn more

Conversation Status

A way for you to visually show where a conversation is in the process of being resolved. Agents adjust status by using the Snooze and Done buttons in the Timeline. Learn more

Conversation Sub Status

Additional levels of granular detail for Conversation Statuses. Admins can configure additional statuses under Settings> Workspace > Conversation Status that expand upon the standard Snooze and Done status options. For example, you might have a Snoozed sub status named Waiting to specify when a conversation is snoozed due to a pending customer response.

Conversation Weight

The total allocation of space that a conversation will take up in an agent's inbox. This value is set when configuring a queue, and applies to all conversations that enter the queue. Conversation weight is used in the calculation of conversation capacity to determine how many tickets an agent can handle at once. Learn more

Conversational Assistant

An automated chatbot that integrates into your organization’s Chat Widget. A Conversational Assistant can collect details from users or deflect to your knowledge base to provide immediate assistance to customers. This is configured under Settings> Kustomer IQ > Conversational Assistants. Learn more

Customer

An end-user client who engages with your business and sales/support teams. Customer details and conversations are collected in the Customer record, which is often created by an inbound call, chat, or email, and associated with the conversations that appear on that customer’s timeline.

Customer Profile

All the relevant details about a customer are collected in the Customer Profile. This contains basic contact info (name, email, phone), and can continue on to more details that may be specific to your business (CSAT scores, loyalty/rewards balances, last order date, and so on). This is visible from the Insight Panel when interacting with a customer, or by selecting the Profileicon in the toolbar. Also known as Customer Record.


D

Data Connect

A feature to ingest object data from 3rd-party services or a homegrown backend into Kustomer. Use our guided wizard to set up a continuous import of ecommerce orders, booking reservations, or other common objects. Available under Settings> Administration > Data Import. Learn more

Data Import

Kustomer offers various options for migrating data into Kustomer from another platform. Managed under Settings> Administration > Data Import.

Data Masking

A feature that hides a customer's sensitive data from unauthorized users in order to minimize accidental exposure of private data. Your organization can expose sensitive data as needed to relevant teams, without compromising the data or straying out of compliance. Agents without access can also request temporary permissions to view PII, but will otherwise only see an obfuscated version of customer data. Learn more

Deactivation (apps)

After installing an app from the Kustomer App Directory, you can use the App Active toggle in the app listing to control the installation state of an integration. This lets an admin turn off the user-facing and automation portions of an app without removing app-created data. Learn more

Dedicated Agent

A feature of Queues & Routing that allows a single member of your team to routinely support a given customer. This allows you to offer white-glove service by routinely matching a customer with a consistent member of your team. This increases the likelihood an inquiry is handled efficiently and effectively by a familiar point of contact, while also factoring in your agents' current capacity and availability. This feature is managed in the General tab of Settings > Queues & Routing. Learn more

Deflection

The act of redirecting customer inquiries to knowledge base articles, which enables the user to self-serve and find a quick solution to their inquiry without waiting to speak to an agent.

Deflection Report

One of the Standard Reports where you can view statistics about interactions where customers are redirected to self-help resources. This helps you understand how well your deflection efforts are working, and identify any improvements that can be made to your articles to improve their effectiveness.

Drilldowns

A feature of Reports that allows you to interact with data points in your charts or tables and see the conversations, customers, or custom objects used to calculate your metrics. From a drilldown, you can jump to view the data on a customer’s Timeline or explore your results in Search. Learn more

Dynamic Form Fields

A method for non-technical users to create a single form for multiple different contact scenarios. Conditions can be added to the attributes within the builder, so you can dynamically display followup questions that are relevant to a customer's response to a previous question. Learn more

Dynamic Text

Responsive variables that can be added to messages, which bring in data from Customer and Conversation KObjects. This can be used in chat to make your messages more personalized, like greeting your customers by name. Learn more


E

Email

A channel for communicating with customers via email. Customers can contact you directly via email using your organization's email alias. You can also forward your existing email to this address, or configure your own domain. Email settings are managed in Apps > Channels > Email. Learn more

Email Hook

A webhook that works through a unique email addresses that can be Bcc’d in order to trigger a workflow. Kustomer will parse JSON and JSON-LD syntax directly from the HTML markup in your email and make it available to you in a workflow. Email hooks are commonly used to update order and shipment details in Kustomer by adding the email hook address in the Bcc field of emails that are already being sent to customers. Learn more

Email Template

A standardized shared style that is applied to your outbound emails and satisfaction surveys. Admins can add or customize templates in Settings> Administration > Email Templates. Learn more


F

Facebook Messenger

A channel that lets customers chat with you using Facebook. Manage settings for this channel under Apps > Channels > Facebook Messenger. Learn more

Forms

A knowledge base feature that offers a simple way for your customers to provide feedback or request email support from you, directly from your help site. Adjusted from Settings> Knowledge Base > Forms. Learn more

Form Hooks

A webhook that works through a unique URL to which users can send data in an HTTP POST request. Currently, form hooks accept JSON and Form-Data content. Form hooks do not require any authentication and are best suited for use in public HTML forms or anywhere authenticity of the sender is not important. Learn more

Full-time User

A user type for an individual with full access to Kustomer.


G

Gmail

An integration in Apps > Channels > Gmail that allows your users to send and receive Gmail messages from your Kustomer instance. Learn more


H

Heatmap Report

One of the Standard Reports which helps you understand your organization's activity throughout the week and identify busier periods. Learn more

Hooks

See Webhooks, Email Hooks, and Form Hooks.


I

Insight Card

A view that displays information from a custom object or an external system. This is usually located on the right side of the Kustomer interface, in the right panel below the Insight Panel. From a development perspective, an Insight Card is built in the same manner as an Object View, but is designed to appear in the Insight Panel, and there can be more than one for an object. Insight Cards can be associated with built-in objects like Conversations and Customers, as well as custom Klasses. Also referred to as Insight Context Card.

Insight Panel

The collapsible right panel of the Customer Dashboard that displays context cards, sentiment information, and object details.

Intent Detection

A feature of Conversational Assistants that detects when customers enter specific words or groups of words in your chat, and redirects them to a specific dialog so that they can get the correct answer. Build intents around the phrases your customers regularly use in contacting you. For example, an intent built to detect questions about order status might look for keywords like "where is my order," "delayed," "shipping status," etc. Learn more

Intent Identification

See Conversation Classification.


J


K

Klasses

Kustomer uses Klasses to define the attributes associated with each object type in your platform. A Klass is the definition of custom objects (Objects), capturing the name of the object (e.g. “order”), an icon to represent it, and the properties that individual objects can have (e.g. an order number). New attributes can be added to standard Klasses to store custom information related to a Customer, Company, Conversation, Message, or User. You can also add custom attributes for your custom Klasses. Learn more

Standard Klasses:

There are five standard Klasses:

  • Company: the company object, associated with the Customer.
  • Conversation: the conversation object, associated with the Customer and Message.
  • Customer: the customer object describing customer attributes.
  • Message: the message object, associated with Conversation and Customer.
  • User: this represents all types of Users that can log into Kustomer, and can be used to allow business rules and routing to access custom data. This klass has no standard attributes defined, but you can add custom attributes to it in the same way as any other standard or custom object.

Custom Klasses:

You can also create custom Klasses, which are used to model more complex objects that map to your business workflows. Custom Klasses are commonly used to store, model, and render Objects. For example, an ecommerce company commonly uses a custom Klass for Orders, which brings in data from an external ecommerce site like Shopify.

Knowledge Base

Your organization’s collection of public-facing self-help content.

KObjects

A custom object or KObject is a single instance of a Klass. Using an order example, the Klass is “Orders”, while a KObject might be “Order #abc123”. Our data layer creates “first-class” KObjects, which are the building blocks of Kustomer. KObjects unify information from external systems with customers and conversations. You can build your own KObject out of any data posted to Kustomer using a form, webhook, or email. You can easily customize the view of your KObject for your team using Klass Views, which is then displayed in the timeline. Kustomer indexes your KObjects which makes it possible to search, update, and reuse KObjects via workflows.

Kustomer

That's us! Our documentation refers to Kustomer and Kustomer app interchangeably to refer to the overall Kustomer environment that your team interacts with.

Kustomer Access

Security Settings that allow you to limit access to your Kustomer org to a range of IP addresses, and monitor access events through audit logs. You can manage this under Settings> Security > Kustomer Access. Learn more

Kustomer Timeline

The main agent working area of the Kustomer app used by your organization's sales and support teams.


Kustomer IQ

A tiered plan offering that leverages advanced artificial intelligence to help agents more efficiently analyze and take action on customer requests. Machine learning models are deployed to allow support experiences to be more rapid and accurate.

Kustomer University

Our learning management solution that offers a series of guided programs and courses to help onboard agents and admins. We offer a growing library of training resources that incorporate videos, best practices, and activities. You can access Kustomer University from your avatar menu while logged in to Kustomer. Learn more

KView / Klass View

KView (short for Klass View) is an older deprecated term for Object View or Insight Card, which may still appear when developing Kustomer apps. See Object View and Insight Card.


L

Linked Conversations

A feature that allows you to freely and non-permanently associate conversations with one another, even messages that are sent from different parties. This allows your team to offer better support by giving agents the flexibility to quickly reference other related or dependent conversations. This would be useful when multiple customers contact you about a shared booking, or for status updates on an order that is still awaiting fulfillment from your third-party supplier. Learn more

Live Mode

A feature of Search that allows you to convert any Custom Report into a live dashboard. Select the Live Mode button in the toolbar above a report to switch to a maximized view that refreshes automatically every 30 seconds, with date ranges updated to Current Day and hourly histogram charts. Data refreshes will pause when you move to a different tab in the same window, but will continue when running in an unfocused window to make it easy to broadcast live statistics to an external monitor. You can also quickly swap from Today to Past Hour for high-volume organizations.

Localization

Under Settings> Administration > Localization, you can set the default language for your organization, and enable additional languages as needed. Configuring additional languages in the settings allows you to offer localizations in your agent interface, Knowledge Base, Chat, and more. Learn more


M

Manager

An individual who can update customers, send messages, and has access to Reporting, Searches, and creating teams/users/searches.


N

Note

Internal communications visible only to users in an organization. You can use notes in the conversation view to collaborate with other members of your organization and share updates about a support request.

Notification

Alerts for incoming messages. Adjusted from Settings> Personal > Notifications. Learn more


O

Object View

The way that Customers, Conversations, and KObjects (custom objects) are displayed in Kustomer. These views can be rendered in various ways depending on where you want to make the information visible, and the object you are using. Older documentation sometimes refers to this as Klass View or KView. For an object view that targets the Insight Panel, see Insight Card.

Organization

Used to refer to your company, and your team’s configuration of Kustomer as a whole. Organization settings that would impact functionality for all of your employees is controlled under Settings> Administration > Organization. Shortened as Org in some settings and documentation.

Org Owner

An individual who has full access to everything in Kustomer. The owner of your organization cannot be deleted or changed by any individual with lower permissions.

Org Logging

A subset of the Security Settings that notifies you of any errors encountered with specific installed apps, and recommends the next best steps on how to resolve them. Learn more


P

Performance

Agents have access to personal performance metrics. This is accessible from your personal account page and used to keep track of your performance so you can improve upon your key metrics, such as the total number of conversations you have marked done, and your first contact resolution rate. Learn more

Permission Sets

Definitions that control what users or teams can see and do within the platform. With Permission Sets, you can grant users levels of access to data and actions within Kustomer. Your organization contains default permission sets (like Admin, Content Administrator, User, etc.), as well as up to 10 custom permission sets. Set up under Settings> Users > Permission Sets. Learn more

Platform

This term is used in various ways to refer to different aspects of Kustomer, or the app itself:

  • Kustomer platform - Used to refer to the Kustomer product, or application as a whole.
  • Kustomer Apps Platform - Productized integrations that other developers and services can build and offer within our App Directory. For more information, see App Directory.
  • Platform - Subsection of Settings that contains preferences for Business Rules, Inbound Webhooks, Klasses, Outbound Webhooks, Queues & Routing, and Workflows.

Portal

A feature that allows you to create a branded login area where customers can sign in to view and respond to all conversations they've had with your support team. Learn more

Preferences

Personal settings that you can adjust to control the Kustomer experience. Accessed in Settings> Personal > Preferences.

Proactive Chat

A method to invite your website visitors to start a chat conversation, instead of waiting for customers to initiate a conversation. Accessed in the Conversational Assistant settings. Learn more

Productivity

A subset of the Settings Overview that recommends ways to leverage content and automations that make your agents more effective.


Q

Queues & Routing

You can automatically route conversations from any channel to available agents within Kustomer. Queues can be seen as buckets, or containers, that hold conversations that are waiting to be assigned to an agent based on criteria that you set through queue rules. 

Queue Key

A string identifier you can set on a queue to refer to it while building queue rules. This advanced feature lets you build flexible rules with variables so you can power multiple queues with a shared queue rule. Learn more

Queue Rule

A set of conditions, or criteria, to determine how conversations get assigned to a queue using customer and conversation data. Learn more


R

Read Receipt

Messages sent over chat can display their status so your agents can identify whether a message has been delivered or seen by the customer. Hover the cursor over any status to view timestamps for read actions.

Reporting

A view in the Global Navigation bar that provides data visualizations for various aspects of your organization’s performance.

Routing

See Queues & Routing.

Routing Profile

A team setting that lets you assign queues to teams. This is used to determine which conversations get assigned to agents, and the amount of tickets that agents are given to handle at a time. Configured in Settings> Users > Teams, then Edit the desired team. Learn more


S

Satisfaction

A metric for how your customers evaluate the service your agents are providing. Satisfaction is collected through the use of Satisfaction surveys that  measure your customers’ happiness with your support team after a conversation is marked done across every channel.  Learn more

Satisfaction Report

One of the Standard Reports where you can view summary data related to surveys executed through Kustomer's Satisfaction product. 

Search

A temporary or permanent filter to find customers or conversations in the Customer Dashboard. Learn more

Seasonal Seats

A user type that offers the same features and functionality as full-time users, but is only active for a set period of time. This can be used to staff up for the holidays or other seasonal increases in support volume. Learn more

Sentiment

A measure of sentiment derived from the text of a conversation, powered by Amazon Comprehend.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

A method of measuring Conversation metrics to ensure you are providing consistent support to your customers. SLAs are designed by setting conditions in which they apply to a Conversation, selecting the metrics you’d like to measure, and inputting target times for each metric set. Learn more

Setup Guide

In-app help resources to help admins get their organization up and running in Kustomer. Setup Guides offer a variety of walkthroughs, tours, and best practices recommendations to assist with onboarding your team. Find under Settings> Overview > Setup Guide.

Scheduled Exports

The ability to configure a recurring export that will run on a daily, weekly, or monthly frequency. Learn more

Shortcut

A recorded snippet of text that automatically expands and inserts frequently-used response text. Can contain dynamic fields to pull customer info. Learn more

Snippets

A feature for agents to create consistent, multi-language responses that can be reused in messages, email templates, and chat. Learn more

Snooze

The ability for a user to pause a conversation for a period of time or until a customer responds.

Spam Filter

Administration Settings option to automatically mark inbound emails from specified addresses as spam. Learn more

Standard Objects

The basic data objects installed on every Kustomer organization. The main set of Standard Objects data models include Company, Customer, Conversation, and Message.

Sub Status

See Conversation Sub Status.


T

Tag

A color-coded label that allows your team to quickly identify a conversation.  Once tags are added to a conversation, you can create a search filter to group these conversations together for better organization. Tags are managed under Settings> Workspace > Tags. Learn more

Team

How you group users together to match your organization's structure and responsibilities. Teams can be created to organize users by skill (such as, product, billing, returns, or technical) or by department (such as, support, sales, or marketing). How you set up your teams depends on how you want to define your workflow and organize your users. Managed under Settings> Users > Teams. Learn more

Team Pulse

A dashboard view that allows managers and administrators to see what agents are working on in real-time, and quickly jump to the customers and searches that agents are viewing instead of relying on manual searches. Team Pulse is a dedicated view visible to individuals with reporting access, which is accessible from the Global Navigation bar.

Text Messaging

A channel to communicate with customers using SMS text messages. Managed under Apps > Channels > Text Messaging. Learn more

Theme

A way for you to customize how you view the Kustomer application and knowledge base to match your company’s branding. Managed under Settings> Knowledge Base > Themes. Learn more

Timeline

A listing of events and objects associated with the current Customer. Timeline objects may also have a custom view.

Timeline Layout

You can display custom Klass objects like Orders in a customer's timeline, and use the Timeline Layout to customize the appearance of the custom object and select which attributes to show agents. Learn more

Timeline Pinning

A Timeline feature that allows you to keep conversations and KObjects pinned at the top of the Timeline for quick and convenient access. Learn more

Twitter

A channel that allows agents to communicate with customers and track conversations over social media. Managed under Apps > Channels > Twitter. Learn more


U

User

A team member of your customer service, sales, or support team that uses Kustomer to interact with your customers. Also referred to as AgentUsers work primarily within the Kustomer timeline and are often given the User permissions set, which allows them to update customers and send messages, but do not have access to settings or configurations. 

User Management

In Settings > Users > Users, you can manage the individual users that have access to your organization's Kustomer app. Learn more


V

Visual Builder

A design interface in Settings that enables non-technical users to easily customize email templates and knowledge base themes without the need to know how to write HTML/CSS.

Voice

A channel that allows your organization to support customers through a phone call. Voice integration with Amazon Connect can be configured under Apps > Channels > Voice. Additional voice integration options are available by installing apps from the App Directory. Learn more


W

Webhooks

A flexible and extensible method to sync your data in real-time between Kustomer and third-party applications and services. A webhook allows one application to be notified when an event occurs in another application. This makes it possible for an application to deliver data to another app, without having to continuously poll a service to discover recent changes. Other products and services sometimes refer to this as a Reverse API, HTTP push API or web callback. Learn more

  • Inbound Webhook - a way for you to receive events from other products and services into the Kustomer platform.
  • Outbound Webhook  - a way for you to send Kustomer events to other systems. Managed under Settings> Platform > Outbound Webhooks. Learn more

Widget

Can refer to Chat Widget, but also used in reference to any app integration that displays as a special icon at the bottom of the global navigation sidebar. Sidebar widgets are currently only applicable to organizations with app integrations that use an icon widget (like UJET and Shelf), but in the future this may apply to additional integrations which operate through a sidebar icon. See Chat Widget.

Workflow

An automation that can be triggered when events occur in Kustomer or in any connected app, then use conditional branching to add tags, assign users, create customers, or even make calls to external systems. In contrast to Business Rules, configuring Workflows in your organization usually requires assistance from your implementations team.  Learn more


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