Nearshore Outsourcing

Nearshore outsourcing is contracting a support team located in a nearby country, often in a similar time zone, as a middle ground between offshore and fully domestic staffing. For US companies, nearshore commonly means teams based in Latin America or Canada; for European companies, it often means Eastern Europe or North Africa. The appeal of […]

Multichannel Support

Multichannel support is offering customer support across several separate channels — like phone, email, and chat — without necessarily connecting the conversation history between them. Each channel typically operates as its own silo, meaning a customer who contacts support by chat and then follows up by email may have to explain their issue again. Multichannel […]

Live Chat Support Outsourcing

Live chat support outsourcing is hiring an external team to staff a company’s website or app chat widget, answering visitor questions in real time on the business’s behalf. Agents are trained on the company’s products, policies, and tone so conversations feel native to the brand rather than outsourced. Because live chat is often the fastest […]

Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is a self-service library of articles, FAQs, and guides that lets customers find answers on their own before contacting a live agent. It typically covers the most common questions a support team receives — account setup, billing, shipping policies, troubleshooting steps — organized so customers can search or browse by topic. A […]

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the specific, measurable metrics a support team tracks to judge how well it’s performing. In customer support, common KPIs include CSAT, First Response Time, First Call Resolution, Average Handle Time, and Net Promoter Score — each capturing a different angle of quality, speed, or efficiency. No single KPI tells the […]

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated phone system that lets callers navigate menus using their voice or keypad before reaching a live agent. A typical IVR greets the caller, presents a set of options (“Press 1 for billing, press 2 for support”), and routes the call accordingly, sometimes resolving simple requests without an agent […]

Inbound Call Center

An inbound call center is a call center set up primarily to receive calls initiated by customers, such as support requests, order inquiries, or booking questions, as opposed to outbound sales or marketing calls made by the business. Inbound call centers are the default model for most customer support phone lines, since the customer is […]

Help Desk Outsourcing

Help desk outsourcing is contracting an external team to provide technical or IT support, either to a company’s customers or to its own internal employees. A help desk typically handles a defined set of recurring issues — password resets, software access, account setup, basic troubleshooting — using documented procedures rather than open-ended problem-solving. The term […]

First Response Time (FRT)

First Response Time (FRT) is the amount of time it takes a support team to send the first reply after a customer submits an inquiry, whether by email, chat, or phone. It’s one of the most visible support metrics to customers, since a long wait for even an initial reply shapes their perception of a […]

First Call Resolution (FCR)

First Call Resolution (FCR) is the percentage of customer issues resolved during the very first phone call or contact, without the customer needing a follow-up call, callback, or transfer. It’s widely considered one of the strongest indicators of support quality, because it reflects whether a team is actually solving problems rather than just responding to […]