AI Glossary · CX & Contact Center
NLU (Natural Language Understanding)
The classical component that maps user utterances to intents and entities. Increasingly replaced or augmented by LLMs.
Related terms in CX & Contact Center
- Agent Assist
- Real-time AI suggestions surfaced to a human agent during a customer interaction — answers, next-best-action, sentiment cues, after-call summary.
- After-Call Work (ACW)
- Post-interaction tasks (wrap codes, notes, dispositions). Auto-summary and auto-disposition are the highest-ROI early CX AI wins.
- Average Handle Time (AHT)
- Mean duration of a customer interaction including hold and wrap. A primary CX KPI reshaped by agent-assist and automation.
- CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service)
- Cloud-native contact center platform — routing, IVR, WFM, analytics, digital channels — delivered as a subscription (e.g., Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud, NICE CXone, Five9, Google CCAI).
- Containment Rate
- The share of contacts a self-service channel resolves without human escalation. Primary KPI for voice bots, chatbots and IVAs.
- Conversational AI
- AI systems that hold natural-language dialogues across voice and digital channels — combining NLU, dialog management, retrieval and generation.