Glossary

Terms this category uses, defined in one sentence

Every entry opens with a standalone definition, then the context — what it actually means for a business evaluating this category — and a link to wherever on this site goes deeper.

After-Hours Coverage After-hours coverage means a business can still answer a call or message outside its own opening hours, either by picking up automatically or by capturing enough information to follow up the next working day.
AI Knowledge Base An AI knowledge base is the set of a business's own material — a price list, an FAQ, a policy document — that a conversational AI assistant is given so it answers from real, current facts instead of guessing.
AI Receptionist An AI receptionist is software that answers phone calls — and often WhatsApp and website chats too — on a business's behalf, holds a real conversation instead of playing a fixed menu, and hands off or logs what happened for a human to pick up.
AI Receptionist Cost AI receptionist cost is what a business actually pays to run one — typically a monthly platform fee plus a per-minute or per-conversation usage charge — and comparing vendors on the headline fee alone misses the number that usually decides the total.
BSP (Business Solution Provider) A BSP is a company Meta has approved to give businesses API access to WhatsApp, handling the technical connection and message delivery, since a business cannot get WhatsApp Business API access directly from Meta.
Call Deflection Call deflection is redirecting a caller to a channel that costs less to serve — a WhatsApp reply, a self-service page, a callback slot — instead of holding them in a phone queue, usually for questions that don't actually need a live person.
Chatbot A chatbot is software that replies to messages in a text interface — WhatsApp, a website widget, Instagram DMs — and ranges from a rule-based menu of canned replies to a conversational-AI system that understands open-ended questions.
Click-to-WhatsApp Ads A click-to-WhatsApp ad is a Facebook or Instagram advertisement whose button opens a WhatsApp chat with the business instead of a landing page, turning ad spend directly into a conversation.
Command Center A command center, in this category, is a dashboard that lets someone run day-to-day parts of the business — checking a conversation, approving an order, sending an update — from a chat interface like WhatsApp instead of a separate app.
Conversational AI Conversational AI is software that holds a natural back-and-forth conversation in ordinary language, rather than routing a person through fixed buttons or scripted menu options.
Cost Per Call Cost per call is the total spend on a phone channel — telephony, minutes and any platform fee — divided by the number of calls it handles, and it's the number that actually decides whether an AI phone agent is cheaper than the alternative, not the headline monthly price.
CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) CPaaS is a cloud platform that lets a business add messaging, voice or video into its own systems through an API, instead of building phone and messaging infrastructure from scratch.
Customer Profile A customer profile is the single history a business keeps for one contact — every call, message and order across every channel — so a conversation on WhatsApp can pick up with the context from a phone call last month.
First Response Time First response time is how long a customer waits between sending an enquiry and getting a reply from the business — by phone, WhatsApp or chat — and it's one of the strongest predictors of whether a lead is still there to convert.
Instagram Messaging Automation Instagram messaging automation is answering Instagram DMs and comment replies with the same assistant handling a business's other channels, instead of running Instagram as a separate, manually checked inbox.
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) IVR is the phone-menu system that plays "press 1 for sales, press 2 for support" and routes a caller based on which key they press, rather than understanding anything they actually say.
Missed-Call Marketing Missed-call marketing is the practice of inviting a customer to give a free missed call to a number as a low-friction way to opt in, request a callback, or trigger an automated response, without either side paying for the call.
Multilingual Customer Support Multilingual customer support is answering a customer in the language they wrote or spoke in, rather than a business forcing every enquiry through English or a single regional language.
NLU (Natural Language Understanding) NLU is the part of a conversational AI system that turns a sentence someone actually typed or said into a structured meaning the software can act on — what they want, and what information they've already given.
Opt-Out Management Opt-out management is the system that records when a customer asks not to be messaged again and then actually enforces it — blocking future outbound messages to that contact rather than just noting the request.
Outbound Voice Campaign An outbound voice campaign is a batch of phone calls placed to a list of customers — for a reminder, a follow-up or an offer — carried out automatically instead of one person dialling each number by hand.
ROI Reporting ROI reporting, for an AI receptionist or assistant, is measuring what it actually produced — calls answered, leads captured, deals closed — against what it cost, rather than relying on adoption metrics like message volume alone.
Sales Pipeline A sales pipeline is the sequence of stages a lead moves through from first enquiry to closed deal — new, contacted, quoted, won or lost — laid out as a board so a business can see where every conversation actually stands.
Security and Access Control Security and access control covers who on a team can see which conversations and data, and what a business can lock down — logins, roles, exports — on the platform running its customer conversations.
Shared Inbox A shared inbox is a single view where every conversation a business is having — across WhatsApp, calls, chat and social — lands in one place that any team member, or an AI assistant, can see and reply from.
WhatsApp 24-Hour Window The WhatsApp 24-hour window is the rule that a business can reply freely to a customer for 24 hours after their last message, but after that must use a Meta-approved template message to start the conversation again.
WhatsApp Broadcast A WhatsApp broadcast is a single message sent to many customers at once through the WhatsApp Business API, using a template Meta has pre-approved, rather than through the personal broadcast list feature in the consumer app.
WhatsApp Business API The WhatsApp Business API is the paid, developer-facing version of WhatsApp that lets a business send and receive messages programmatically at volume through an approved provider, instead of using the free WhatsApp Business app by hand.
WhatsApp Catalogue A WhatsApp catalogue is a list of a business's products or services, with photos and prices, that customers can browse and order from inside a WhatsApp chat without leaving the conversation.
Word Error Rate (WER) Word error rate is the standard measure of how accurate a speech-recognition system is — the percentage of words it gets wrong against a correct transcript — and it's one of the few numbers worth asking a voice AI vendor for directly.