Gladly is leading the charge on reimagining how Customer Service is delivered. And because Gladly is built around the Customer, we introduce concepts defined differently from systems you may have used in the past, especially "ticket" or "case-based" systems.

To help you get the most out of Gladly, take a moment to review these terms and key concepts. They will help you familiarize yourself with Gladly features and terms used in Gladly documentation.

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Agents/Hero/Heroes

Agents/Hero/Heroes are the front line of a company’s Customer Service Center and the champions of providing a great Customer Experience. In Gladly, this means Agents/Hero/Heroes:

Handle Conversations and their Contacts.
Staff or are assigned to {{glossary.Inboxes}}, and Agents can be assigned to multiple Inboxes at a time.
Handle a single Conversation over time, but a Conversation can only be assigned to a single Agent/Hero simultaneously.
Can be assigned multiple Conversations (or Customers since a Customer can only have one Conversation at a time), especially in Messaging Channels.

Add New Customer

While Gladly automatically creates a Customer Profile for unknown Customers who reach out, you can still manually create a new Customer Profile by adding a new Customer.

Answers

Every company has a database of ‘model’ responses for Agents to leverage when responding to Customers. At Gladly, we call that database Answers.

Answers are knowledgebase articles that Agents use to relay information to Customers quickly. Customers can also access them for self-service through the Glad App and the Help Center.

There are four Answer types in Gladly with specific use cases and applications: Reference Answers, Email Answers, Messaging Answers, and Public Answers.

While all Gladly users can access and use Answers, only Answers Administrators, Team Managers, and Administrators can create and edit them.

Answer Threads

A generative AI feature using an LLM (Learning Language Model) to provide quick, accurate, personalized, and conversational responses to Customers. It utilizes Public Answers to source answers to questions Customers ask. Whenever Answer Threads cannot respond accurately to a question, it routes the Customer to an Agent that can help.

Agent Status / Activity

Agent Status reflects what you’re doing on Gladly at any given time.

API tokens

Use API tokens to generate tokens to integrate with Gladly API.

Apps

Apps are external services and systems that Gladly may use to retrieve Customer information.

Assignments

Assignment is a process that helps ensure that Customer requests are correctly handled. There are a few things to know about Assignments and other related concepts:

Customers can be assigned and reassigned manually by Agents or automatically by {{glossary.Rules}}.
Customers are always assigned to an Inbox. Once they’re routed, Customers are also assigned an Agent in that Inbox.
- At a technical level, Conversations are the assigned entities. Still, since a Customer can only have one open Conversation at a time, you can think of that Customer as assigned to that Agent.
Calls and messages contained within a Conversation inherit assignments from the Conversation. This means a chat message or email can’t be assigned independently; the entire Customer and Conversation are.
{{glossary.Tasks}} are different. They are also always assigned to one Inbox and an Agent when routed, but a Customer can have multiple open Tasks at a time.
Over its duration, a Conversation may be assigned to more than one Agent (e.g., it starts with one and then is reassigned to another). Those Assignment changes are reflected as Attribution in relevant reports. Since Conversations can contain multiple Contacts, each Contact can be attributed to a different Agent.

Audience

Used with Answers to segment Reference, Email, Messaging, or Public Answers or knowledge information for a particular audience, region, brand, etc.

Availability

With Gladly, you can decide when to make yourself available and which Channel(s).

Depending on which Channel you’re ready to take on, you’ll select the corresponding Availability button, which turns green to signify that you are ready. Gladly will route you to the next most urgent Customer on that Channel.

Overview of communication channels showing emails, voice calls, and messaging notifications.

Gladly automatically pushes new Emails, Tasks, and Voicemails in two situations:

When the Agent first becomes available for Email, Task, Voicemail Channel.
If and when the Agent is available for Mail and has no Work, the next inbound email will be automatically pushed to the Agent. Otherwise, Agents must select Next or Close & Next to receive new Email, Task, and Voicemail items.

Away

Away allows you to step away from helping Customers. You must select a reason for stepping Away.

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Business Hours

Business Hours is used with Rules to create routing automation based on your hours of operation.

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Channel

A Channel is a method a Customer uses to communicate with your company. Currently, we support all Customer communications from the following Channels:

Voice
IVR
Email
Chat (via Glad App)
SMS/MMS
Social Messaging: Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messaging, WhatsApp

Close & Next

Close & Next allows you to close an existing Conversation and receive the next most urgent Customer who needs assistance.

Conversations

Conversations provide a more natural way of handling communication. Conversations always provide a holistic view of who the Customer is the Channels they use to communicate, and quickly see past Conversations. It also comprises all Contacts and Messages a Customer has with you.

Comparison of ticketing systems between Legacy Systems and Gladly for customer interactions.

A conversation flow between Michael and Olivia about a gift for Valentine's Day.

Here are other things to take note of regarding Conversations:

A Conversation can span across multiple Channels.
A Conversation stays in a single Inbox and Agent at a time.
A Conversation can have different Contacts on different Channels.
A Conversation can be assigned one or more Topics, so you know the matter being discussed.
A Conversation may go through a series of statuses:
- New – Unassigned, after a new Contact just came in.
- Open – Assigned to an Agent.
- Waiting – An Agent has responded to the Customer and is waiting for their response.
- Closed – Solved and require no further action. It can be reopened if a Customer responds to a closed Conversation within a specified time window.

Conversations in Gladly differ greatly from the traditional concepts of "tickets" or "cases." Some of the other key differentiators to take note of are:

Customers are never assigned a ticket or case number in Gladly.
A new Conversation is never opened every time a Customer contacts you (unlike cases/tickets).
Conversations can cross multiple Channels (e.g., SMS, chat, voice, etc.) where cases/tickets are generally restricted to the type of inbound Channel used. This omnichannel capability in a conversational environment allows you to quickly meet your Customers when and where they want to be met.
A Customer can only have one Conversation open at any given time, preventing request duplication.

Conversation Timeline

A running record of every Customer interaction with your company compiled into a single timeline. This means you can see the entire history of a Customer’s relationship, every action and every Conversation with your brand, from start to present.

Email correspondence regarding a damaged item and its replacement details.

Contacts

Gladly defines a Contact as a phone call, a Messaging session, an email, or a voicemail. Contact can be defined as an Inbound (started by the Customer) or Outbound (started by Agents) activity. Contact can contain one call or multiple messages (individual chat messages, SMSes, etc.). Contact is also part of a Conversation.

Comparison of ticketing systems between Legacy Systems and Gladly, detailing interactions.

A conversation flow between Michael and Olivia about a gift for Valentine's Day.

A Contact is a phone call, a chat session, a Messaging session, an email, or a voicemail. Contact can be an Inbound (started by the Customer) or Outbound (started by Agents) activity.
A Contact can contain one call or multiple messages (individual chat messages, SMSes, etc.)
The linear sequence of Contacts and Tasks, and their Assignment and Routing actions, comprises the Conversation Timeline.

Conversation Workflow

Conversation Workflow is a group of settings to manage Conversation behaviors and routing logic for Email, Voice, Messaging, Tasks, and Focus.

Compliance Event Log

Compliance Event Log is a setting that allows you to view events related to compliance, including the deletion of Customer Profiles, Conversations, and more.

Composer

A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor where messaging, emails, chat, and Answers text is written. It also contains a set of text editor features similar to what you'll find in word processing applications like Google Docs and Microsoft Word.

Custom Attributes

Identifies unique attributes (e.g., Lifetime Value, Order ID, etc.) associated with a Customer typically accessed by API. Attributes may originate outside of Gladly (i.e., an external app like Shopify) or from Gladly, like through Freeform Topics.

Customers

Customers are people who have a connection with your company because they are interested in your products and services or are existing paying Customers. Customers in Gladly could also have a history of Conversations that may span multiple Channels.

A Customer will have a single Customer Profile in Gladly that contains information about them. Sometimes, a Customer may have multiple Customer Profiles (e.g., if they contact you using a different email address, phone number, etc.) that may exist. Duplicate Customer Profiles should be merged in this situation.

Customer Data Retention

Customer Data Retention is a setting for your organization that controls how long Customer data is stored in Gladly before it's automatically purged.

Customer Profiles

Think of a Customer Profile as a one-stop-shop for everything related to a Customer.

On the left of the Customer Profile, you’ll find the Customer Details pane, with the Customer’s name, contact information, a list of their past Conversations with your company, and even a section for Customer notes - a handy place to store important details about them like an upcoming anniversary or golf trip. Your company can also customize the information that gets pulled in here, so if you work at an airline, you might see a Customer’s upcoming flight details or past purchases if you work in retail.

On the right of the Customer Profile, you’ll see the Customer Timeline, a complete history of interactions - regardless of the Channel used - between you and the Customer. The Timeline includes internal actions, like when and by whom a Task was created, who the Customer was routed to, and Notes left by you or your fellow Agents.

The more you interact with and learn about a Customer, the more you can add to their Customer Profile, helping to paint a complete, rich picture of who your Customer is, what makes them tick, and how you can help them have the best experience possible.

Customer Match

If a Customer has contacted your company before, they should have their very own Customer Profile in Gladly. That means that when they reach out again, Gladly can direct you straight to that Customer Profile using any matching identifier (like their email address, phone number, or Facebook ID), so you know the when, where, and what of their previous interactions with you.

We call that matching process Customer Match.

Customer Cards

Visible to Team Managers and Administrators only, a Customer Card is how Gladly represents Customers in a particular Inbox. Clicking on a Customer Card takes you directly to that Customer’s Customer Profile.

Contact information for Michael Baker regarding a product inquiry due on May 22, 2020.

Each Customer Card is meant to give you a snapshot and status of a Customer, any pending chat payments for a Customer in an Inbox, and all Conversations. Customer Card details include the following:

The Customer’s name and contact information
The Topic(s) of the Conversation
When the response is due
The Channel that was last used
The last interaction with the Customer
When the Conversation was created
The Inbox the Conversation belongs to
When the Customer Card was last updated

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Data Dictionary

The Reporting Data Dictionary defines Gladly reporting metrics that appear in reports and report CSVs.

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Email

Email is a setting that allows you to configure sending domains and associated email addresses to use in Gladly.

Email Answers

Email Answer is a type of knowledge article that can be shared with Customers through the EMail Channel or Proactive Email.

Entry Points

Suppose a Channel is the primary way a Customer uses to reach you. An Entry Point would be the bystreet that helps direct them to your company's exact destination — or department.

For example, while a Customer might use email as the Channel to reach out, the Entry Point would be the specific address they send that email to (e.g., billing@awesomeco.com or help@always.org). Entry Points are essentially the phone numbers, email addresses, Facebook pages, or chat widgets a Customer uses to contact you.

External Name

External Name is a setting that replaces the First Name Answer Variable with the name configured as the External Name.

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Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages is a setting that allows you to connect Facebook as a Channel and utilize Facebook Messenger with Gladly.

Focus

Focus is a setting that allows Agents to pause the Routing Engine from routing Customers without going unavailable on any Channel.

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Glad App

Glad App is an embeddable website element that allows Customers to chat with you and see your public answers.

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Help Center

Help Center is a website embeddable knowledge base that uses Public Answers and allows your Customers to view FAQs and encourage self-service

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Idle Timing

Idle Timing is a setting that allows Administrators to control how soon Agents are put in an idle state or logged out of Gladly after inactivity.

Inboxes

Inboxes are used to assign Customers to the right Agent for assistance. The Inbox concept is the closest to a traditional "queue:" that you will find in Gladly, except Inboxes provide other benefits not found in a traditional "queue" world. Some of these benefits are:

A Customer can only be assigned to one Inbox at a time. This removes the possibility of having duplicate requests for any Customer.
Gladly’s Routing engine smartly assigns Conversations to the Agents who are Available in each Inbox.

On a personal level, every Agent has their own individual "Inbox" called My Customers. It's a list of Customers and Tasks currently assigned to them.

On a company level, Inboxes direct and organize incoming Conversations based on certain characteristics. This could be the Entry Point that a Customer uses to reach out, the issue they’ve reached out to you for, or a custom Rule your company might have set.

Let’s assume your company directs Customers with billing issues to one Inbox (‘Billing Inbox’) and Customers with warranty issues to another. If a Customer asks a question about their last bill, that request would be automatically routed to the Billing Inbox and then assigned to the next available Agent servicing that Inbox.

Instagram Messaging

Instagram Messaging is a setting that allows you to connect Instagram as a Channel and utilize Instagram Messaging in Gladly.\

IVR

IVR (Interactive Voice Response), or as some call it, “Phone Tree”, allows Customers to go through when they call for help. The IVR setting allows you to create and manage IVRs associated with phone numbers linked to Gladly.

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Languages

Languages are used as part of Answers and Answer Keyword Groups.

Link Customer to External System

This allows you to link a Customer in Gladly to an external app/system where additional information may exist. You can then retrieve data from the external system to display or make available in the Customer Profile.

Liveboards

Liveboards – as the name suggests – are live, real-time measures of how your contact center is running. Liveboards make it easy for Administrators and Team Managers alike to keep track of important metrics at that very instant, such as:

How many Agents are working and available?
How long are Customers waiting before they speak to an Agent?
What percentage of SLAs have we met so far?
What type of issues are Customers reaching out for?

There are three types of Liveboards in Gladly:

Summary Liveboard
Agent Liveboard
Topic Liveboard

Lookup Adaptor

Lookup Adaptors allow Support Heroes on Gladly to link and populate a Gladly Customer Profile from an external record system. The debugging tools test the specific workflows associated with your Lookup Adaptors and mirror the experience Support Heroes have in Gladly.

Lookup before Rules

Lookup before Rules is a setting that tells the Routing Engine to wait for the Lookup Adaptor to retrieve Customer information from an app or external system before running Rules.

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Merge Customer

Customers may have duplicate Customre Profiles in Gladly. Maybe they have one with just their email address and one with their phone number. Merging the Customer Profile consolidates all interactions into one Customer Profile.

Messaging Answer

Messaging Answer is a type of knowledge article that can be shared with Customers through the Messaging Channel or Proactive SMS.

Mobile Phone Number Identification

Mobile Phone Number Identification is a setting that allows Gladly Voice to detect if a phone number used to contact you is a mobile device. This allows Gladly to better match existing Customer Profiles.

Multi-Channel

Conversations can have different types of Contacts (e.g., chat, SMS, voice, etc.) in the same thread. If there are at least two different types of Contacts from different Channels, this is known as a multichannel interaction.

My Customers

My Customers is a list where you’ll find open Conversations and Tasks assigned to you.

Customer support interface showing issues with orders for multiple customers, highlighting Julie Chang.

You can think of it as your home base or center of operations, and it’s where you’ll spend most of your day as you help resolve your Customers’ issues.

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Next

Click Next to receive a Customer who needs assistance waiting in an Inbox.

Notifications

Notifications allow users to see notifications, like if they have been tagged or mentioned in a Note or Task.

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People Match

People Match is a routing feature that boosts the priority of routing certain Customers based on situations or attributes.

Profile

Not to be confused with Customer Profile, Profile is a user-specific settings page containing basic information about the Gladly user.

Pin

The Pin feature allows you to pin a specific Conversation with another Customer Profile, making it easier to view related interactions for different but possibly related Customers.

Placeholders

An Answer can also have Placeholders, which are mandatory fields you’ll need to fill out before you can send the Answer out to a Customer.

For example, an Answer could have a Placeholder that requires you to insert a confirmation number or name of the item purchased, to help provide personalized context to a Customer.

Proactive Conversations

Proactive Conversations is a suite of features comprising Procitve Email, Proactive SMS, Proactive Chat, and Proactive Voice. Proactive implies that you initiate the communication in Gladly through the aforementioned Channels.

Public Answer

Public Answer is a type of knowledge article that can be shared with Customers through Help Center or Glad App.

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Reference Answer

Reference Answer is a type of knowledge article that's written for internal use only and only available to internal Gladly users.

Relationships

Relationships connect people in Gladly so you can jump between their Profiles and share Conversations, such as when a person asks a question on someone else's behalf. Relationships can be called, for example, “Spouse,” “Executive Assistant,” and so on."

Routing

Routing is the term we use to describe how Customers are directed to Agents in Gladly.

Rather than having you choose who to help or be assigned a Customer by an Administrator or Team Manager, Gladly’s intelligent routing system automatically routes the most urgent Customer in an inbox to the next available Agent.

Our Routing Engine works on the following basic principles, which help ensure that Customer issues are handled in the fastest and most efficient way:

Voice, SMS, Chat, and Social Media Customers are routed ahead of Email, Voicemails, and Tasks
- Customers who reach out on real-time Channels like Voice Chat, SMS, and Social expect to wait minutes — not hours — to speak with an Agent. That’s why our Routing Engine directs these Customers ahead of those who reach out over email or those who previously left an agent a Voicemail. That means even if you’ve made yourself available for both voice and emails, you’ll only be routed voice call Customers for as long as they’re calling in and waiting to be helped. Only when all the voice calls have been cleared will you be routed to the Customers who reached out via email.
Conversations that are closest to or which have gone over their SLA will be routed first
- In keeping with our philosophy of routing the most urgent Customers first, Gladly will always route Conversations that are closest to exceeding their SLAs ahead of Conversations that are less urgent. So between an SMS that’s just come in (with an SLA of 3 hours) and an email that came in yesterday (with a remaining SLA of 4 hours), the SMS will be routed ahead of that email, even though it came in later.
Customers are routed to the Agent waiting for the longest
- When multiple Agents are available to help a Customer, Gladly will route them to the Agent who has been waiting and is available the longest. This helps ensure that work is distributed as evenly as possible between team members and gives you the chance to take a breather before jumping on to the next Conversation.
When an Agent logs out, Customers in their Inbox nearing their SLA will be routed to the next available Agent
- There are only so many Customers that you can help in a day. When logging out, Gladly will automatically route the Customer whose Email, Voicemail, or Task is closest to reaching its SLA\ to the next available Agent. After an Agent goes offline, Messaging Conversations are placed back in the Inbox and are routed to the next available Agent. This helps ensure that customers respond to their issues promptly, even when you’re not available to help them.
Where possible, Customers are routed to the same Agent they spoke with before
- Gladly will always try to route a Customer to the last Agent they spoke with. This helps give Customers a sense of familiarity and comfort with an Agent and a chance to build rapport. However, if the Agent can’t help the Customer — for example, they’re not set up to handle the Channel the Customer reaches out on — the Customer will be routed to another Agent instead.

Routing Engine

Routing Engine powers Routing in Gladly, ensuring Customers are routed to the proper Inbox whenever they reach out.

Rules

Rules are a set of conditions that, when met, can trigger actions and/or responses in Gladly. For example, you can set a Rule to route all incoming emails with the word ‘Returns’ in its subject to an inbox that deals just with Customers wanting to return items. It’s an easy way to automate workflow, saving time and effort for your team's more common actions.

Rules can only be applied to incoming emails and SMSes and can be used to:

Add Topic(s) to a Conversation
Assign an Agent to a Conversation
Assign a Conversation to a particular inbox
Send an auto-reply to Customers

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Scheduled Reports

Schedule a recurring report to be sent to your inbox. You can easily send the report to one or more email addresses.

Single Sign-On

Single Sign-On allows users to access Gladly using an SSO provider, like Okra or Azure. The Single Sign-On setting allows you to configure and use access SSO to access Gladly.

Skills

Skills is used with People Match to connect Customers to Agents with the desired expertise, like languages or product specialty. You can create nested Skills to organize a range of Skill areas.

SLA Business Hours

SLA Business Hours is a setting used to indicate the primary operating hours during which you are staffed to receive Customers to assist.

SMS

SMS is a setting that allows you to purchase phone numbers for use with SMS and see the numbers currently ready for use for SMS in Gladly.

Search

Search lets you find Conversations and Customer information — Gladly-wide — using various filters to find the Customer you need.

Sidekick

Gladly Sidekick is an AI and automation platform that enables personalized self-service. It’s designed to work with Gladly Hero to deliver personalized Agent-assisted service.

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Tasks

Tasks are work items that must be accomplished for a Customer or other Customer related items. Some other things to note about Tasks in Gladly are:

Tasks are associated with the Customer and can be found in the Customer’s Profile.
Tasks appear in the Customer Profile and Conversation Timeline but are not Contacts.
Tasks can be Opened or Closed at a given time and include a due date.
Tasks can be assigned to either an Inbox or a specific Agent in an Inbox.
Tasks are routed separately from the open Conversation of a Customer.
Tasks can be assigned/routed to a different Inbox(es) than the active Conversation.

Here are examples of just some of the Tasks you can set in Gladly:

Set a Task for yourself as a reminder to call a Customer back in a week to confirm her return was processed.
Assign a Task to your company’s design team to work on a layout for the Customer by the end of the month.
Assign a Task to your Team Manager or Administrator to ask for their advice on a particularly tricky Customer issue.

Task Cards

Available to Team Managers and Administrators, Task Cards are, for the most part, almost identical to a Customer Card. Instead of Customers, they represent the assigned task. This view is available for Team Managers and Administrators only.

Customer task details for updating address in the database for Jose Kim.

Each Task Card should give you a quick snapshot of the key information and status of a Task, including:

The Customer’s name and contact information.
When the Task is due.
Details of the Task.
Who created the Task.
Who the Task is assigned to and when it was assigned.

Topics

We use Topics to classify or disposition Conversations in Gladly — they’re labels you can attach to a Conversation that helps identify the issue a Customer is reaching out to you for.

Each Topic also gets reflected in Gladly’s Liveboards and Reports, providing Administrators and Team Managers an overview of the kinds of issues Customers are reaching out to the company for and what’s causing the most pain.

Teams

Agents in contact centers are often grouped by Channel, skill, location, product expertise, and more. Gladly’s Teams feature gives Admins and Team Managers the flexibility to segment Agents into groups, giving them better visibility around how each team is performing via Liveboards and Reporting. And teams can be defined without the need to adhere to any strict hierarchy. Group any Agent across your contact center, regardless of geography, Channel, or organizational structure.

Teams are configured as a group of people that may have specific skills, be in a particular location, or be based on an organizational structure. Agents can be grouped into Teams for reporting purposes.

Agents can be grouped into Teams for reporting purposes
Teams can reflect things like:
- Your organizational structure
- In-house vs. outsourced teams
- Different locations

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Users

A Gladly user is, well, you; and anyone else in your company who uses Gladly to help Customers resolve their issues, manage teams of Agents, or even manage Gladly.

Every user has at least one assigned Role, which helps define the types of permissions and their actions in Gladly. For more specific details on each of these roles, check out the Role and Responsibilities help doc.

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Variables

You can think of Variables like cheat codes that help you personalize your responses with the information you have about your Customers. When a response with a Variable gets sent, that Variable gets replaced with the corresponding information from your company’s database.

While you can certainly insert Variables into your responses, you’ll encounter them most often in Answers since they’re usually drafted generic enough to be used across support teams.

You can find the following Variables in Gladly:

Customer Full Name
Customer First Name
Customer Last Name
Customer Email
Customer Phone Number
Agent Name

You can also find the full list of Variables in the Variables section of the Answers page.

But there will be times that you won’t have all the information you need to replace those Variables - you may know the Customer’s name, for example, but not their loyalty number. In those cases, your Agents Plus, Team Managers, or Administrator should have set a default value in its place to replace that Variable if it can’t be resolved.

Voice

Voice is a setting that allows you to purchase phone numbers to use with Voice but also manage phone number-specific settings, like Hold Music and IVRs.

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Webhooks

Webhooks is a setting that allows you to get notified when certain events (e.g., when a Conversation is created) occur in Gladly as a POST request to an endpoint of your choice.

Work Session

A Work Session represents a period of time that an Agent spends working with a Customer on a given Channel during a given Contact (messaging exchange, phone call, etc.).

Work

"Work" is used to describe actionable Customer items that get routed to Agents, which include Conversations and Tasks.

Working

Agents are considered Working if they’re working with a Customer and are Available.

How can my team add context about their follow-up with a customer?