Glossary
Use this glossary to quickly clarify key terms and concepts related used in Medallia communications
Accuracy
Metric to determine the level of correctness in a given transcript.
accuracy (ACC)
Note:
Accuracy can be calculated with this formula:
ACC = 1 - ( ( S +I ) / ( N - D + 1 ) )
Where:
S = number of substitution errors
I = number of insertion errors
D = number of deletion errors
N = number of words in reference transcript
ACC
Anonymous survey
Surveys generated with no prior knowledge of who the survey taker is. Anonymous surveys differ from personalized surveys where the survey taker is reached based on existing data and access the survey directly via email.
Note: Previously known as Feedless surveys.
Assertion
Automatic Speech Recognition
Technologies that leverage the independent, computer-driven transcription of spoken language into readable text (often known as Speech to Text or STT), enabling users to use speech rather than a keyboard as the source of input data for a computer system.
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
ASR
Chatbots
An emerging artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer support channel that can be used to help triage customer inquiries and complaints.
Closed loop feedback
A process by which feedback from respondents is shared with the organization, action is taken to respond to the feedback, and action is taken to improve core processes and products. CLF is important because it shows your customers and employees that you care, and drives internal operational improvements.
Closed loop feedback (CLF)
CLF
Company
An organization that uses or licenses Medallia, Inc.. software.
- Companies are also Medallia customers.
- Companies may also be called clients.
Conversation
Conversational feedback
Custom survey ID
Unique survey ID that is easier to read than a standard survey ID. It i used on a survey where the survey taker manually enters the ID on a landing page.
custom survey ID
Custom survey URL
A survey's URL that includes a company-friendly domain (such as feedback.example.com) instead of a default Medallia domain like survey.medallia.com. This allows companies to brand the URL or make it look like it is coming from the company instead of from Medallia.
custom survey URL
Note: Also known as Survey URL masking.
Customer
A person or business that has interacted with a company in some way, and whose feedback can be collected. More commonly referred to as a respondent.
Customer analytics
Data/insights garnered from customer behavior, customer feedback, customer sentiment, or supporting internal systems and measures used to make actionable business decisions.
Customer experience (CX)
Customers' perception of their experience with a brand or organization over time, which results from every interaction they have from the website to customer service to purchasing a product or service, etc. This allows companies to drive loyalty at every point along the customer life cycle by capturing and analyzing signals to predict behavior, take action and create experiences that lead to customer loyalty.
Customer experience (CX)
CX
Customer experience management (CEM)
The practice or discipline of how a company takes control of how it designs and optimizes interactions with its customers. CEM is about understanding key journeys from the customer's perspective, and then engaging all relevant internal teams to improve these journeys and interactions.
Customer experience management (CEM)
CEM
Customer feedback
Opinions, insights, and feelings customers share — via surveys, messaging channels, SMS, social media, emails, customer support phone calls, live chat, and other channels — about the companies whose products or services they use. This can include complaints, praise, and neutral statements, and both directly solicited and unsolicited commentary.
Customer loyalty
A level of customer engagement in which individuals are likely to repeat business with a given brand and forego doing business with said brand's competitors. May also refer to a customer's willingness to advocate on behalf of or promote a brand.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
A technology platform that is used to track customer interactions with a brand and can integrate and share data with other key customer experience tools.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
CRM
Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
A measure of how happy customers feel about a given company, product, or service versus their expectations. Typically gathered via surveys or other forms of customer feedback.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
CSAT
Data Protection Act (DPA)
The Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 is the UK's implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that controls how personal information is used by organizations, businesses, and the government.
Data Protection Act (DPA)
Note: In the US, the equivalent regulation is called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
DPA
Deny-list
A list of unacceptable or impermissible items, typically a set of IP addresses to deny access to a site or instance
exclude-list
Dialog
One prompt or response in a conversation. It can be a simple statement like "Thank you!", or it can be a request for information like "How would you rate your experience?"
Direct feedback
Feedback from customers or potential customers shared through channels designed for the purpose of gaining insights (e.g., web forms, invitations to share feedback sent via email or SMS message, invitations to participate in crowd-sourcing ideas, etc.).
Employee experience (EX)
Every moment, interaction, and touchpoint inclusive of the entire journey employees have within an organization from the interview process to exiting a given company. Companies with high employee engagement and positive employee experiences are more likely to have strong customer engagement and positive customer experiences.
Employee experience (EX)
EX
First call/contact resolution (FCR)
A critical contact center key performance indicator that measures the rate at which companies are able to address customer problems or inquiries upon the first call or other form of contact, such as an email or support ticket.
First call/contact resolution (FCR)
FCR
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The General Data Protection Regulation requires companies to be accountable for how they use, manage and maintain the personal data of their customers and employees.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
GDPR
HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a US regulation that publicized standards for the electronic exchange, privacy, and security of health information. Healthcare providers must adhere to the federal law of HIPAA. In the UK, the equivalent regulation is called the Data Protection Act (DPA).
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
HIPAA
Identity provider (IdP)
An identity provider (IdP) is a service that stores, manages, and verifies user's digital identities for the purpose of single sign-on (SSO) authentication. Some examples of IdPs are Okta, OneLogin, Cierge, KeyCloak, and Gluu.
identity provider (IdP)
IdP
Inbound SSO
Indirect feedback
What customers say about a company in channels that aren't expressly designed to gather feedback or in channels where the feedback is not necessarily designed to go directly to the company (such as social media).
JSON
A standard format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects. commonly used between web applications and servers.
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
JSON
Key performance indicator (KPI)
An important success metric that organizations track to assess how well they're doing. In the customer experience context, these may include scores, measurements, and metrics such as retention, NPS, OSAT, CES, and others.
Key performance indicator (KPI)
KPI
Live chat
A form of customer support offered via a company's app or website available through instant messaging with a real person, as opposed to chatbots, which are powered by AI to mimic human interactions.
Multichannel
Experiences offered through multiple channels where customers interact with a brand (such as website, stores, or contact centers). Sometimes contrasted with omnichannel, which indicates a more consistent and seamless experience across those various channels.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
An index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company's products or services to others. It is used as a proxy for gauging the customer's overall satisfaction with a company's product or service and the customer's loyalty to the brand.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Note: NPS is calculated based on the response to a single question that asks about the likelihood of recommending the company or brand to a friend or colleague. Based on their rating, customers are then classified in 3 categories: detractors, passives and promoters.
Traditionally, NPS is calculated on a scale of 0-10 or 1-10, where the promoter scores are 9 or 10, and the detractors are 6 or below. On a scale or 1-5, promoter scores are 5, and detractor scores are 1-3.
The NPS score is the percentage of respondents who were detractors subtracted from the percentage who were promoters.
NPS
Operational Customer Experience Management (OCEM)
A methodology for embedding customer experience management deeply within an organization's operations. It includes seeing your company as customers do, wiring that point of view into decision making for individual teams, ensuring accountability to customer needs at all levels of an organization, and taking actions to innovate and improve continuously based on customer needs.
Operational Customer Experience Management (OCEM)
OCEM
Opt-outs
Opt-outs are respondents who have expressed intent to no longer receive survey invitations from the company. Once an invitee has opted-out, they do not receive future invitations. However, depending on how they were opted out, they might receive reminder notifications if they have not completed the survey they have opted-out from.
OSAT
An in-the-moment gauge of a customer's overall satisfaction with the company, brand, or service. The metric is usually associated with a question like, "How satisfied are you with the service you received?" Over time, the average of the responses is an indicator of how satisfied customers are with their experience with the company.
overall satisfaction (OSAT)
OSAT
Outbound SSO
An SSO operation where a Medallia application user connects to an external system without having to sign in to the system. Experience Cloud is the identity provider (IdP) and the external system is the service provider (SP).
Personalization
When brands collect and use customer data and preferences to tailor interactions and outreach to the individual, such as addressing customers by first name, suggesting new products or services based on prior behavioral patterns, and thanking them for how long they've been doing business with the company.
Personally identifiable information (PII)
Information that can be used by itself or in the context of other information to identify, contact, or locate a person.
personally identifiable information (PII)
Note: Sometimes called personally identifiable data or sensitive data.
The acronym PII is not commonly used outside of North America, as such, it is better to use the whole term.
PII
Personalized survey
Event-based surveys unique to each individual record and created based on information known about both the person and the event. Potential survey takers access the survey via an Invitation email.
personalized survey
Note: Previously known as Feeded or feed-based surveys.
Quarantine
A sampling step to avoid sending surveys to the same invitees too often. Incoming, potential invitations are excluded when the recipient was recently sent an invitation.
Quotas
Quotas are a Sampling step that attempts to achieve a target number of responses for survey invitations sent in a given time period. They can limit invitations for high-traffic units to allow lower-traffic units to be statistically significant in the overall scores and results. For example, if a unit has a quota of 300 responses per month, that unit needs to receive about 10 responses a day. When the response rate is 70%, Experience Cloud knows to send out 14 invitations to achieve the target 10 responses for the Unit.
Respondent
Generic term for a person who provides feedback. Specific respondents may be a customer
or
employee.
customer
employee
Response rate
The average proportion of survey takers that typically respond to an invitation; it is the count of responses received divided by count of invitations sent.
Sampling
Filtering raw survey invitations to identify invitees to receive personalized invitations.
Sentiment
A qualitative assessment of the positive, negative, or neutral views, attitudes, and opinions of customers and non-customers, such as website visitors or brand mentions in social media.
Note: In natural language processing (that is, Text Analytics), sentences or phrases are automatically tagged with an estimate of their sentiment, using machine learning algorithms.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
A standard protocol for authenticating users during single sign-on (SSO). An identity provider issues an assertion that authenticates users to a service provider.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
SAML
Service provider (SP)
Signals
Data that helps to describe what customers and employees are experiencing, thinking, feeling, and doing, collected from a wide range of direct and indirect experience data sources (e.g., surveys, transactions, chats, voice calls, website visits, social media, and more).
Single sign-on (SSO)
SMS
A service for exchanging short text messages, typically on mobile devices.
Short Messaging Service (SMS)
SMS
Sub-records
Collect feedback for multiple products, locations, or people, etc. within the same survey. They display the results aggregating data across similar questions and are calculated at a record level, whether it is average of all the records or using some other method.
sub-records
Tags
Custom labels that identify or classify customer interaction events. Some examples include disposition of an interaction, identity a product or feature, a client or market segment, and escalation level.
Note: In Medallia Agent Connect, tags are also known as Interaction Tags, and they are assigned by the CRM. Tags are specific to your business; there are no default tags.
Text Analytics
Also called natural language processing (NLP), this is a process or technology used to analyze or assess the meaning of large volumes of unstructured data (such as phone call transcripts or other written communication) to reveal common themes, insights, emerging trends, sentiment, recurring topics, and more.
Touchpoint
Any interaction between customers and a company, across any and all channels, such as over the phone, in person, via text, on social media, or on the website or app.
Unit
Units are the measurable part of the Company (the Medallia customer) that respondents interact with, such as people, locations, and web sites.
User
A person that can sign in to a Medallia application, usually to view reports. Some users are also administrators.
employee
Webhook
A HTTP request that is triggered by an event, which includes a payload of data, and which may receive and process a response. In Medallia Experience Cloud webhooks are implemented with OmniExporter.
Omnichannel
Experiences designed to be consistent and seamless across all of the major channels where customers interact with a brand (such as website, mobile app, stores, contact centers, etc.).
