This guide lists terms that are important to understand, but are not necessarily associated with any resource.
Active
At any given moment during a conversation, one of the following is true:
- One and only one playbook is active.
- One and only one page and the associated flow are active.
Agent, human agent, live agent, virtual agent, bot, and chat bot
In this documentation, without context, agent refers to the virtual agent. When it is important to provide a distinction, a contact center may have both human agents (also called live agents) and virtual agents.
Virtual agent, bot, and chat bot are synonymous, however, chat bot may imply a text-only interface in some contexts.
Audio input, speech recognition, and speech-to-text
End-user input as an audio file or streamed audio sent at runtime to the agent API. Audio containing speech is transcribed by speech recognition (speech-to-text) and the transcripts are processed.
Audio output, speech synthesis, and text-to-speech
Agent output as an audio file or streamed audio sent at runtime to the agent's client. Agent text responses use speech synthesis (text-to-speech) to convert text to audio.
Back-end and front-end
Back-end is the part of your system that is responsible for business logic. This is in contrast with the front-end, which provides a user interface.
Contact center
Software that allows companies to automate communication between their customers (referred to as end-users) and human or virtual agents.
Contact center operator
A person operating a contact center by using a contact center software solution.
Conversation and session
End-user interaction with a virtual or human agent. Conversation is synonymous with session.
Conversation turn, end-user input, and user query
A conversation turn is one interaction between an end-user and the virtual agent. The end-user provides an input (also called user query) and the agent provides a response.
Runtime and design-time
When using the console or API to build an agent, this is a design-time activity. When the agent is in a conversation with an end-user, this is a runtime activity.
User, end-user, and developer user
There are two types of users:
- End-users: People who have conversations with the agent.
- Developer users: Developers who build agents.
In this documentation, without context, user and end-user are equivalent.