The Keres AI glossary
Clear, plain-English definitions of the terms behind AI receptionists, AI outbound, and email deliverability — so you can make a confident decision.
AI Receptionist
An AI receptionist is software that answers your business phone automatically, 24/7. It greets callers in a natural voice, answers questions, qualifie…
AI Answering Service
An AI answering service is an automated phone-answering solution that handles inbound calls 24/7 without human operators. Unlike a traditional answeri…
Virtual Receptionist
A virtual receptionist is a remote service — staffed by people or powered by AI — that answers your business calls, greets callers, schedules appointm…
Missed-Call Text-Back
Missed-call text-back is an automation that instantly sends a text message to any caller whose call you miss. Instead of losing the lead to voicemail …
Call Overflow Handling
Call overflow handling routes calls that your team can’t pick up — because the lines are busy or staff are unavailable — to a backup that answers imme…
Appointment Booking Automation
Appointment booking automation uses software to schedule, confirm, and reschedule appointments without manual back-and-forth. An AI agent checks real-…
Lead Qualification
Lead qualification is the process of determining whether a prospect is a genuine, ready-to-buy opportunity worth your team’s time. It captures details…
Missed-Call Recovery
Missed-call recovery is the practice of recapturing the revenue from calls your business doesn’t answer. Because most callers who hit voicemail never …
Conversational AI
Conversational AI is technology that understands and responds in natural human language across voice and text. It combines speech recognition, natural…
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
IVR (interactive voice response) is an automated phone system that greets callers and routes them through a menu using keypad presses or simple voice …
Call Routing
Call routing is the process of directing inbound calls to the right destination — a person, team, location, or queue — based on rules like time of day…
Appointment Reminders
Appointment reminders are automated messages — usually text or email — that confirm an upcoming appointment and give the customer an easy way to confi…
After-Hours Answering
After-hours answering is a service that handles inbound calls outside normal business hours — evenings, weekends, and holidays. It ensures callers who…
Emergency Dispatch
Emergency dispatch is the process of identifying an urgent inbound request — a no-heat call at midnight, a burst pipe, a stranded motorist — and routi…
Patient Intake
Patient intake is the process of collecting essential information from a new patient before their first appointment — including contact details, insur…
Legal Intake
Legal intake is the structured process by which a law firm evaluates and onboards a potential new client — capturing the nature of the matter, checkin…
No-Show Rate
No-show rate is the percentage of scheduled appointments where the patient or client doesn't appear and hasn't cancelled. For service businesses, dent…
Lead Response Time
Lead response time (also called speed to lead) is the time between a prospect first reaching out — calling, submitting a form, or clicking an ad — and…
Front Desk Automation
Front desk automation uses AI to perform the core tasks of a business's front desk without human staff: answering every call, greeting callers, bookin…
Dispatch Automation
Dispatch automation uses software to capture inbound service requests, assess urgency, assign the job to the right crew member, and communicate dispat…
AI SDR
An AI SDR (sales development representative) is software that automates outbound prospecting: it builds and sends personalized cold-email sequences, m…
Cold Email Outreach
Cold email outreach is the practice of emailing prospects you have no prior relationship with to start a sales conversation. Done well, it is targeted…
Email Sequence
An email sequence (or cadence) is a series of automated emails sent to a prospect on a schedule — typically an opener followed by several spaced follo…
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a method of ranking prospects by how likely they are to convert, using signals like fit (industry, size, role), intent, and engagement…
Outbound Sales
Outbound sales is the practice of proactively reaching out to prospects who haven’t contacted you first — through cold email, calls, or social — to st…
Reply Rate
Reply rate is the percentage of outbound emails that receive a response — the metric that matters most in cold email, because replies, not opens, lead…
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is the measure of whether your emails actually reach recipients’ primary inboxes rather than the spam folder or being blocked. It…
SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS record that specifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. When a receivin…
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email-authentication method that adds a cryptographic signature to every message you send. The receiving serve…
DMARC
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is a DNS policy that builds on SPF and DKIM. It tells receiving servers what to d…
Inbox Warmup
Inbox warmup is the process of gradually building a new email account’s or domain’s sending reputation before running outbound at scale. It starts wit…
Spam Score & Sender Reputation
A spam score estimates how likely a message or sender is to be filtered as spam, based on factors like sender reputation, authentication, content, and…
Email Bounce Rate
Email bounce rate is the percentage of emails that fail to deliver and are returned. A hard bounce is a permanent failure (invalid address); a soft bo…
Email Blacklist
An email blacklist (or block list / DNSBL) is a database of IP addresses and domains flagged for sending spam. Mailbox providers check these lists, an…
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