Glossary

Artificial intelligence glossary for businesses

The words you'll hear when you talk about AI for your business, explained without the jargon. There are 39 terms, and each one links to the service where it's used.

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24-hour customer service window

The time window each customer message opens in the WhatsApp API. Within those 24 hours you can reply with free-form messages; outside it, only with approved templates.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

A

AI agent

A program that talks with your customers, understands what they're asking for in their own words and does something with it: replies, books, records it or hands the case to a person. Unlike a button-based chatbot, it doesn't need the customer to pick an option.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

AI Audit

The assessment El Tío starts with: a questionnaire about how your business works today and a map of what's worth optimizing and automating first, with the reason for each item. It's free.

See: Packages and pricing

Artificial intelligence

Software that handles tasks that used to need a person, like understanding a message, reading a document or drafting a reply. In a business, it's most useful for the work that repeats.

See: Services

Attribution, or contact source

Recording where each customer came from: an ad, Instagram, a listing portal, a referral. It's what lets you know which channel brings in sales and which one only brings in messages.

See: CRM and follow-up

Automated collections

Payment reminders that go out on their own, in the order and with the wording you approve, until the payment is recorded. You see every message sent and can stop the sequence for any customer.

See: CRM and follow-up

Automatic reminder

The notice that goes out on its own before an appointment, a reservation or a due date, for the customer and for your team.

See: CRM and follow-up

Automatic report

The summary that arrives on its own every week with the numbers that matter in your business: new contacts, replied, booked, closed and payments pending.

See: Automations and reports

Automation

A task a person used to do that now happens on its own every time something happens: a welcome message, a reminder, an alert to the person in charge. It's best to sort out the process before automating it.

See: Automations and reports

C

Chatbot

A program that answers messages. The simplest ones show a menu of options; the ones that use AI understand what the customer writes and reply in a normal conversation.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

Churn rate

The share of your customers or members who leave in a given period. Also called attrition. The sign that someone is leaving usually shows up weeks earlier, when they stop coming in or buying.

See: CRM and follow-up

Consent or opt-in

The permission a person gives your business to message them. WhatsApp requires it to send messages outside an open conversation, and Mexican law requires it for certain uses of personal data.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

CRM

Customer relationship management: the single list of who contacted you, what they want, where things stand and what's next. It replaces each salesperson's WhatsApp, the spreadsheet and the team's memory.

See: CRM and follow-up

D

Deduplicated database

Your customer list with a single record per person. When the same customer shows up three times under different names, nobody knows how many customers you have or who talked to them last.

See: CRM and follow-up

Document reading

Turning what arrives as a photo, PDF or Excel file into data: an order list, an invoice, an ID. The technique is called OCR, and with AI it also understands abbreviations and messy tables.

See: Automations and reports

F

First response time

How long your business takes to answer a customer's first message. It's one of the numbers that weighs most in a sale: whoever asks usually goes with whoever answers first.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

Follow-up

The next contact with a customer who didn't reply or didn't decide. It's where most sales are lost, because it depends on someone remembering.

See: CRM and follow-up

H

Hallucination

When an AI model confidently answers something even though it's false. You reduce it by giving it only your business's information and telling it to hand off to a person whatever it doesn't know.

See: Training

Handoff to a person

The moment the agent passes the conversation to someone on the team, with the case already summarized. A good agent knows when to do it: complaints, exceptions, big sales.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

I

Integration

The connection between two systems so they pass data back and forth without anyone copying and pasting: your calendar with the CRM, your point of sale with the report, your form with WhatsApp.

See: Automations and reports

K

Knowledge base

What the agent knows about your business: hours, prices, policies, common questions. If something isn't written there, the agent doesn't know it, and the right move is to hand it off to a person.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

L

Language model

The engine behind tools like ChatGPT or Claude. It learned from huge amounts of text and generates written answers. Also known as an LLM (large language model).

See: Training

Lead or prospect

Someone who showed interest but hasn't bought yet: they left their details on a form, asked on WhatsApp or requested information on a listing site.

See: CRM and follow-up

Lead qualification

Separating the people ready to buy from the ones just asking. The agent asks the questions your salesperson needs, like budget, date or area, and logs the answers in the CRM.

See: CRM and follow-up

M

Message template

A WhatsApp message approved by Meta that your business can send outside an open conversation, like a reminder. You create one per language, and WhatsApp may charge for each one sent.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

N

No-show

The reservation or appointment where the customer doesn't show up and doesn't let you know. A reminder with the option to reschedule lets you free up the spot and offer it to someone else.

See: CRM and follow-up

P

Privacy notice

The document that tells your customer what data you keep, what you use it for and how they can ask you to delete it. In Mexico the personal data law requires it, and it's a good idea to link it in the agent's first message.

See: Training

Prompt

The instruction you give an AI tool. A good prompt says what to do, with what information, in what tone and what not to do.

See: Training

R

RAG

Retrieval augmented generation. The agent searches your documents before answering, instead of replying with what it learned in general. That way it quotes your prices, not made-up ones.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

S

Sales pipeline

The stages a customer goes through, from the first inquiry to the purchase, using the names your team already uses. It shows where people get stuck and how many are at each step.

See: CRM and follow-up

Sensitive personal data

Data that can harm a person if it's misused, like health information. In Mexico you need express, written consent to handle it, and it's best not to ask for it over chat.

See: Training

T

Text to speech

The technology that turns a written answer into a voice that sounds natural. It's half of a voice agent; the other half is speech recognition, which turns what the person says into text.

See: Voice agent

U

Unified inbox

A single screen where your team sees messages from WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and email, instead of checking each app separately.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

UTM

Tags added to a link to know where the person who clicked came from: which ad, which post, which email. The CRM saves them with the contact.

See: Automations and reports

V

Voice agent

An AI agent that talks on the phone. It calls or answers, talks in a natural voice, confirms appointments or qualifies a prospect, and leaves a summary of the call in the CRM. At the start, it says it's an AI.

See: Voice agent

W

Webhook

The automatic notice one system sends another when something happens, like when a payment comes in or a form is filled out. It's what lets an automation start on its own.

See: Automations and reports

WhatsApp Business API

The business version of WhatsApp that lets you connect a system to your number, so an agent can answer and every conversation gets saved. It's not the WhatsApp Business app you use on your phone.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

WhatsApp Business app

The free business app you install on a phone. It works for handling messages by hand, with quick replies and a catalog, but not for connecting an AI agent or a CRM.

See: WhatsApp and Instagram agent

Workflow

A sequence of steps that runs on its own: when a new contact comes in, it gets assigned a salesperson, receives a message and gets a reminder scheduled. Also called an automation.

See: Automations and reports