Pretexting
Inventing a believable scenario and identity to make a target comfortable handing something over.
The pretext is the story: a new auditor who needs access to a share, a courier confirming a delivery address, a Microsoft engineer following up on an alert. Good pretexts are mundane and answer the question of why this person would be contacting you before the target thinks to ask.
It is the setup phase for most social engineering, and it is why attackers spend time on reconnaissance. The more real detail they can weave in, the less the story has to carry on its own.
Where this comes up
Pretexting sits inside our cybersecurity and threats work. If you are trying to work out what this means for your own environment rather than in the abstract, that is the page worth reading next, and a short call will get you a straight answer faster than either.