What is Ticket Deflection?
Redirecting customer inquiries away from human agents, typically to self-service content or automated responses.
Ticket deflection is a customer support metric that measures the percentage of potential support tickets redirected away from human agents. While historically seen as a positive efficiency metric, deflection has significant limitations.
How Deflection Works
Common deflection tactics include:
- Knowledge base suggestions: Showing articles before allowing ticket submission
- Chatbot interactions: Scripted bots that attempt to answer questions
- FAQ popups: Surfacing common questions during support flows
- Community forums: Directing users to peer support
The Problem with Deflection
Deflection measures redirection, not resolution. A deflected customer might:
- Read an article but still not find their answer
- Give up and leave frustrated
- Come back later through another channel
- Churn silently without ever getting help
Industry data shows traditional chatbots achieve only 10-30% deflection rates, and many of those deflected customers eventually need human help anyway.
Resolution vs Deflection
The better metric is resolution rate - was the problem actually solved?
- Deflection: Customer was redirected somewhere (may or may not help)
- Resolution: Customer problem was actually fixed
Modern AI agents achieve 80-93% resolution rates compared to 10-30% deflection rates from legacy tools.
Why This Matters
Focusing on deflection can hurt customer experience:
- Frustrated customers who cannot reach humans
- Multiple contacts for the same issue
- Lower CSAT and NPS scores
- Hidden churn from unresolved problems
Maven AGI Difference: We measure resolution, not deflection. When Mastermind achieved 93% with Maven, that meant 93% of customers had their problems actually solved - not just redirected. That is the metric that matters.
Book a demo to see resolution-focused AI in action.
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