What is Deflection rate?
Conversations that never reached a human. A legacy metric that mistakes silence for success.
Deflection rate is the percentage of conversations handled without ever reaching a human agent. Deflection is a legacy metric that should be treated with caution.
It assumes that any query which did not reach a human was therefore resolved, which is frequently untrue. A customer who gives up in frustration counts as a deflection just as much as a customer who got a perfect answer. Track resolution instead.
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Related terms
- Resolution rate The share of conversations an AI agent fully closes on its own. The most honest measure of whether your AI actually solves problems.
- Involvement rate How much of your inbound support volume the AI agent touches, whatever the outcome. A measure of footprint.
- Automation rate Resolution rate times involvement rate. The single number that ties AI impact to cost and capacity.
- Containment rate The share of conversations kept inside the automated experience. Directional at best, misleading as a success measure.