What Deflection Is Worth

Every ticket that never reaches an agent is worth the full handle time. Here is what your rate is actually saving you.

Ticket deflection calculator

Tickets deflected per month
1,500
Agent hours returned per month
225
Saved per year
$75,600

Merging duplicates is the most reliable deflection there is. It needs no article written, no bot trained, and no customer behaviour change.

Stop paying for duplicates

What counts as deflection

A contact resolved before an agent works it. In practice that means four things.

  • Help centre articles that answer the question before someone opens a form.
  • Bots and AI agents that resolve the request in the channel.
  • Product fixes that remove the reason for contacting you at all, which is the best kind and the slowest.
  • Duplicate merging, where the contact exists but is absorbed into a ticket already being answered.
  • Why duplicate merging is the easiest deflection you will ever buy

    Help centre deflection needs articles written, maintained and found. Bot deflection needs training, tuning and a tolerance for the times it is wrong. Both are worth doing and both take quarters.

    Merging duplicates needs no content, no training and no change in customer behaviour. The customer already contacted you twice about one thing, and the second contact simply stops costing you a separate reply.

    It is also the only deflection that improves the customer experience directly, because they stop getting two different answers.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is a good deflection rate?+

    Self-service deflection between 10% and 30% is typical where the help centre is genuinely maintained. Above that usually means the product changed, not the content.

    Do merged duplicates count as deflection?+

    They should. A duplicate merged before an agent opens it is a contact that never consumed handle time, which is the definition.

    The deflection you can turn on this week

    No articles to write, no bot to train. Connect your helpdesk and duplicates stop reaching agents.

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