Deflection

Self-service is help a customer can complete without contacting support at all, such as a help centre article, an account action, or a guided flow. Its success is measured by task completion rather than page views, since a read article that fails to resolve still generates a contact.

Containment rate is the share of automated conversations that end without escalation to a human. It is the primary efficiency measure for AI support, but a high rate only indicates success when paired with satisfaction and repeat-contact data confirming customers actually got their issue resolved.

Automation rate is the percentage of incoming contacts handled entirely without a human agent. It measures reach rather than quality, so support teams read it alongside containment rate and satisfaction scores to confirm that automated volume is genuinely resolved rather than simply absorbed and later reopened by the customer.

A knowledge base is the maintained source of truth that AI agents and human agents both answer from. Its accuracy sets a ceiling on the quality of every automated answer, which makes knowledge maintenance an operational requirement rather than a documentation project owned by nobody in particular.