The idea behind ticket deflection is simple: encouraging customers to use self-serve resources to solve their problems, without contacting official support and generating a support ticket.
After all, customer service centers cost money to run, and they can't generate revenue. At best, they can only reduce customer churn. So anything you can do to lower contact center costs, without affecting customer satisfaction, is going to be a net positive – and the cheapest ticket to resolve is the ticket that isn't generated at all.
So operations are increasingly looking to push customers towards self-service portals, such as FAQs and chatbots, to reduce tickets. Every ticket successfully deflected is money saved.
What Techniques Drive Ticket Deflection?
Currently, there are numerous applications and resources you can make available to customers which can all drive ticket deflection. The most popular options include:
- Knowledge Bases. In many cases, much of a company's KB can be made available for customers to peruse, especially in the case of tech products.
- FAQs. FAQ pages are an indispensable tool, when they're properly implemented and genuinely cover common questions and issues.
- Contextual help. Don't underestimate the basic tooltips or wiki glossaries. Anything which helps the customer learn the product can also drive ticket deflection.
- Community forums. More complicated products such as software tools can benefit greatly from an official moderated public forum where users can share information with each other.
- AI Chatbots. AI systems can now power chat portals which are capable of answering even complicated customer questions. AI can also be empowered to do basic account maintenance such as helping verified customers update their phone number.
How Does Knowledge Management Power Ticket Deflection?
For ticket deflection to succeed, users must have access to accurate and reliable knowledge resources online. In addition, it should be relatively easy to browse and locate that information.
A next-gen AI-powered Knowledge Management System makes this easy to achieve. The KMS can monitor itself for discrepancies and errors, while responding to customer contacts using natural language. A user who can get full-service help from an AI portal has no need to call into CS and generate tickets.
How Do You Calculate Ticket Deflection Rate?
Self-service deflection rates are relatively easy to track and calculate.
The basic calculation looks like this:
Ticket deflection rate = total users of self-help resources / unique users named in tickets
So if 100 users accessed the self-help system, and 20 of those went on to call customer service, 100/20 = 5. The deflection rate is 5, or 80% if you prefer.
In addition, you can drill down to look at the performance of specific features by using the same basic calculation. For example, if you want to know how many tickets are being deflected by an AI chatbot, simply look at total chatbot users / users sent to live agents.
That said, keep in mind that not all touches in your self-service center are necessarily deflected tickets. For example, users of complicated software tools often browse support forums looking for new ideas without any specific issue driving their behavior. These are not deflected tickets.
Depending on your customers' usage patterns, you may want to add some guidelines involving metrics like "time spent in self-service center" or "number of forum pages accessed" to put those numbers in context. AI analysis can help here as well, by breaking down users' behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
Basically, the higher the better. That said, if your deflection rate is at least a 2 – which means 50% deflection – you're doing well. Strive to push it as high as possible for maximum savings.
The basic calculation is:
Ticket deflection rate = total users of self-help resources / unique users named in tickets
You can also run the same calculation to get the deflection rate of a specific service, such as a FAQ, by focusing on only the users of that service.
Ticket deflection specifically refers to situations where a customer would have contacted customer support, but solved their own problem through self-serve resources. Not every use of self-serve is necessarily a support ticket deflection, but robust self-serve options encourage deflection.
Properly curated and managed knowledge bases offer accurate and reliable information which is easily discovered by users. A powerful Knowledge Management System can power such a system.
Well-implemented AI chatbots can take a huge burden off of your human support staff. FAQs, forums, and wikis will also provide good results.
In Conclusion: Ticket Deflection Saves Money
It's as simple as that. Customers appreciate self-serve options, and the majority would prefer to handle issues themselves when possible. A robust self-serve portal deflecting tickets can significantly reduce the costs associated with your contact center, without damaging customer satisfaction – or potentially even improving CustSat!
KMS Lighthouse is your premiere AI-powered KMS tool for creating customer self-service tools. Contact us to request a free demonstration.