Resolve, don't deflect: the metric that actually matters

The CX industry loves containment rate — the percentage of tickets 'handled' without a human. It sounds like efficiency. In practice, it often measures how many customers gave up.

Deflection is hope, not resolution

Deflection hides a ticket behind a search box and hopes the customer finds their answer — or gets tired of looking. The issue isn't solved. It's deferred. And it usually comes back, angrier, to a human anyway.

Chimes optimizes for genuine resolution: did the customer's problem actually get solved? That means taking the action — issuing the refund, resetting the password, updating the account — not pointing at a help article.

Resolution durability

We go one step further and measure whether resolutions stay solved. Our durability metric tracks how often an issue doesn't generate a re-contact within seven days. A 'resolved' ticket that bounces back in two days was never resolved.

A high containment rate can mask a mountain of unresolved issues. Durability can't be faked — the customer either came back or they didn't.

Optimize for the number that reflects reality, and the rest follows: CSAT rises, cost per contact falls, and your humans spend their time on the conversations that genuinely need them.