Customer demand for support is on the rise, with no indication of a future slowdown. Support and Success leaders universally agree: Effective self-service deflection is critical to meeting this demand. Is it working? Here’s a look at self-service deflection performance trends over the past decade.
For the past decade, reported self-service deflection has averaged 22.2%. In 2020 self-help deflection stood at 19.8%. The industry trend for deflection has sloped down (-.5%) during the last decade; in the past year (2019 to 2020) average deflection rate has dropped 3.7%.
Self-Service Deflection Performance Trends 2010-2020
(Source: ServiceXRG)
That stubborn 20% Self-Service deflection ceiling
There is no single reason that deflection appears pegged at 20%. This may indicate that there is a practical limit caused by the confluence of the elements that make defection possible:
- The percent of Support issues that are known and can be adequately documented.
- The willingness of customers to fully accept an answer without verification by a human.
- The limits of aligning available answers to unique customer circumstances with available search, AI, and automation tools.
If we are truly going to increase deflection, then we need to address and improve all three of these factors simultaneously.
