Deflection
Preventing a contact from reaching an agent, usually via self-service or automation.
Deflection is the umbrella term for any mechanism that resolves — or diverts — a would-be ticket before a human touches it: a help-centre article, a chatbot, a status page, a community answer.
It is genuinely valuable when the customer's problem is actually solved. It is a vanity metric when it just measures people giving up.
What it hides: the standard "deflection rate" often counts anyone who viewed an article and didn't immediately open a ticket as deflected — including those who found nothing, got frustrated, and churned or complained elsewhere. Deflection that isn't tied to a confirmed resolution is measuring avoidance, not help. See deflection vs resolution.