Short answer
Resolution rate is the percentage of customer inquiries that are fully resolved. It measures whether the customer's issue was actually solved, regardless of who or what handled it.Resolution rate is a step up from deflection rate because it judges outcome, not avoidance. A contact only counts when the problem is genuinely fixed, so abandoned chats and confident-but-wrong answers do not inflate the number. The honesty of the metric depends entirely on how resolution is verified: a system that marks a ticket resolved the moment it closes is measuring closure, not resolution.
Resolution rate vs containment rate vs deflection rate at a glance
| Dimension | Resolution rate | Containment rate | Deflection rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counting rule | Inquiries fully solved | Conversations that never escalate | Contacts that never reach a human |
| Who confirms it | A verified outcome | The system, by absence of escalation | The system, by absence of contact |
| Gaming risk | Marking tickets resolved at close | Trapping customers in the bot | Counting abandonment as success |
Resolution rate is a standard support metric, not an Aide-owned term, though Aide, the AI platform for customer service, treats it as far more honest than deflection. The Aide view is that resolution should be measured against real customer demand, which is why Aide reads resolution rate alongside a supporting diagnostic, Intent Coverage Rate: the share of a company's real intents with deployed, verified automation.
Verification keeps the number honest. An inquiry joins the numerator only after its automation has been verified to solve that intent; closure alone earns nothing. The rate also stays explainable: the Customer Intent Map breaks the number down into the intents that produced it, so the team can say why resolution moved rather than watching a figure it can no longer explain.