Calculator
Support Deflection Calculator
Put in your ticket volume and what a ticket costs you. This works out what an assistant would have to deflect to be worth paying for, and shows the conservative case first because that is the one your finance team will ask about.
- Runs in your browserNothing is sent anywhere
- Assumptions on screenEvery number is editable
- Pessimistic by default20% deflection, not 60%
Work it out
Your numbers
Result
- Tickets deflected —
- Support hours returned —
- Gross saving —
- Net of subscription —
- Net over twelve months —
- Deflection needed to break even —
Support hours assume 12 minutes per ticket. Deflection means the visitor got a correct answer and did not open a ticket — not that the ticket was closed faster.
What the numbers mean
Deflection is not resolution
A deflected question is one the visitor never had to ask a person. If the assistant answers and they still open a ticket, that is not deflection, and counting it as one is how these calculations end up wrong by half.
Twenty percent is the honest starting point
Published deflection figures cluster around 60% because vendors publish their best customers. First-year reality on a site with ordinary documentation is closer to 20%, and it climbs only as the source content improves.
The binding constraint is your content, not the model
An assistant cannot deflect a question your site never answered. If the calculation looks disappointing, the fix is usually a missing page rather than a better model.
Cost per ticket is where estimates go wrong
Use fully loaded cost: salary, tooling, management and the time spent switching context. Teams that use only the agent's hourly rate understate it by roughly half.
Questions
Because 60% is what a mature deployment on excellent documentation reaches, and quoting it at the start sets up a number nobody hits. If you clear 20% in the first quarter you are ahead.
Usually not, and it is worth being clear about that internally. It means the same team handles the questions that actually need a person, and the repetitive ones stop arriving. Headcount reduction is a much longer conversation.
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, stored or logged, and you can read the source of this page to confirm it.
Want this run against your actual site?
Tell us the page your assistant lives on and the questions you care about. A person runs them and sends back the raw answers.