Resolution is the only customer service outcome that matters

It’s hard to deliver great service if you aren’t actually resolving a customer’s issue. Most customers wouldn’t count a dropped call or a timed-out chat as resolution, and you shouldn’t either. But many companies say it is – and charge you for it, too.

Resolution isn’t deflection. It’s not a half-baked handover or a conversation that simply ends. A true resolution is when the problem is fully solved. And if a customer has to reach back out or gets stuck between departments with no end in sight, you’re just not meeting the mark.

Here’s the issue: most AI vendors and platforms are optimising for activity, or the number of engagements or deflections, rather than outcomes. A bot can easily respond to thousands of conversations a day, but if it’s not delivering true resolution, you’re scaling false success quickly.

At Zendesk, we believe resolution is the only customer service outcome that matters – so much so that we’ve built our entire platform and pricing model around resolutions that actually resolve.