Re-Contact-Subtracted Resolution Gate

Problem

Session-end is a cheap proxy for resolution, and any metric the deployment is optimised against will be gamed once it becomes the target. A bot that answers wrong, or wears the user down until they give up, looks identical on a deflection dashboard to one that genuinely fixed the issue. Reporting raw deflection or containment as quality therefore rewards exactly the behaviour that erodes trust, and the team cannot tell a good deployment from a harmful one until churn surfaces. The gate needs a definition of resolution that the agent cannot inflate by ending conversations.

Solution

Stop treating session-end as success. Define the gated rate as (deflected interactions − wrong answers − re-contacts within a fixed window such as 48 hours) divided by total handled interactions, and optionally condition it on a CSAT floor so worn-down departures are not counted as wins. Wrong answers come from an automated or sampled correctness scorer; re-contacts come from production monitoring that links a later conversation back to the same customer and problem. Deflection and containment stay on the dashboard, but only as raw throughput labelled as such — never as a quality claim. Releases and rollouts are gated on the subtracted rate, so an agent that drives deflection up by stalling, looping, or answering wrong sees its gated number fall, removing the incentive to game session-end.

When to use

• A support or contact-center agent is reported on deflection, containment, or session-end and that number drives rollout decisions.
• Re-contacts can be linked back to the same customer and problem within a fixed window through production monitoring.
• Aggressive automation can plausibly end sessions without solving the underlying issue, so a gameable success metric is a real risk.