Customer self-service is the answer a customer finds without you, and for a small company the case for it is made from four numbers it already has: tickets a month, the share of them a help centre and an account page would answer, what an agent-handled ticket costs, and what the portal costs to run and to write. Every vendor page on the subject quotes an industry deflection rate; this one does not, because the share is read from your own ticket log or it is a guess. This page walks the case and where each number comes from; the customer self service guide it supports walks the portal, and the free worksheets on this site work the savings and the content plan from your figures, with no account.
The four numbers, and where each comes from
Tickets a month is the help desk's count. The share is last month's tickets an article or an account page would have closed, counted, over the total. The agent cost is minutes per ticket at a loaded hourly rate. The portal cost is the price on the vendor's page: Help Scout Standard is $25 per user per month and Freshdesk Growth $19 per agent per month billed annually on the pages cited below, and this site's plan is $39 a month for the company.
The case, worked
1,200 tickets at a 30% share is 360 deflected; at $8 each less a $39 portal that is $2,841 a month and $34,092 a year, and 20 hours of set-up at $40 is $800, paid back in 8 days on the worked example. Change the share and everything moves, which is the point: the share is the decision, and the deflection savings worksheet makes it a visible input rather than a brochure figure.
What the case leaves out, deliberately
Customer satisfaction, agent morale and the tickets that get better because the portal attached the context are real and are not in the arithmetic, because they are not numbers a small company has before the portal exists. The paid plan measures the deflection per month after launch, which is when the case stops being a forecast.
Questions people ask about customer self-service
What is customer self-service?
The help centre, account view and request form that let customers answer their own repeating questions, see their own account and raise a ticket only when self-service has not worked.
How do I make the business case for self-service?
From tickets a month, the share a portal would answer read from your own log, the cost of an agent-handled ticket and the portal's cost: the deflection savings worksheet on this site works the saving, the set-up cost and the payback in days from those four figures.
What deflection rate do vendors quote?
Various, and none of them is yours. This site publishes no industry rate; count last month's tickets an article would have closed and enter that share.