What is a reasonable resolution rate for a support agent?

Per Jason Lemkin's write-up of the Gorgias benchmark across 13 vendors and 212 ecommerce stores, the top five resolved 64% to 75% of conversations and the median was 48%, counting zero human touch and no push out of the channel. A fan support agent in eleven languages is a different domain, so treat that as a reference point. The release's 20% resolved alone is not a failing number on its own; it is an undefined one.

Why score the resolution rate three ways?

Because each definition answers a different question and the gaps between them are where disputes live. Zero human touch is the strictest. The invoice definition is what you pay on. No related follow-up in seven days catches the customer who came back. Vendor reporting that counts a resolution after 72 hours without a human, as Lemkin notes Gorgias's does, counts the customer who gave up.

What does the hand-off count tell you that engagement does not?

The size of the cost line the engagement number hides. If 20% of interactions are resolved alone and the rest reach a person, the support team is still taking four in five conversations. Engagement at 86% says nothing about that team's queue. The hand-off count is that queue.

Should an AI Agent Launch Lead With Engagement Rate?

Should an AI agent launch lead with its engagement rate?

THE SHORT ANSWER

No. An engagement rate on a chat widget says the box opened and the person typed, which is true of any agent placed in a support path, so it cannot tell you whether the agent works. Salesforce's October 15, 2026 Tottenham Hotspur release leads with an 86% engagement rate for Ask Spurs and reports lower down that 20% of interactions are resolved by Agentforce alone, with no definition of either term. Lead with the resolution rate under a stated definition, scored three ways (zero human touch, the invoice definition, no related follow-up in seven days), and print the hand-off count beside it. When I priced per resolved ticket on a 48-hour definition, 98% of cases held and the other 2% became more than 200 contested cases a week, so the definition is the number.

Engagement is the number that can't be wrong, which is why it ends up at the top of the release and why a product leader should strike it first. The Tottenham release is the clean case: the useful work, about 30 systems replaced and 4.6 million fan accounts unified, is in the body, and the headline is the one figure that would look the same whether the agent worked or not.

The three definitions, the Gorgias numbers as Lemkin reported them, and the 200-cases-a-week dispute queue from my own pricing are in 86% Engaged, 20% Resolved: Kill the Engagement Rate Headline. The scoring method is One Support Agent, Three Resolution Rates.

Last reviewed 2026-10-15 · 1 min read

Should an AI agent launch lead with its engagement rate?

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