Connect to IntercomContainment Rate
Containment Rate measures the percentage of customer conversations initiated with a bot or automated system that were fully resolved without ever transferring to a human agent. It is the bot equivalent of FCR for human agents, and the primary metric for evaluating AI or chatbot ROI. High containment rate means your automation is genuinely solving problems — not just frustrating customers into escalating anyway.
Containment Rate = (Conversations fully resolved by automation without human transfer ÷ Total conversations initiated with automation) × 100
A conversation is "contained" only if the customer's issue was resolved without handing off to a human. Watch carefully for how your platform counts "fully resolved" — some incorrectly count abandoned conversations as contained.
B2B SaaS, AI/bot-first support
Calculate your containment rate
- 1Counting abandoned conversations as contained — a customer who got frustrated and left is not a successful containment.
- 2Optimizing containment at the expense of CSAT — bots that refuse to escalate to humans can have high containment but terrible customer experience.
- 3Measuring containment rate without tracking post-containment satisfaction — was the issue actually resolved, or did the customer just give up?
- 4Not segmenting by intent type — simple FAQs contain at 80%+; complex billing issues contain at under 20%. Blended rates obscure both.