How would one measure that agent deflection number if customer size or the month-over-month being measured is in flux?

This is a good question. Let me try to answer it a little better here than I did in today's roundtable.

The answer is that there's no set answer. When we encounter an in flux situation, Dr. Natalie and I work with our client on deciding the best approach. One is to determine an average Deflection Rate. This can work well if the change in rate is modest.

However, if the change in Deflection Rate is more significant over time, then we may break out the long time-period into smaller ones. For example, we recently looked at a scenario where we looked back at the ROI over a 10-month period. The client's community hit its stride around about month 6.5 and showed a more dramatic increase in community membership and conversation volumes.

Our approach involved looking at 2 Deflection Rates. The client didn't want to make things too complicated so we used 2 average rates. One rate spanned months 0-6.5 and the other rate spanned month 6.5-10.