# Containment rate

> The share of conversations an agent handled without a human, what it does not tell you, and why it rises when an agent gets worse.

The share of conversations that finished without a person being involved. Also called automation rate or self-service rate, depending on the vendor.

```
containment = conversations with no human / all conversations
```

## It measures who, not whether

Containment counts who handled the conversation. It says nothing about whether the customer got what they came for.

A customer who gave up and left is contained. A customer who was told something wrong and believed it is contained. Both are counted as success.

## The number can rise as quality falls

Make the handoff harder to reach and containment goes up. Remove the path to a person entirely and it approaches 100 percent.

That is why containment alone is unsafe as a target. Optimised in isolation it rewards exactly the behaviour customers hate most.

Read it beside task completion, which asks whether they actually got the thing. [Task completion rate](/glossary/task-completion-rate)

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Source: https://evidova.com/glossary/containment-rate