What is an assumed resolution? Who bills for silence

The short version: an assumed resolution is an AI support conversation counted as resolved because the customer left without asking for more help, not because they said they were helped. As read on 7 October 2026, five of the seven vendors whose billing rule we found bill on that basis: Intercom's Fin, Featurebase's Fibi, Help Scout, Gorgias and HubSpot. The wait before silence counts runs from 3 minutes at Featurebase to 72 hours at Gorgias and HubSpot; Intercom's billing page states none, and an Intercom engineer put Fin's at 24 hours after its last answer in an April 2025 forum reply. Zendesk bills silence only if an LLM check of the transcript passes, and Freshdesk bills every AI Agent session, resolved or not.

Where the term comes from

Intercom uses the term, and uses it openly. Its billing page for Fin splits a resolution in two: following Fin's last answer, the customer either "confirms the answer was satisfactory (confirmed resolution), or exits the conversation without requesting further assistance (assumed resolution)". Fin's reporting counts the two separately, so a Fin customer can see how much of their resolution figure is silence. Of the pages read for this piece, only Intercom's points to a report that shows the two side by side.

The same page is plain about the hard cases. A customer who is frustrated with Fin's answer and leaves without asking for more help "is counted as an Assumed Resolution and will be charged", which we covered in our piece on Fin's resolution rate. A conversation a teammate joins after Fin has answered, before the customer asks for a person, is also billed, which is the subject of our piece on hand-offs.

The name has started to travel. Featurebase prices its AI agent, Fibi, at $0.49 per resolution, with a definition in the same words as Fin's, with Fibi's name in it: confirmed or assumed, the same teammate rule, the same reversal if the customer comes back. Featurebase adds the one number Intercom's billing page leaves out. Its FAQ says an assumed resolution is recorded when the customer does not ask a follow-up question or for a person, and that the conversation "auto-closes after 3 minutes of inactivity". Stating the window is to Featurebase's credit. Three minutes is a short time to decide a customer was helped, though a customer who returns to the same conversation later is not charged for it.

Not every vendor uses the word. Several use the rule.

Who counts silence as a resolution, as of 7 October 2026

Each row is from the vendor's own help or pricing page, read in a browser on 7 October 2026. "Not stated" means the page does not say.

Salesforce's Agentforce pricing page, read the same day, prices mainly by Flex Credits ($500 per 100,000) or by conversation, and lists "Help Agent Resolutions" at $2 without saying how a resolution is counted, so it has no row until that rule is found. Crisp, Helply and eesel are not yet covered; our pricing models piece sets out what they bill for instead.

Zendesk wins this table. Since 18 May 2026, a conversation where the customer did not ask for more but the verification did not pass is a "Contained resolution", and it does not count against the resolution allowance. It is the only vendor here that checks whether the customer was helped before billing. The others check only that the AI answered and nobody asked for more. Whether an LLM grading a transcript is a strong enough check is a fair question, but it is a check of the outcome.

Freshdesk gets a different kind of credit. Billing per session means you pay for conversations that failed, but the invoice never calls a failure a success. The bill and the outcome are separate questions, which is honest.

Two details that change the number on your bill

What happens after the timer. HubSpot sets the status 72 hours after the last visitor response, and says later events, "such as messages from a live agent, a transfer request, or negative feedback", will not change it. A customer who writes back on day four to say the answer was wrong does not undo the charge. HubSpot does restart the window if an email thread is reopened after 72 hours, which can mean a second charge for a second resolution.

What happens when the customer comes back. Intercom and Featurebase both say a resolution is deducted and not charged if the customer returns to the same conversation for more help, even across billing periods. That is a real protection and it is stated plainly. Its limit is the phrase "the same conversation": a customer who starts a new chat about the same problem is not covered by that sentence. Help Scout, Gorgias and HubSpot do not state a reversal of this kind on the pages read.

How to find the assumed resolutions in your own bill

You can run this on any vendor in the table with an afternoon and the vendor's own reports.

1. Find your vendor's rule. Use the table above, then read your vendor's billing page yourself. Wording changes, and the date in the table heading is the date each row was true.
2. Get the list of billed conversations, not the total. Fin lists them under Analyze, Performance, in the "Performance funnel". Help Scout lists them in the Beacon's Sessions tab, filtered to "Contact helped". HubSpot points to its resolution analytics. If your vendor cannot give you the list, that is the finding.
3. Separate the silent ones. On Fin, compare assumed resolutions with confirmed resolutions in reporting. Elsewhere, mark each billed conversation by whether the customer's last message said they were helped.
4. Read a random sample of the silent ones. Forty is enough to see a pattern. Mark each as helped, not helped or unclear, by your judgement, and count unclear as not helped. If two people can grade the sample separately, compare their marks.
5. Look for your own team in the transcript. On Fin, Featurebase and HubSpot, a teammate's reply does not by itself stop the charge. Every billed conversation with a human reply in it is worth a second look.
6. Check the comebacks. Search for customers who wrote again about the same problem within a week. Note whether the original charge was reversed, and whether they came back in the same conversation or a new one.
7. Take the list to the vendor. Send the conversation IDs, not a percentage. Specific conversations are what a vendor can check and credit.

Why silence is the wrong evidence

An assumed resolution is not a lie. Every vendor in the table that bills silence also publishes the rule, and some publish it in more detail than most buyers read. The problem is the definition, not the disclosure: silence is evidence that the customer stopped typing, and the rule treats it as evidence that they were helped. Customers go quiet because they were helped, because they gave up, because they phoned instead, and because a person on your team answered first. A rule that bills the first three at the same price is a choice about who carries the cost of not knowing which. On Fin, Featurebase and HubSpot, the fourth can be billed too. The same rule feeds the resolution rate a vendor reports, so a high rate can be mostly silence; on Fin, the reporting split shows how much.

Where Varley stands

Varley sells a competing AI support agent, billed per resolution, so read this section as a vendor talking about itself. Everything above it can be checked on the vendors' own pages.

Varley's published definition is at How we count a resolution. On the point of this piece, it says: "Varley does not count assumed resolutions and does not bill them." It also says: "You are never charged for a conversation Varley hands to a human." The early-access price is $0.50 per resolution, as the pricing page shows today. If you want to hold us to the same test as the vendors above, How we count a resolution sets out how.

Get early access to Varley.

Right of reply

None of the companies named here was approached before publication. Every claim is taken from their own public pages, read on the date given in the sources. If anything on this page is wrong or has changed, write to support@dragapp.com and the correction will be published here with a date, including if it is inconvenient for us.

Questions

Is an assumed resolution billed?

Usually. On the per-resolution plans read here, the charge is avoided when the customer asks for more help or a person before the window closes, when the AI escalates, or when the AI gave no real answer. Fin and Fibi also reverse the charge if the customer returns to the same conversation, even across billing periods.

Can I get assumed resolutions refunded?

Ask for credit conversation by conversation, not as a percentage. Intercom and Featurebase already deduct a resolution if the customer returns to the same conversation, even across billing periods. For anything else, send the vendor the conversation IDs and transcripts showing the customer was not helped. A specific list can be checked; a disputed rate cannot.

What is the difference between an assumed and a confirmed resolution?

A confirmed resolution is one where the customer said the answer helped, for example by replying "that helped". An assumed resolution is one where the customer left without asking for more help and said nothing either way. On Intercom's Fin both are billed at the same price, and Fin's reporting shows the two as separate figures.

Is an assumed resolution the same as containment?

Close, but not the same. Containment means the AI handled the conversation without a person taking it over, whether or not the customer was helped. An assumed resolution is a contained conversation that the vendor then bills as resolved. Zendesk keeps the two apart: a silent conversation that fails its check is a "Contained resolution" and is not billed.

Changes to this piece

7 Oct 2026

First published.

Sources

• Fin AI Agent outcomes, Intercom help centre, including its FAQ. Read 7 October 2026.
• Reporting metrics and attributes, Fin Help Center. Read 7 October 2026.
• Fin's flawed assumed resolved and pricing design, Intercom Community, started 22 January 2025, including the reply of 22 April 2025 by Intercom technical support engineer Mateusz Leszkiewicz describing a 24 hour window. Read 7 October 2026.
• Fibi AI Agent resolutions, Featurebase help centre, including its FAQ. Read 7 October 2026.
• AI Resolutions Pricing, Help Scout docs. Read 7 October 2026.
• How you're billed for using Gorgias, Gorgias docs. Read 7 October 2026.
• Understand the customer agent, HubSpot Knowledge Base, updated 16 September 2026. Read 7 October 2026.
• About automated resolution tiers, Zendesk help, edited 30 September 2026. Read 7 October 2026.
• Purchase and manage Freddy AI add-ons, Freshdesk support, modified 4 August 2026. Read 7 October 2026.
• Agentforce pricing, Salesforce. Read 7 October 2026.