Why are users still opening tickets instead of using Knowledge or AI Search?

[Matthew_13]

Hi Community,

We’ve invested time in cleaning up Knowledge articles and enabled AI Search / Genius Results, but users still prefer opening tickets instead of self-service. Even when answers exist, adoption remains low.

It feels like the issue isn’t the content t’s how and when users encounter it.

I’m curious:

• What actually drove self-service adoption in your org?

• Did AI Search improve deflection, or just change how users searched?

• How do you measure “knowledge success” beyond article views?

Would love to hear what finally moved the needle for others.

[JuanitaR94 · Accepted solution]

Totally relatable. We saw the same thing better content alone didn’t change behavior.

What finally worked was meeting users earlier in the flow. Surfacing relevant articles during ticket creation and nudging them to review before submitting drove more deflection than improving KB quality. If the answer is already there, many won’t finish the ticket.

AI Search helped reduce friction for users who wanted self-service, but it didn’t create adoption by itself. 

We stopped focusing on article views and looked at:

• Ticket starts vs submits

• Tickets resolved via linked articles

• Repeat tickets on the same issue

Big lesson: self-service is a behavior problem, not a content problem.....