Forrester TEI studies report ~35% support-ticket deflection from portals — but every TEI study is commissioned and paid for by the vendor whose product is studied; enterprise-scale

Claim: Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) studies report self-service / portal deflection of ~35% of tickets/cases (SymphonyAI ITSM; Salesforce); Microsoft Dynamics 365 reports ~40%.

A related vendor figure: "32% email deflection" + "4-6 hours/account manager/week" of low-grade comms (Agiled vendor blog).

A widely cited unverified figure: "Deloitte: client portal reduces document-retrieval time by 35%" — cited secondhand by agencyhandy.com; original Deloitte report not located.

Source: tei.forrester.com (SymphonyAI, Salesforce, Microsoft TEI studies); agiled.app/blog ; agencyhandy.com

Confidence: Single-source per study; Industry-consensus that deflection is real at enterprise scale.

Caveat: Every TEI study is commissioned and paid for by the vendor whose product is studied. Figures are vendor-sponsored and enterprise-scale, not SMB. The "35% Deloitte" figure could not be traced to a primary Deloitte report — treat as unverified.

Why this matters for Candid: Efficiency is plausibly real but the hard numbers are vendor-sponsored. The defensible SMB framing is: deflection only matters if the SMB currently fields a steady volume of repetitive "where's my X" messages. If they don't, there's nothing to deflect.