Quick estimate
800
Agent hours freed per month
$336,000
Estimated annual cost recovered
Assumes 30% deflection of routine contacts and a $35 fully loaded hourly cost.
The formula, in full
Agent hours freed per month = calls per month × 30% deflection × average handle time (minutes) ÷ 60.
Annual cost recovered = hours freed × $35 per hour × 12, rounded to the nearest $1,000.
With the default inputs: 20,000 calls × 0.30 × 8 minutes ÷ 60 = 800 hours per month. 800 × $35 × 12 = $336,000 per year. The agent count does not change the estimate; it is there so you can sanity-check the hours against your team size. 800 hours is roughly five full-time agents' monthly capacity.
What the assumptions mean
- 30% deflection of routine contacts. A conservative starting point from programs I have delivered on Salesforce Service Cloud, Service Cloud Voice and Agentforce. Your number depends on how many contacts are routine, how good the knowledge base is, and which channels the automation runs on.
- $35 fully loaded hourly cost. Wages plus benefits, management and tooling for a US agent, as a round number. Offshore or specialist teams will differ.
- Average handle time. Use the handle time of the contacts you would automate, not the blended average, if you know it. Routine contacts are often shorter than average.
How to turn this into a real business case
- Pull contact reasons from your real data and tag which ones are routine.
- Set a deflection target per reason, not one number for everything.
- Decide what happens to freed hours: redeploy, absorb growth, or reduce.
- Add licensing and implementation costs, then the revenue and satisfaction effects that this calculator leaves out.
That is most of what the first two weeks of a discovery engagement produce. If you want to shortcut it, book a 30-minute call and bring your call volumes.