Calculating the Financial Potential of AI in the Contact Center
How WWT's ROI calculators provide financial clarity and justify strategic AI investments for enhanced customer experience and operational efficiency.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way businesses connect and engage with their customers. Central to this transformation is the contact center — a hub for customer interactions and rich data, and a prime area for enhancing operational efficiencies and customer experience (CX).
While contact center AI can significantly improve customer satisfaction and cost management, the decision to invest in AI solutions often hinges on demonstrating tangible financial benefits. This is where return on investment (ROI) calculators become indispensable.
ROI calculators are tools designed to quantify the financial impact of implementing AI solutions in contact centers. For example, WWT's suite of ROI calculators provides concrete numbers that illustrate potential cost savings and efficiency gains across a variety of use cases, making it easier for contact center leaders to justify investments in AI technologies to key decision makers and business counterparts. These calculators can be pivotal in shifting conversations from the theoretical benefits of AI to actionable insights.
By presenting real data, our ROI calculators help leaders move from considering AI use cases to actively implementing them in the contact center.
WWT's suite of ROI calculators
We currently offer four different ROI calculators tailored to various AI solutions for the contact center. Each calculator incorporates relevant variables and data based on the solution an organization is interested in. For example, our ROI calculator for real-time agent guidance factors in information like average agent cost and average talk time, while our calculator for quality management focuses on average evaluation time (more to come in the following section).
Our ROI calculators cover the following contact center AI solutions:
- Real-time agent guidance: Agent guidance solutions leverage AI to provide dynamic, context-specific support and next-best-action advice to agents during customer interactions, enhancing their ability to resolve issues quickly and accurately.
- Automated call summarization: This solution automatically generates concise summaries of customer interactions, capturing key points and action items from each call.
- Self-service virtual assistants: Virtual assistants are AI-powered bots that can handle routine inquiries and tasks, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex issues.
- Automated quality management: This solution automatically scores all customer interactions to improve CX, ensure compliance and support agents' professional development.
Our ROI calculators help contact center leaders understand the financial implications of each technology and make informed decisions about which solutions to implement.
The data you'll need to utilize our ROI calculators
The first step in leveraging our ROI calculators is to gather essential data points about your contact center. This data forms the foundation of your ROI projections, so it is important that the information is precise, accurate and current. We typically ask for the following information from clients:
- Total number of agents: You'll need an accurate and up-to-date number of all agents, including full-time, part-time and temporary staff. This number should be regularly updated to reflect any changes in staffing levels.
- Fully loaded agent cost per hour: Calculate the total hourly cost of an agent by including the base salary as well as benefits, taxes and any other associated costs. This should also account for any overtime pay or bonuses that agents might receive.
- Total monthly calls to agents: This data can typically be obtained from your contact center's call management system. It should be consistently recorded and reflect all incoming calls.
- Average talk time: Measure the average duration of time an agent spends talking to a customer during a call. This metric can be obtained from call recordings or call management systems. Be sure to exclude any outliers that might skew the average.
- Average call handle time: The average total time an agent spends on a call, including talk time and any after-call work.
- Average call wrap-up time: The average time an agent spends completing tasks related to a call after the customer has hung up. This can include updating records, sending follow-up emails or logging call details.
- Fully loaded QA cost per hour: Like the fully loaded agent cost, calculate the total hourly cost of a quality assurance (QA) analyst by including salary, benefits, taxes and other associated costs. This should also account for any additional training or certification costs for QA analysts.
- Total number of calls evaluated monthly by QA analysts: This data can be obtained from your QA management system.
- Average call evaluation time: The average time it takes for a QA analyst to evaluate a call. This metric can also be obtained from your QA management system. Be sure to exclude any outliers that might skew the average.
By providing our experts with key operational metrics, your organization can gain a clear view of potential cost savings, efficiency gains and AI's overall impact on CX.
Sample insights from our ROI calculators
Below is a sample of the information that organizations obtain by using our ROI calculators to understand investment requirements and potential cost savings from implementing contact center AI.
What you'll gain from our ROI calculators
The potential benefits of AI in contact centers are well-documented. However, transitioning from theory to practice requires demonstrating concrete evidence of AI's value. ROI calculators serve as the bridge between these theoretical advantages and actionable insights.
By providing detailed financial projections and efficiency metrics, our calculators help contact center leaders move beyond abstract concepts and focus on tangible outcomes. You can leverage our ROI calculators in the contact center to:
Facilitate data-driven decision making
Instead of relying on assumptions or anecdotal evidence, leaders can use the precise data generated by these calculators to guide their investment strategies. This data-driven approach allows organizations to make decisions based on reliable and quantifiable information, reducing the risk of costly missteps and enhancing the likelihood of successful AI implementations.
Enable strategic planning and implementation
With the insights provided by ROI calculators, contact center leaders can engage in more effective strategic planning and AI adoption initiatives. These tools allow them to identify which AI technologies will deliver the most significant returns and prioritize their deployment accordingly. By aligning AI investments with strategic goals, leaders can achieve maximum operational efficiency and customer satisfaction in their contact centers.
Build a strong business case for AI investments
A critical challenge in adopting new technologies is building a compelling business case. ROI calculators provide the necessary financial justification for AI investments, making it easier to secure buy-in from stakeholders. By presenting clear and quantifiable benefits, these tools help contact center leaders articulate the value of AI solutions to executives, board members and other decision-makers, facilitating smoother approval processes and faster implementation timelines.
Demonstrate real-world impact for continuous improvement
ROI calculators provide concrete evidence of AI's benefits by showcasing actual data on cost savings, efficiency improvements and revenue enhancements. This evidence is crucial for maintaining momentum and support for AI initiatives and enabling continuous innovation and improvements in contact center operations.
Get started today: Quantify AI's impact on your contact center
ROI calculators can be valuable tools for contact center leaders aiming to transition from AI exploration to successful AI implementation and contract center transformation. Our calculators offer the financial clarity, data-driven insights and strategic support necessary to convert AI potential into tangible performance enhancements.
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