Voicebot ROI calculator
Why €0.90 per talk minute?
Agent with a gross salary of €32,000 per year
- Gross salary
- €32,000
- Employer social security contributions (22%)
- €7,040
- Cover and off-peak hours (10%)
- €3,904
- Management: team leads and quality assurance (10%)
- €4,294
- Training
- €1,000
- Software: CRM, ticketing, phone system
- €2,400
- Office and workplace
- €3,600
- Full cost per employee and year
- €54,238
- 8 FTE × €54,238
- €433,907
- 10,000 calls × 4:00 min × 12 months
- 480,000 min
- €433,907 ÷ 480,000 talk minutes
- €0.90
For comparison: one fully utilised full-time agent
- 261 weekdays minus 10 public holidays, 30 days of leave, 15 sick days, 8 hours each
- 1,648 h
- Minus 15% for breaks, meetings, training
- 1,401 h
- Of that 70% on calls, the rest is after-call work
- 981 h
- €54,238 ÷ 58,834 talk minutes
- €0.92
Cost savings
€24,477
of €433,907 in total
Savings per minute
€0.50
Human: €0.90 | Bot: €0.40
Savings per call
€2.02
Human: €3.62 | Bot: €1.60
Savings per year by automation rate
Click the chart to set the rate.
ROI
1.3x
1x = pays for itself
Break-even
from 16.6%
Automation rate
Capacity freed
2 FTE
of 8 FTE today
Missed calls
Extra revenue per year
€0
with the AI on the phone
Extra orders
0
per month
Revenue per AI euro
€0.00
at €0 AI cost per year
Every call nobody answers today can be a lost order. The AI answers every call, at night too and when everyone is busy.
How we calculate: 0 missed calls × 20% conversion rate × €100 order value × 2/3 = €0 per month. The 2/3 are the callers who never call back (Car Wars 2026). This revenue comes on top of the cost savings above.
At which rate does the AI phone assistant pay off?
| Cost today per year | Avg. cost per call today | Automation rate | Avg. cost per call with botBrains | ROI | Savings per year | Total cost with botBrains | Capacity freed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| €433,907 | €3.62 | 0% | €4.02 | 0x | -€48,000 | €481,907 | 0 FTE |
| €433,907 | €3.62 | 16.6%Break-even | €3.62 | 1x | €0 | €433,907 | 1.3 FTE |
| €433,907 | €3.62 | 20% | €3.53 | 1.1x | +€9,981 | €423,926 | 1.6 FTE |
| €433,907 | €3.62 | 25%Expected automation | €3.41 | 1.3x | +€24,477 | €409,430 | 2 FTE |
| €433,907 | €3.62 | 50% | €2.81 | 1.8x | +€96,954 | €336,954 | 4 FTE |
| €433,907 | €3.62 | 80% | €2.08 | 2.1x | +€183,926 | €249,981 | 6.4 FTE |
Frequently asked questions
How many talk minutes does an agent handle per month?
Of 2,088 contract hours per year, a full-time customer service agent spends about 981 hours actually talking to customers. That is roughly 4,900 talk minutes per month. At 4 minutes per call, one full-time agent handles about 1,250 calls per month, or 56 per working day.
261 working days × 8 h
minus 10 public holidays, 30 days of leave, 15 sick days
minus 15% breaks, meetings, training
70%, the rest is after-call work
| Industry | Talk minutes per month | Avg. duration | Calls per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| General customer service | 4,903 | 4 min | 1,226 |
| Banking | 4,641 | 4.5 min | 1,031 |
| Utilities and grid operators | 4,734 | 4.5 min | 1,052 |
| Car dealerships | 4,557 | 3 min | 1,519 |
Important for staff planning: positions change in blocks. Half a position equals about 2,500 talk minutes per month. Only once the AI takes over that much can you redeploy half a position, through turnover, part-time or new tasks. Smaller relief shows up first as shorter waiting times and less overtime. That is why the calculator shows the relief in FTE.
What does a talk minute with an agent cost?
Usually between €1 and €1.70. The calculation below shows it for an agent in general customer service: full cost per year divided by the minutes the agent actually spends on the phone. In the employee view the calculator uses your team: agents × full cost ÷ your talk minutes (calls × average duration). If your team talks less than the 58,800 minutes of one fully utilised full-time agent, each minute costs more.
Phone customer service agent at a German company
- Gross salary
- €36,000
- Employer social security contributions (22%)
- €7,920
- Cover and off-peak hours (10%)
- €4,392
- Management: team leads and quality assurance (10%)
- €4,831
- Training: product, phone, data protection
- €1,000
- Software: CRM, ticketing, phone system
- €2,400
- Office and workplace
- €3,600
- Full cost per employee and year
- €60,143
- 261 weekdays minus 10 public holidays, 30 days of leave, 15 sick days, 8 hours each
- 1,648 h
- Minus 15% for breaks, meetings, training
- 1,401 h
- Of that 70% on calls, the rest is after-call work
- 981 h
- €60,143 ÷ 58,834 talk minutes
- €1.02
What counts as resolved automatically?
A call the AI phone assistant completes without an agent: an answered question, a booked appointment, a change made after customer authentication. If a call is forwarded or taken down as a callback request, it counts as handed over.
Do handed-over calls still help?
Yes. Handed-over calls reach the agent with the request and, after authentication, with customer data. Nobody has to ask again who is calling and why. The calculator sets this saving to 0 minutes by default. You can enter it with the "Time saved per transfer" slider. The minutes the agent talks before a handover cost AI minutes.
At which automation rate does the AI phone assistant pay off?
The break-even shows it. It is where AI cost plus remaining staff cost equals today’s cost exactly. The table shows what is left per year for every rate.
What are the benefits of replacing a call center with your own team plus AI?
- You pay no call center margin.
- There is no queue.
- Peaks are no longer a problem, and they are hard for a call center to absorb too.
- You pay for usage instead of a minimum commitment, depending on the call center.
- No slow retraining when policies change: you change a flow centrally in one place and have 100% process fidelity from that moment on.
- You get full access to your call data, including analytics.
How is the price made up?
botBrains Voice costs €0.40 per talk minute, in every industry. Everything else is included: platform, analytics, integrations and users. The minimum volume is 1,000 minutes per month, about 250 calls.
How does the calculator count AI minutes?
Like the invoice: per call, every started minute counts. A call the AI resolves costs its average duration rounded up, so 4:30 is billed as 5 minutes. Before a handover the AI talks the time saved plus 30 seconds, mainly because it has to give additional notices: about recording and, as a transparency obligation under Art. 50 of the EU AI Act, that the caller is talking to an AI. With 1:00 saved that is 1:30, billed as 2 minutes. Your team saves exactly 1:00, without rounding.
Is a call billed if the customer hangs up early?
Yes. Every started talk minute is billed, including calls where the customer drops off. These calls also show up in reporting, so you can see how often and where customers hang up.
Does the AI learn from transfers?
Yes. After a transfer we keep listening, so reporting and quality management continue for the rest of the call. With Suggestions we find the knowledge the AI was missing, so it can answer more of these calls itself next time.
How quickly do you reach the automation rate?
From day 1 the AI phone assistant answers every call as an AI receptionist and routes it to the right team. In the first week, appointment management, customer authentication and knowledge questions follow. After one month the AI fully handles everything that doesn’t strictly need a human.
What does the calculator leave out?
The calculator only counts costs on the phone. It leaves out calls nobody answers today and the revenue lost through them, as well as availability at night and on weekends and happier customers. The savings are therefore rather a lower bound.