Cost per case as a function of volume, agent usage and engineering time — and the pilot price that comes out of it. Every figure below is an input you can change; nothing is hard-coded.
ScenarioModel
Deflection rate45%
0%every second case95%
Share of enquiries the agent closes without a human ever touching them.
Volume250
25cases per month10,000
Drag to see how cost per case and savings move with scale.
Suggested pilot price
—
—
Cost per case
—
Monthly run cost
—
Monthly cost composition
Model inference—
Retrieval / grounding—
Platform & storage—
Support & engineering——
Total per month—
Variable (scales with volume)—
Fixed (independent of volume)—
Pilot economics
Build (one-off)——
Run cost over pilot—
Total cost to deliver—
Price · setup fee—
Price · per month—
Pilot contract value—
Contribution—
Effective recovery on your time——
Sanity check vs. a quoted price
Quoted contract value—
Gross margin at that price—
Volume ceiling at that pricecases/month before the fee stops covering cost—
Headroom on today's volume—
Recovery on your time at that price—
Steady state · year one after pilot
Annual run cost—
Annual price at target margin—
Equivalent monthly—
Annual contribution—
Savings vs. handling it by hand
Same volume, two ways of serving it. The left column is what the work costs today at the staff cost and handling time you entered; the right is what it costs once the agent absorbs the deflected share and shortens the rest. Move the deflection slider to see how sensitive the case is to that one assumption.
Today · all manual
—
per month · — per case
Cases handled by staff—
Staff time consumed—
Annual cost—
With Drift
—
per month · — per case
Cases still reaching staff—
Staff time consumed—
Fee to Drift—
Annual cost—
Net saving
—
—
Per year
—
Return per € spent
—
Payback
—
Staff time freed
—
Where the case turns
Break-even deflectionbelow this the fee costs more than the time it saves—
Headroom on today's assumption—
Break-even volume at this deflectioncases/month needed for the fee to pay for itself—
Savings across deflection rates
The same engagement at every plausible deflection rate, so the discussion can be about which row is realistic rather than whether the model is rigged.
Deflection
Cases to staff
Staff hours / mo
Staff cost / mo
+ Drift fee
Total / mo
Saving / mo
Saving / year
Volume sensitivity
What the same engagement costs and yields at different volumes. Fixed cost and your engineering time stay flat, so cost per case falls quickly — this is the argument for pricing in bands rather than per case.
Cases / month
Cases / year
Variable cost
Total monthly cost
Cost per case
Price @ target margin
Margin at quoted price
Tier builder
Monthly price for each volume band at the target margin, rounded to a sellable number. Use these as the published tiers; the band ceiling is the fair-use cap written into the contract.