Six months of stable unit economics. The next $49.2K is a routing problem.
A six-month cost-to-serve study held the per-contact baseline flat at $5.18 while FCR ran around 82.3% — a stable platform, not a regression. The lever with the most leverage isn't training; it's routing. Phone runs at $8.50 per contact; chat at $2.80. I sized a 20% phone-to-chat migration plus a 5pt FCR lift against the derived cost-to-serve model and turned an incremental dashboard into a $49.2K annual savings thesis at 63% ROI.
Three insights that reframed the program.
Phone costs 3× more than chat
Phone sits at $8.50 per contact, chat at $2.80 — a $5.70 gap on every interaction. Volume is currently split roughly evenly across channels.
7 intents, each around 14.4%
Retention Discussion, Complaint Resolution, and Product Information are within a point of each other. No single dominant intent — which means automation needs to target the simple-tail of multiple intents, not a silver bullet.
Bimodal FCR — top quartile saturated, bottom tail drags
Median FCR is 89.3% — most of 75 agents are at ceiling. Bottom quartile sits at ≤ 78.9%, with the floor at 48.5%. The opportunity is the tail, not training the average agent.
Today's operating picture.
Chat is 3× cheaper than phone — and resolves at higher efficiency.
Top 5 categories = 71.9% of volume.
Billing Inquiry: 14.3% of volume (7,147 cases) at 15.6m each. Account-balance and payment-history queries are 60–70% automatable — roughly 7,944+ cases off the floor annualised.
7 months of operating data.
Top 5 all resolve at 98% FCR. The bottom sits at 48.5%.
Pair top 5 with bottom 10. +15–20% FCR in the bottom quartile within 90 days ≈ $325K avoided repeat contacts.
Four strategic proposals, each with sized impact.
Progressive validation + pre-population
Buddy system for bottom quartile
Template library for top categories
Chatbot for balance + payment history
A stable cost baseline — and the next lever is routing.
Two cash levers stack to $49.2K annual savings.
Shift 20% of phone to chat & email
Validated by the $5.70/contact cost gap and chat's 82.5% FCR.
Improve FCR by 5pt via training + KB
Buddy system + template library across the top categories (71.9% of volume). 5pt lift avoids ~5% of annual cost via fewer repeat contacts.
Skills-based routing + WFM
Route by intent, not availability. Compresses the 50pt performance gap toward the median (89.3%).
AI chatbot for top repetitive queries
Billing balance, payment history, order status — the simple tail.