At this moment, much calculating is being done with AI in customer contact, and the sum is usually short. The bot takes over a part of the traffic, so people can leave, and that is where the benefit lies. Anyone who lays that calculation alongside practice sees that it seldom adds up.
Gartner expects that half of the companies that reduced their customer contact staffing levels with AI as the reason will be hiring people again for comparable work by 2027, only under a different job title. The same research shows that only a small part of the implemented reductions was actually attributable to AI. Most had an economic motive and were given AI as an explanation after the fact.
The explanation for that decline is always the same. AI catches the simple traffic, and it is good at that too. What remains is the complicated part: the exceptions, the cases where the customer has already called three times before, the conversations where someone is angry or sad. Those conversations cost more knowledge and more time per piece. You are therefore left with a smaller group doing heavier work, and that is a different department than you had.
The costs that are not in the sum
In most calculations, the license is there, and it stops there. The money is in the connections with the systems that are already there, in the management, in the compliance, and in the time it takes to let employees work differently. That last item is almost always estimated too low, because it does not appear on an invoice.
What also plays a role: if the underlying process is not right, AI will not make it better. It only goes faster, and it becomes more difficult to explain why something is happening.
The profit is therefore often in work that looks boring. Removing repeat traffic, writing letters in plain language, repairing forms where people get stuck, automatically confirming appointments so that people do not have to call to ask if it is going ahead. Once that is cleared up and the structure and process are in place, you can sensibly look at where AI adds something. That order yields a business case that you will still stand behind in two years.
