Running a contact centre comes with plenty of moving parts: agents, software, telephony and countless other expenses that keep the operation running. But here's the big question: do you actually know how much each call costs your business?
Most companies don't. Why? Because calculating cost per call isn't as simple as dividing a few line items. Many businesses leave out critical expenses, such as shared services like IT and HR, partially dedicated executives, and abandoned calls, leaving them with incomplete and inaccurate data. Without a clear picture, you could be missing significant opportunities to benchmark yourself and to create a reliable baseline that justifies initiatives to save money and improve efficiency.
Here's what you need to know about understanding your cost per call, and why an audit is the right first step toward improving your contact centre's performance.
Why Cost per Call Is Often Misunderstood
Most companies underestimate their cost per call because they don't factor in all the overhead it takes to keep the contact centre running. These often-overlooked areas include:
- Total operating expenses (OPEX), from your actual annual budget, not forecasts
- Amortized capital expenses (CAPEX)
- Partial headcount for executives, IT, HR and others who support the centre
- Technology costs, including telephony, platforms, subscriptions and maintenance
- Vendor costs, including recruiters, BPOs, software, security and payroll support
- Transferred and abandoned calls, which still add to your costs
- Workstation and premises costs, including utilities, common areas and taxes
If you don't include these elements, you're only seeing a fraction of the full cost. That makes it harder to find where resources are underused, or where processes can be streamlined.
How to Calculate Your True Cost per Call
To get an accurate number, we recommend this approach:
1. Start with your total actual budget, OPEX plus CAPEX. Use your actual operating expenses for the year, not projections, and include the partial costs of the executives, IT teams and HR staff who support the contact centre.
2. Collect your call volume data. Break your total volumes down by type: simple, transactional calls such as order status or billing questions; complex calls that need a live agent; and every inbound channel, including voice, chat and email.
3. Apply the math. Work out what percentage of total volume each call type represents, and apply that percentage to your budget to see each type's cost contribution. Then identify the average handle time for each call and non-phone work type, and calculate the total minutes for each over a full year.
4. Include headcount and contact minutes. Identify your team by role and queue, then calculate the cost per contact and cost per minute for each type of inquiry and transaction, including non-phone work.
5. Simplify when needed. If detailed data isn't available, start with an average across all inbound calls, simple and complex, handled by voice, chat and email.
If gathering this data sounds overwhelming, that's a sign your business could benefit from a contact centre audit. An audit doesn't just collect the missing data; it shows where your people, processes and technology may be falling short.
Why Start with an Audit
If you're not sure where to begin, an audit is the best first step. It gives you:
- A clear understanding of your true cost per call, by type
- Insights into where your people, processes and technology are underused
- Recommendations to improve efficiency and customer experience while reducing costs
Once you understand your cost per call, the next step is to bring those costs down, efficiently and sustainably.