When leaders think about AI, one question rises to the top: “What’s the ROI of AI in a contact center?”

We built an ROI calculator to help answer that. But if you’re not ready to plug in your numbers, or if you want to understand why AI agents drive savings before you do, this breakdown is for you.

Let’s walk through what really drives contact center ROI through automation, covering the hard costs, soft costs, and not-so-obvious experience gains.

1. The biggest cost in your contact center? People.

For most enterprise contact centers, labor accounts for 60–70% of total costs. And that makes sense: handling thousands of calls a day requires large teams, complex scheduling, onboarding, training, and continuous QA.

But here’s the catch, a large percentage of those calls are highly repetitive.

• “What’s my order status?”
• “I need to reschedule an appointment.”
• “Can I update my payment method?”

These aren’t complex. But they tie up your team, drive up wait times, and burn through budget.

Advanced voice and chat AI agents can resolve these kinds of calls automatically, no wait, no script, no handoff. That’s where the savings start.

2. How much can AI agents really save your contact center?

We ran the numbers in our ROI calculator, based on actual customer inputs. Here’s what we found:

Labor savings

• Live agent cost per call: $4–$7
• AI agent cost per call: ~$1
• For a team handling 500,000 calls per month, that’s a potential $2–3M in annual savings just on repetitive Tier 1 calls.

Efficiency gains

• Faster resolution: No hold times, no transfers
• 24/7 coverage: Nights, weekends, and holidays
• Consistent experience: No coaching gaps or missed steps

“Seasonal hiring used to be a massive effort that consumed the entire summer,” said Chris Alston, Solutions Architect at Bulwark Pest Control. “Bringing on Replicant has reduced the need so significantly that now you hardly even hear about it.”

Experience impact

• Lower wait times = happier customers
• Shorter handle times = less agent burnout
• Consistent resolution = better CSAT and retention

“Customers like the fact that the bot is available 24/7 and provides quick responses to getting answers to the more common questions without waiting,” said Brien Mikell, Director of Customer Engagement at Love’s Travel Stops.

In short: AI doesn’t just save money, it scales your support without scaling your team.

“Implementing Replicant at Sunrun has pretty much paid for itself,” said Stetson Wood, former Director of Engineering and Communications Domain Owner at Sunrun. “Not only have we been able to save money with the number of agents that we have on the phone, but the service is collecting money.”

3. What goes into the ROI calculation?

Here’s how to calculate call center automation ROI, based on the same inputs our ROI calculator uses:

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Most teams see the highest return on call center automation when they focus on high-volume, repetitive interactions first. Want to see how your center stacks up? Run the calculator.

4. “Is it really that simple?”

We get it. It sounds too good to be true. Let’s clear up a few common questions:

Is this just another IVR or bot?
No. Replicant’s AI agents listen, think, and speak like your best reps. They don’t follow rigid scripts, they resolve. Want to hear the difference?

Try our AI Agent Showcase and experience a fully conversational AI agent in action.

Will this replace my agents?
AI agents can fully take over repetitive, seasonal, and Tier 1 call types, reducing or eliminating the need for short-term hiring and some entry-level staffing.

“Not that you won’t have human agents. You always will,” said Jay Baer, customer experience strategist, researcher, and author. “But having your people work solely on high impact, high emotion interactions while the bots do the rest? Standard practice, very soon.”

The goal isn’t to replace everyone. It's to reassign human effort where it matters most: complex, emotional, or edge-case interactions that still benefit from human touch.

What if our calls are complex?
AI can already handle far more than most leaders realize.

“I know you hear all the time about how AI is coming. About how AI is going to change everything (customer service first and foremost),” wrote Baer. “But from a firsthand participant, I’m telling you it’s all true (and then some), and it’s happening already.”

From emergency roadside assistance to multi-step payment disputes, Replicant’s AI agents are delivering full-call resolution, even when emotion, urgency, or layered data are in play.

And when escalation is needed? They hand off with full context, not forcing customers to repeat information, or dropping prior threads.

How do we ensure ongoing success after deployment?

Implementing AI agents is just the beginning. With Replicare, Replicant's all-inclusive partnership model, you receive unlimited support and continuous innovation to keep your AI agents performing at their best. This includes proactive discovery and deployment of new automation opportunities, regular AI model upgrades, and seamless integration of enhancements, all without additional costs or change orders.

5. Real-world call center automation ROI in action

• ECSI: Saved $1.5M annually by automating front desk calls with Replicant
• Leading wellness company: Saved $1.2M+ annually by automating their most common inquiries, with AI agents handling 10,000+ calls weekly during peak season
• DoorDash: Replaced a costly BPO with Replicant and now automates 35,000+ calls per day with a 94% success rate

These aren’t pilot projects. They’re live, scaled deployments across thousands of calls per day.

AI agents save you time, money, and headaches

If your team is answering the same questions day after day, your ROI from call center automation isn’t hypothetical, it’s inevitable. Try our ROI calculator to see the numbers for yourself.

Curious how this could work for your team? Book a personalized demo and let’s map it out together.