Most contact centers overpay for AI because they don’t ask the vendor the right questions before buying.
Here’s one of the most important:
AI vendors will tell you they can contain 35% of your calls.
Most buyers never ask: 35% of what?
That question changes everything.
Here’s the math vendors don’t walk you through:
Total call volume: 100,000
Calls the AI can actually handle: 10,000
Vendor’s claimed containment rate: 35%
Actual calls contained: 3,500
That’s 3.5% of your total call volume. Not 35%.
The vendor isn’t lying, technically. Their AI does contain 35% of the calls it’s eligible to handle. But if you assumed that number applied to your full call population, your business case just fell apart.
Token-based pricing makes this worse.
The AI may still process all 100,000 calls to figure out which ones it can handle. So you’re paying for 100,000 calls worth of processing to resolve 3,500. Your true cost per contained call is far higher than the headline rate suggests.
Before you sign anything, ask these four questions:
1. Does your containment rate apply to total call volume or only eligible calls?
2. How many of my actual calls can your AI handle?
3. What is the true cost per contained call, including all processing?
4. Will you guarantee the outcome and put compensation at risk if you miss it?
Savings claims without performance guarantees aren’t guarantees.
They’re projections.
I’m Mark Danielson, and I help healthcare leaders reduce support costs while improving patient satisfaction.
Follow me for practical insights on cutting contact center costs, improving service quality, and modernizing operations without the tradeoffs.
