You don’t need another article telling you “AI is the future.” You need a practical way to prove its value to your CFO. This guide cuts through the hype and gives you a simple framework to build a real business case for conversational and agentic AI in your Salesforce contact centre.
Executive Summary: Your AI ROI Cheat Sheet
AI ROI is hidden in operational waste
The biggest gains are found in three key areas: 1) Revenue Leaks (lost high-value sales calls), 2) The Wasted Time Tax (time lost to manual call logging and transfers), and 3) The Repetitive Task Burden (agents handling simple, automatable queries).
Focus on a specific problem
Don’t try to boil the ocean. Target a clear, costly problem first, like high abandonment rates, low First Call Resolution (FCR), or excessive agent time spent on manual Salesforce data entry.
Quantify your waste in minutes
You can build a simple financial model. For example, [Total Calls] x [% of Repetitive Calls] x [Avg. Handle Time] x [Agent Cost per Min] quickly reveals the annual cost of tasks that could be fully automated.
Build your business case
Use this guide’s formulas to create a strong “back-of-the-napkin” estimate, then let our team build you a free, bespoke AI ROI projection based on your actual call data.
When you’re running a busy contact centre or sales team on Salesforce, you don’t need magic. You need math. You need to know: if I invest in conversational AI, what is the actual return? Where will I see it? And how can I build a business case that my CFO will actually approve?
The good news? It’s not as abstract as it sounds, and is something we do with customers every day.
Getting a real number for your AI ROI isn’t about gazing into a crystal ball. It’s about a practical, bottoms-up analysis of your current operations. Here’s a simplified version of our framework that you can use to build your own projection.
Step 1: Start with Your “Why” (The Discovery)
Before you can calculate a return, you have to define the problem. Conversational AI is a tool, not a strategy. (If you’re new to the term, check out our simple guide: What is Conversational AI?) What specific, costly problem are you trying to solve?
Look at your existing dashboards and talk to your team. The “why” is usually hiding in one of these common pain points:
- “Our hold times are too long, and our abandonment rate is killing us.”
(Efficiency Problem) - “My agents are burning out answering the same five simple questions all day.”
(Repetitive Task Problem) - “Our First Call Resolution (FCR) is low because calls keep getting routed to the wrong department.”
(Routing Problem) - “My sales team spends more time logging calls in Salesforce than actually selling.”
(Productivity Problem) - “We have no idea why customers are calling, so we can’t fix the root cause.”
(Data Problem)
Pinpoint 1-2 of these as your primary targets. This focuses your calculations and stops you from boiling the ocean.
Step 2: Find the Hidden Costs (The 3 Pillars of AI ROI)
Now that you know your “why,” you can find the money. Your AI ROI is hiding in plain sight, disguised as operational waste. We find it in three main areas.
Pillar 1: The “Revenue Leak”
This is the money you’re actively losing. It’s the high-value sales call that got routed to support, sat on hold for 10 minutes, and hung up. It’s the frustrated customer who churns because they could never get a simple answer.
- How to find it: Look at your call abandonment rates (especially for sales queues), call data for transfers away from revenue-generating teams, and your customer churn metrics.
- Example: We identified one contact center where 12% of their inbound calls were being transferred almost immediately; a classic sign of an opportunity to improve routing and customer experience and fix a crucial revenue leak.
Pillar 2: The “Wasted Time” Tax
This is the “swivel chair” cost. It’s the cumulative time your agents spend on tasks that don’t help a customer.
- Manual call logging: That 60-90 seconds agents spend after every single call typing notes into Salesforce? That’s a tax.
- Manual transfers: The 1.5 minutes your agent spends finding the right person, explaining the problem, and initiating a transfer? That’s a tax.
- Manual identity verification: The 45 seconds spent asking “Can you confirm your name, account number, and mother’s maiden name?” That’s a tax.
When you add up this tax across hundreds of agents and thousands of calls, the number becomes staggering.
Let’s do a quick example: Imagine 100 agents who each handle 50 calls a day. If they spend just 90 seconds (1.5 minutes) on manual after-call work for each one, that’s:
100 agents x 50 calls/day x 1.5 min/call = 7,500 minutes of wasted time. Every single day.
At a loaded cost of $0.52/minute, that’s over $1 million per year ($3,900/day x 260 working days) spent just on manual data entry.
Pillar 3: The “Repetitive Task” Burden
This is the cost of using a skilled, expensive human agent as a simple lookup tool. These are the calls that are necessary for the customer but add zero value for your agent, like:
- “What’s my account balance?”
- “Where is my order?”
- “What are your opening hours?”
- “What’s the price for product X?”
This is the low-hanging fruit for AI. By automating these, you don’t just save money; you free your agents to work on the complex, high-value problems that need them the most.
Just look at Sutton Tools. They automated 77% of their price and availability inquiries. The result? They saved 24 hours of non-stop agent conversation time in the first month alone. That’s 3 full workdays reclaimed.
Step 3: Run the Numbers (The “Back-of-the-Napkin” Model)
You have your “why” and your “where.” Now, let’s do some simple math. You’ll need two baseline numbers:
- Total Annual Calls: How many calls do you handle a year?
- Fully-Loaded Agent Cost per Minute: (This is not just salary. Include taxes, benefits, overhead, etc., and break it down to a per-minute cost. A $60,000/year fully-loaded agent costs about $0.52/minute.)
The Wasted Time ROI (Bad Routing)
- [Total Annual Calls] x [% of Calls Transferred] x [Avg. Time per Transfer (in min)] x [Agent Cost per Min]
- Example: 1,000,000 calls/year * 12% transferred * 1.5 min/transfer * $0.52/min = $93,600 lost to bad routing.
- AI Solution: A hybrid of Conversational and Agentic AI (like the Natterbox AI Agents). Conversational AI understands why a customer is calling, and Agentic AI acts on that intent, getting them to the right agent (or AI) the first time.
The Wasted Time ROI (Manual Salesforce Logging)
- [Total Annual Calls] x [Avg. Time to Log Call (in min)] x [Agent Cost per Min]
- Example: 1,000,000 calls/year * 1.25 min/log * $0.52/min = $650,000 lost to manual data entry.
- AI Solution: This is a core task for agentic AI, which can automate this entirely – logging call notes, transcripts, and sentiment in Salesforce instantly, no agent action required. Natterbox’s AI Advisor automates this for both human and AI conversations.
The Repetitive Task ROI (Automation)
- [Total Annual Calls] x [% of Repetitive Calls] x [Avg. Handle Time (in min)] x [Agent Cost per Min]
- Example: 1,000,000 calls/year * 30% repetitive * 3 min/call * $0.52/min = $468,000 lost to simple questions.
- AI Solution: A conversational AI agent can handle these 30% of calls end-to-end, 24/7, for a fraction of the cost.
Your Business Case is Ready.
Look at those numbers. Suddenly, AI isn’t a vague, futuristic “nice-to-have.” It’s a direct solution to a six- or seven-figure problem.
When you combine:
- $93,600 saved from fixing poor routing
- $650,000 saved from automating manual admin
- $468,000 from handing off repetitive tasks to AI Agents
You have a $1.2M+ business case for investing in conversational and agentic AI.
And that’s before you calculate the Revenue Leak from missed sales or the Customer Lifetime Value boost from better CSAT scores (like BuyaCar, who saw a 33% drop in call abandonment).
Stop Guessing. Get Your Custom AI ROI Projection.
These “back-of-the-napkin” calculations are a great start. But they’re just estimates.
The real power comes when you apply this model to your specific call data, your Salesforce setup, and your business goals. We can help you do that.
Our team will work with you to analyze your current operations and build a bespoke, data-backed ROI projection, for free. No hype. Just the numbers you need to make the right decision.