Call Center Cost Per Call: How to Calculate & Actually Reduce It

Cost per call is a deceptively simple metric that rarely tells the full story. And yet, it’s often used to justify budget decisions, hiring plans, or tech investments. The challenge isn’t calculating it – it’s understanding what’s really driving it.

According to ContactBabel’s latest industry report, the average cost of an inbound call now stands at $7.16, which is 42% more than a web chat, highlighting why more contact center leaders are under pressure to optimize it – but very few know where to begin.

This article is for operations leads, CFOs, and heads of sales or customer support who want to move beyond surface-level math and get serious about lowering costs without hurting performance.

The Real Cost Behind a Single Call

It’s tempting to simplify the math: take your monthly operating expenses, divide by total calls, and call it a day. But taking  shortcuts means ignoring the core truth of contact center economics: no two calls cost the same.

A routine password reset on chat takes two minutes. A fraud-related call in the financial sector might run for twelve, require a senior agent, trigger a compliance workflow, and tie up resources across systems. Treating them as cost-equivalent is not just inaccurate, it’s risky.

Yet many teams still report a single “average cost per call” metric in board meetings. It may look tidy in a spreadsheet, but it hides everything that actually drives cost:

• Call type: Is it support, sales, collections, or retention?
• Channel: Voice costs more than chat; email and messaging cost far less.
• Duration: A call that takes twice as long doesn’t always cost just twice as much.
• Agent tier: Entry-level vs specialist – different salary bands, different cost profiles.
• Customer value: A $100 client and a $100,000 client shouldn’t have the same cost ceiling.
• Region: Labor and telco costs can swing dramatically by geography.

What goes into the real cost of a single call

To understand the true cost of a single customer interaction, you have to account for every contributor, not just what shows up in payroll or software invoices.

Below is a breakdown of the most common and impactful cost categories across contact center operations:

Advanced Call Cost Models that Actually Reflect Reality

Too many teams still rely on total volume as the primary reference point. But if your contact center handles a mix of outbound sales, inbound support, retention calls, and compliance verification, then volume alone tells you nothing. You need models that reflect purpose, complexity, and context. Here’s how to do it:

Segment by purpose, not just volume

Calls aren’t created equally.Treating them as such is the fastest way to distort your unit economics.

Segmentation is important for a number of reasons:

• Inbound vs. outbound
  Outbound calls often require more dialing attempts, incur more telephony costs, and are harder to staff efficiently. Inbound calls come in spikes and require real-time readiness.
• Sales vs. support vs. collections
  A two-minute shipping update call costs far less than a 15-minute account recovery or a debt resolution conversation that spans multiple departments. Bundling these together blurs what’s working and what’s dragging your budget down.
• Simple vs. complex interactions
  Not all long calls are expensive – and not all short ones are cheap. The key variable is resolution effort, not just time. A quick call requiring supervisor approval and three systems is often costlier than a five-minute one resolved in one screen.

Channel-specific costs are foundational

If you’re still reporting a blended cost per call across channels, you’re not tracking cost, you’re tracking noise.

Every channel has a distinct cost and productivity curve:

Cost Per Minute vs. Cost Per Resolution

Most dashboards still show cost per minute. It’s neat, It’s consistent, It’s misleading.

Why? The goal of a call isn’t to last a certain number of minutes – it’s to resolve an issue. And some of the most expensive calls are the ones that don’t result in a resolution.

Cost per resolution reframes the objective. It answers the real question: how much do we spend to solve a customer problem?

For industries like finance, healthcare, and BNPL, this is critical, as these sectors deal with:

• Longer handle times
• Specialist agents
• Higher regulatory overhead
• High-risk customer outcomes

In these contexts, shaving 30 seconds off a call doesn’t help if the issue remains unresolved and the customer calls back, or worse, churns.

Where Contact Centers Overspend

Many contact centers think they’re running lean, but invisible inefficiencies are often baked into everyday workflows. And there are three main cost centers that rarely show up in budget reviews while quietly draining performance and profit in the background:

1. Wasted agent time isn’t just idle time

Agents aren’t just paid to talk, they’re paid to wait: for someone to answer, for systems to load, for the right lead to connect. In outbound environments, up to 25% of paid talk time is lost to voicemail.

Most dialers leave it up to agents to guess whether a call was answered by a human, which is wrong 22% of the time, leading to bad data, inflated wrap-up time, and wasted payroll.

With Voiso’s AI-powered Answering Machine Detection, only live calls reach the agent, increasing actual talk time by 3.5x, simply by eliminating dead calls before they hit the queue​.

2. Fragmented workflows multiply handle time

An agent toggling between three screens isn’t just inefficient – it’s also error-prone, slower to resolve, and less focused.

Most contact centers still rely on siloed tools: one for dialing, one for CRM, one for ticketing. Every switch adds seconds – and every second compounds across thousands of calls.

Voiso solves this by embedding its full contact center functionality directly inside Salesforce, Zoho, and Bitrix24. Agents can call, log, update, and follow up—all within one screen​​​.

3. Repetition is the costliest call type

If a customer has to call back to repeat their issue, it goes beyond  frustrating; it’s 100% waste.

The real cost isn’t the talk time, but the opportunity cost: another inbound slot lost, another agent-hour duplicated, and another resolution delay. Worse, these issues often go undetected until they pile into churn reports.

Voiso’s AI Speech Analytics prevents this by flagging unresolved issues, summarizing each call automatically, and surfacing repeat call reasons for QA teams to fix at the root​.

Strategic Ways to Reduce Cost Per Call

Reducing cost per call doesn’t mean cutting quality or pushing customers to frustrating automated systems. It’s about making strategic choices that reduce inefficiency without sacrificing service. Here’s how to do it right:

1. Automate low-value touchpoints

Not every customer query needs a live agent. In fact, many low-complexity tasks, like order status updates, basic troubleshooting, or account information requests, are better handled through automation.

Voiso’s Flow Builder offers a zero-code way to automate these interactions. Instead of routing simple requests to agents, you can use IVR menus or WhatsApp handovers to provide instant answers or self-service options.

A well-designed flow not only frees up agents for high-value tasks, it improves customer satisfaction by delivering quick resolutions. Plus, if a customer needs to escalate to a human, the transition is seamless – no need to repeat information.

Use SMS for smart follow-ups

One major cost driver is repeat calls, often because customers don’t have clear next steps after an interaction. Instead of hoping they’ll remember, it is better to automate follow-ups using SMS.

Voiso enables agents to send follow-up SMS messages directly after a call, ensuring that customers leave with all the details they need – whether it’s a booking confirmation, payment link, or simple instructions.

With SMS open rates at 98%, customers are almost guaranteed to see the information, reducing their need to call back for clarification​. This not only lowers call volume but also boosts first-call resolution.

For example, setting up SMS templates for common scenarios: appointment confirmations, troubleshooting steps, or follow-up surveys can save hours of agent time every week.

Optimize agent scheduling and remote work

Labor is the most significant expense in any contact center, but many still struggle with staffing inefficiencies: overloaded during peak times and underutilized during lulls, stemming from rigid scheduling and a lack of flexibility in workforce management.

The key isn’t just to forecast demand accurately but to adapt dynamically. Here’s how:

• Flexible staffing models: Using a mix of full-time, part-time, and on-demand agents to match varying call volumes helps maintain service levels without overstaffing.
• Dynamic shift planning: Automating shift adjustments based on real-time data, allows you to respond immediately to unexpected spikes or drops.
• Hybrid work policies: Implementing remote or hybrid models taps into a wider talent pool and reduces fixed costs like office space.
• Skills-based routing: Ensuring that specialized agents are only handling calls that require their expertise, while simpler tasks go to general agents makes the process highly efficient

How to achieve the most efficient workflow:

1. Track peak and off-peak trends using historical data. Identify patterns, such as increased call volume during certain hours or days, and schedule staff accordingly.
2. Regularly review agent performance metrics to spot inconsistencies and address productivity issues.
3. Use automated workforce management tools to ensure real-time adjustments without manual intervention.

Benchmarking: What’s a “Good” Cost Per Call?

One of the biggest mistakes contact centers make is comparing their cost per call to broad industry averages. In reality, what’s considered a “good” cost per call is highly context-dependent.

Why industry averages are misleading

Industry benchmarks are often treated as the gold standard, but they can be dangerously misleading. Why? Because they ignore the nuances that actually drive costs:

• Sector differences: A technical support call in telecom can’t be compared to a simple reservation call in hospitality.
• Geographic variations: Labor costs differ significantly between regions. A support call in the US will naturally cost more than one in Southeast Asia.
• Call complexity: Basic inquiries versus escalated issues – combining these into a single average masks true performance.

Instead of looking at generic averages, segmenting your costs by industry, geography, and call type will get you meaningful insights.

Below is a comparison of average cost-per-call figures for various industries, with the type of call (generally inbound customer support unless noted) and the year of the data where available. All values are in USD:

Focus on Cost-to-Value

The fundamental flaw in benchmarking is treating all calls as equal. In reality, cost per call only makes sense when aligned with call value. Here’s what matters more:

Cost Per Upsell

For sales-driven contact centers, not every call should be measured purely on cost. Consider:

• A 10-minute outbound call that results in a successful upsell might have a higher per-call cost, but it also drives revenue.
• Tracking cost per upsell can help balance efficiency with profitability.

Cost Per Satisfied Customer

For support-focused centers, the goal isn’t just to close a ticket, it’s to keep the customer satisfied. Why and how to use cost per satisfied customer as one of the primary metrics:

• High satisfaction (measured via NPS or CSAT) can correlate with long-term loyalty, reducing churn-related costs.
• Instead of just calculating cost per call, consider cost per satisfied resolution.
• Use Voiso’s AI Speech Analytics to analyze sentiment and tie satisfaction scores directly to cost metrics​.

The cheapest calls are not always the most valuable. A short, unresolved call that leads to customer dissatisfaction can end up costing more in retention efforts and reputation damage.

Monitor, Measure, and Iterate

Once you’ve implemented strategies to reduce cost per call, the real challenge begins: sustaining and continuously improving those savings. The key is to consistently measure the right metrics, identify patterns, and fine-tune processes.

KPIs to track

Not all metrics are equally valuable when it comes to understanding and controlling cost per call. Here are the four most impactful KPIs that directly influence your financial efficiency:

1. Cost per Resolution

A slightly longer call that resolves the issue on the first attempt is often more cost-effective than a quick call that leads to repeated follow-ups.

Tracking cost per resolution – not just per call – helps you understand the real financial impact of solving customer issues. It’s crucial in industries where resolution takes precedence over call duration, like finance, healthcare, and technical support.

How to track it:

• Use Voiso’s AI Speech Analytics to determine if the resolution was achieved and analyze factors contributing to higher costs per resolved issue​.

2. First Call Resolution (FCR) Rate

Repeated interactions on the same issue inflate costs unnecessarily. If your FCR is low, it’s a sign of ineffective call handling or insufficient agent training.

An FCR rate above industry standards (typically 70-75%) is a strong indicator of cost efficiency. High FCR means fewer repeat calls, saving both time and labor.

How to track it:

• Voiso’s real-time dashboards display FCR rates, allowing managers to pinpoint problematic call types or agent performance gaps​.

3. Agent Productivity

Agents spending excessive time on manual tasks or unnecessary admin work inflate the cost per call.

Agent productivity directly impacts operational costs. The focus should be on active talk time, wrap-up efficiency, and time spent on non-productive tasks.

How to track it:

• Voiso’s integrated analytics track agent talk time, pause durations, and after-call work, highlighting areas to streamline​.
• Monitor remote agent productivity through Voiso’s Mobile App, ensuring performance consistency regardless of location.

4. Channel Shift Ratio

If voice calls are steadily shifting to self-service or chat – without compromising resolution – you’re actively reducing cost per interaction. 

The channel shift ratio indicates how effectively you’re moving customer interactions from high-cost channels (like voice) to more economical ones (like chat or messaging).
 

How to track it:

• Voiso’s omnichannel dashboards help track volume changes across channels, so you can evaluate the effectiveness of your channel optimization efforts​.
• Use Voiso’s Flow Builder to push common voice inquiries to chat or messaging channels where appropriate​.

Tools to do it right

Having the right metrics is useless without effective tools to monitor and analyze them. Voiso’s platform is built to give you actionable insights, not just data.

Real-Time Dashboards

Voiso’s dashboards provide live tracking of KPIs, showing you not just the numbers but the context. If cost per call spikes, you can see which agents, call types, or channels are contributing to the increase.

Features that add value:

• Multi-channel visibility: Voice, chat, messaging—all in one view.
• Custom KPI widgets: Track the metrics that matter most, including resolution rates and channel shifts.
• Remote performance tracking: Monitor hybrid teams without compromising visibility.

Historical reporting

Spotting patterns requires more than just real-time monitoring, it needs in-depth analysis. Voiso’s reporting tools give you the ability to:

• Compare current metrics with historical performance to identify trends.
• Break down costs by agent, call type, and channel.
• Measure the effectiveness of new strategies, like self-service implementation or automation improvements.

You Don’t Need Cheaper Calls: You Need Smarter Ones.

Reducing cost per call isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about making your operations smarter, more agile, and focused on the customer. The goal isn’t just to spend less – it’s to make every dollar count by improving the experience or boosting conversions. When done right, cost optimization isn’t a sacrifice – it’s an upgrade.