Would an AI chatbot pay for itself? Work it out with your own numbers
This calculator takes ten figures from your own business — how many routine enquiries you get, how long each takes, what an hour of staff time costs, how many out-of-hours enquiries you lose, what a customer is worth, and the costs you were quoted — and shows whether a chatbot earns its keep. Nothing is filled in for you, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Your estimate
10 of 10 fields still to fill in.
How the estimate is worked out
Two things can make a chatbot worth having, and the calculator adds them together before taking off the running cost.
- Staff time freed. Routine enquiries a month, times the share the chatbot could handle end to end, times the minutes each one takes, converted to hours and valued at your all-in hourly cost.
- Customers you stop losing. Enquiries a month, times the share arriving out of hours, times the share of those you lose today, times your conversion rate, valued at the gross profit from one customer. It assumes the chatbot catches those enquiries and takes a name and number; it does not assume it wins the sale on its own.
- Payback. The one-off build cost divided by what is left each month after the running cost. If nothing is left, it never pays back, and the calculator says so plainly.
Where to find each number
- Enquiry volume: your phone system’s call reports, your shared inbox, and any chat or booking widget you already run. Count a normal month, not your busiest.
- Minutes per enquiry: time a handful yourself, including looking things up and logging the result.
- Hourly cost: the wage plus the employer costs set out in Business.gov.uk’s guide to the costs of employment — National Insurance, pension, leave, insurance, equipment and training.
- Out-of-hours share and losses: the time stamps on emails and web forms, and how many of those enquiries you never converted.
- Customer value: gross profit, not revenue, from your accounts.
- Costs: the quote you were given, split into monthly running and one-off build.
Before you trust the answer
Be conservative with the share a chatbot could handle end to end. Complaints, refunds, anything clinical, legal or financial, and anything needing judgement should stay with a person, and a good build hands those over rather than guessing. Our guides on custom versus off-the-shelf chatbots and Intercom Fin versus a custom build explain where that line usually falls and how the two pricing models differ, and how long a chatbot takes to build covers the time to budget before it starts paying back.
Sectors with high volumes of routine questions tend to show the clearest results — see how this works for dental practices and trades businesses.
Questions about the calculator
Why are none of the fields filled in?
Because any number we put there would be a guess dressed up as a fact. Your enquiry volume, the time each one takes and what a customer is worth to you are all in your own records. A result built on them tells you something; a result built on an industry average tells you about someone else’s business.
What should I enter for the cost of an hour of staff time?
More than the hourly wage. Business.gov.uk’s guide to the costs of employment lists employer National Insurance, workplace pension contributions, paid leave, insurance, equipment and training on top of salary, and GOV.UK sets out the minimum an employer must pay into a workplace pension. Add those to the wage before dividing by paid hours, or the saving will look smaller than it is.
Where do the running and build costs come from?
From a quote, yours or anyone else’s. Ask for the monthly running cost and any one-off build cost separately and enter each. For a subscription product with no build fee, enter 0 as the build cost and the calculator will tell you whether the monthly figure is covered. We give every client a fixed quote after a free discovery call.
What does the calculator leave out?
Anything you cannot put a number on honestly: customer satisfaction, the time your team spends setting it up and checking its answers, and the data protection work. The ICO expects organisations using AI to tell people clearly, in plain language, how their personal data is processed, so budget time for a privacy notice update. If the result is marginal, treat it as a no until those are accounted for.
What if the result says it never pays back?
Then on your figures it does not, and that is worth knowing before you spend anything. It usually means enquiry volume is low, each enquiry takes little time, or the quoted running cost is high for the volume. A shared inbox and better opening hours might serve you better, and we will say so on a call.
Want a second opinion on your numbers?
Bring the figures to a free thirty-minute call. We will tell you honestly whether a chatbot is worth building for your business, including when it is not, and give you a fixed quote if it is. See what we build on our AI chatbot development page.
Book a Free Discovery Call