Service desk cost calculator
Put in your own numbers. This is not a "you will save ₹X with our product" machine — it estimates your current handling cost and what a given deflection rate returns, with the assumptions on screen so you can argue with them.
What that works out to
Agent hours a month: —
Cost per ticket: —
Monthly handling cost: —
Tickets deflected: —
—
returned per month at that deflection rate
The assumptions, stated plainly
- Cost per ticket is loaded agent cost divided by productive hours, times handling time. It ignores tooling, management and the cost of a ticket nobody resolves.
- Deflection returns agent time; it does not remove a salary. The honest benefit is usually absorbing growth without hiring, not cutting a headcount.
- None of this counts the value of a request being answered in ten minutes instead of two days, which is usually the bigger number and is not something a calculator can tell you.
We would rather give you a figure you can defend in a budget meeting than a large one you cannot. If the number here is not compelling, that is useful information too.
Questions
Is a 30% deflection rate realistic?
Rarely in year one. Fifteen per cent from a genuinely good knowledge base is a solid result, and anything above thirty usually means the baseline was measured generously. Model the number you would defend in a budget meeting.
Does deflection actually save money?
It returns agent time. Unless you plan to reduce headcount — and most teams do not — the honest benefit is absorbing growth without hiring, which is a real saving but a different sentence.
Why is the biggest benefit missing from the calculator?
Because it is not calculable. A request answered in ten minutes instead of two days changes how the rest of the company works, and no spreadsheet can put a defensible rupee figure on that.
What handling time should we put in if we do not measure it?
Ask two or three people on the desk what a typical request takes them, take the highest answer, and use that. Teams consistently underestimate handling time when they guess, because the tickets they remember are the quick ones, and a cost case built on an optimistic number falls apart the first time somebody checks it.
Can we use this to compare two tools?
Only loosely. The handling time and the deflection rate are properties of your desk and your knowledge base far more than of any product, so the honest use of this page is sizing your own problem rather than scoring vendors against it.
See whether it holds on your own tickets
Free for two agents, forever, with no card. Run a real month and compare.