Support cost calculator
How much time is your team spending on repetitive enquiries?
Many businesses spend hours every week answering the same questions, chasing the same information and manually handling routine requests. Use the calculator below to estimate the cost of your current approach and explore how guidance, self-service resources or automation could reduce the workload.
Current handling vs a supported model
See how your current handling effort compares with a model where routine enquiries are answered using documented guidance, self-service tools or AI-assisted responses before they reach a member of staff.
The figures below are estimates designed to help identify potential opportunities and are not a quotation. A guided answer is priced at 50p in the model, plus a running allowance of £500 a month. That allowance is not a Ventric fee. More complex enquiries would still be escalated to a member of your team when needed.
- Hours spent on enquiries each month
- 133
- People involved in handling them
- 5
- Estimated monthly handling cost
- £4,660
- Estimated monthly supported cost
- £2,050
Potential annual saving
£31,320 a year
Based on the figures entered, approximately 700 enquiries each month appear likely to be routine requests that could be answered from documented guidance, self-service resources or automated responses.
This could reduce the amount of time your team spends on repetitive work, improve response times and allow staff to focus on enquiries that genuinely require their expertise.
Not every problem needs full automation. For many businesses, the first step is simply improving how enquiries are managed, making sure messages have clear ownership and helping staff respond consistently and quickly.
Explore the shared mailbox assistant
If your enquiry volumes are lower, the biggest gains often come from improving shared mailbox processes, assigning ownership and reducing the time spent writing the same replies over and over again.
Get the PDF
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The report is generated when you request it and no results are stored on the website.
When the same questions keep arriving, the usual places to look are an AI front desk, a shared mailbox assistant, or an IT helpdesk for the internal ones.
Signs the queue owns the team
- The same five questions arrive every morning.
- A shared inbox has several people on it and no owner.
- The first reply depends on who happens to be in.
- Customers chase because nobody can see who has the thread.
- Internal IT tickets pile up next to the customer ones.
Questions a guide can answer
These are the ones already written down somewhere. A person still gets anything that needs a judgement, a complaint, or a customer who is upset.
- Password resets and 'I cannot get in'
- Opening hours, parking, how to find you
- Where is my order, or when is the engineer due
- What is included, and what do I send you
- New starter questions that are already in a handbook
- Which policy applies, when the policy is already written down
Not every inbox needs automation
Automation works best where enquiry volumes are high and the same questions appear repeatedly.
For lower-volume environments, improvements such as better ownership, clearer processes and stronger documentation can often deliver better results than introducing additional technology.
When the out-of-hours share is high, look at an AI front desk that answers from your material. For a smaller shared mailbox, the shared mailbox assistant is the smaller job: drafted replies, and someone still accountable. Internal passwords and "how do I" questions sit with the IT helpdesk.
Firms in professional services, construction and care hit this differently. The calculator is the same. The questions are not.