AI support savings by ticket volume & deflection rate
Short answer: the dollars an AI-first support desk saves are set by how many tickets you handle and how many of them the AI resolves without a human. Across this 42-cell sweep at a $32/hr loaded agent cost, 36 of 42 volume/deflection combinations save money and 6 cost more than staffing humans — every one of those is a weak 20% deflection rate, where escalation overhead swamps the token savings. A desk handling 5,000 tickets/mo at 65% deflection saves $13,586/mo; at just 20% deflection on 2,500 tickets you lose $1,607/mo. The full grid is below.
Monthly savings by ticket volume and deflection rate
Rows: support tickets per month. Columns: AI deflection (resolution) rate. Each cell is monthly savings versus a human-only desk. Green ≥ $25k, grey $5k–$25k, amber under $5k, red negative.
| Tickets \ deflect | 20% | 35% | 50% | 65% | 80% | 90% | 95% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500/mo | -$321 | $239 | $799 | $1,359 | $1,919 | $2,292 | $2,479 |
| 1,000/mo | -$643 | $477 | $1,597 | $2,717 | $3,837 | $4,584 | $4,957 |
| 2,500/mo | -$1,607 | $1,193 | $3,993 | $6,793 | $9,593 | $11,460 | $12,393 |
| 5,000/mo | -$3,214 | $2,386 | $7,986 | $13,586 | $19,186 | $22,919 | $24,786 |
| 10,000/mo | -$6,428 | $4,772 | $15,972 | $27,172 | $38,372 | $45,839 | $49,572 |
| 25,000/mo | -$16,070 | $11,930 | $39,930 | $67,930 | $95,930 | $114,597 | $123,930 |
Provenance
- Engine
- AI vs Human Support Cost (
ai-vs-human-support-cost) - Source
- Computed live from
/engines/ai-vs-human-support-cost.js - Grid
- 6 ticket volumes × 7 deflection rates = 42 cells
- Computed
- 2026-05-23
- Held constant
- 10 human min/ticket · $32/hr agent · 3,500 tokens/AI ticket · $0.40/M in · $1.20/M out · 4 min escalation overhead
Every value above and in the table is the deterministic return value of the shipped engine bundle, recomputed independently in continuous integration and diffed against this page on every build. The engine is pure (no clock, no randomness): the same inputs always produce the same output. No number on this page was hand-typed or estimated.
How to read this dataset
- Find your monthly ticket volume on the left, your realistic AI deflection rate across the top, and read the monthly savings where they meet.
- Red cells cost more than staffing humans: at 20% deflection the escalation overhead (re-routing the ticket after the bot fails) outweighs the token cost saved. Push deflection up before deploying.
- The CSV adds human-only and AI-first monthly cost, savings percent, cost per AI ticket, and escalated-ticket counts for every cell, so you can model your own desk.
Want to run your own inputs instead of this grid? Use the AI vs Human Support Cost calculator. For the exact math, defaults, and what the model can't tell you, read the methodology page. For a worked desk at 3,200 tickets/mo, see AI vs human support cost at 3,200 tickets, and for how agentic resolution shifts the math, agent cost vs. AI vs. human support.