Investment Shortcut

If you are trying to justify an outbound investment, and the discipline of the model described in The Investment Decision is too much for you, then a rough, but sometimes effective, way of considering your investment is as follows:

Additional staffing cost per agent hour = $x (salary, bonus, benefits, office space and allowance for other overheads).
Additional revenue generation per agent hour = $y

Therefore with z agents, the additional revenue per agent hour is z times (y minus x) dollars

This is OK, if you really have a good handle on all your figures. For example, in the additional agent costs you will need to allow for

the fact that your fulfillment overheads per agent hour have gone up because of extra business
the additional systems investment in terms of its costs per agent hour

And on the revenue side you will want to have worked through carefully the extra talk time you are getting per hour, rather than just assume an industry average increase.

Our advice is that unless, the additional revenue impact is quite overwhelming, i.e. the decision is obvious, try the model presented in The Investment Decision. And if you are not sure how to use it, ask one of our trainers.

Note

We have spotted at least one suggestion on the Internet:

Take the additional talk time that you expect to generate per agent hour, compute the fully loaded agent costs for this, and treat this too as an additional saving, or if you like, additional revenue.

Our advice: don't!