If you’re paying a support agent £25,000 a year to answer “where’s my order?” messages that AI can handle for under £1 each, the maths have already turned against you. Most multichannel sellers don’t do this calculation until they’re running two or three agents and wondering why margins aren’t moving.
This is that calculation.
TL;DR
- A single support agent costs £32,500/year fully loaded (salary, NI, pension, equipment). AI resolution costs £0.80 per ticket.
- At 500 tickets/month with 65% automation, AI handles 325 tickets for £260/month. The agent would handle the same 325 tickets for £1,354/month equivalent.
- The break-even on AI vs a manual agent is around 200 tickets/month. Below that, the maths are marginal. Above it, every additional ticket tips further in AI’s favour.
- This is not about replacing support teams. It is about stopping the reflex to hire a third agent when the first two are spending most of their day on predictable, answerable questions.
How many tickets does a multichannel seller receive?
For every 100 orders processed, expect 10-15 support contacts. A seller doing 3,000 orders a month across Amazon, eBay, and Shopify receives 300-450 tickets a month as a baseline.
Across ecommerce operations, 50-65% of inbound tickets are order-status or post-purchase queries: “Where is my order?”, “My tracking hasn’t updated.” Factual answers, no judgement required. The remaining 35-50% need human decisions. The maths below apply to the automatable majority. For what AI handles and doesn’t, see the AI capabilities and limitations guide.
What manual support actually costs
The headline salary figure understates the true cost.
A UK agent at £25,000/year gross, with employer NI, pension, equipment, and overhead, costs approximately £32,500/year fully loaded, or £2,708/month. That is the correct number to use.
At 45 tickets per day and 22 working days per month, agent capacity is approximately 990 tickets/month. At full capacity: £2.73 per ticket handled (£32,500 divided by 11,880 annual tickets).
For the 65% of tickets that are WISMO and similar (queries with a factual answer and no human judgement required), that is £2.73 spent per interaction to produce an outcome AI produces for £0.80.
What AI-automated support costs
eDesk’s AI Agent Ava resolves tickets at $0.99/€0.99 per automated resolution (approximately £0.80). Platform access runs from $39/month per agent (Essential plan, approximately £31).
At 65% automation, Ava handles 65 of every 100 inbound tickets at £0.80 each. Human agents handle the remaining 35%, but now managing one-third of their original volume. One agent comfortably covers work that previously required one and a half.
The cost comparison
The figures below use modelled assumptions. Agent cost uses the £32,500 fully-loaded annual figure. Ava resolution cost uses £0.80/ticket. Platform cost uses £31/month (Essential plan). Human agents still required for non-automated tickets.
| Monthly tickets | Manual cost | With Ava: AI fees | Platform | Human agent | Total with Ava | Monthly saving |
| 300 | £2,708 | £156 | £31 | £1,354* | £1,541 | £1,167 |
| 600 | £2,708 | £312 | £31 | £1,354* | £1,697 | £1,011 |
| 1,200 | £5,417 | £624 | £62 | £2,708** | £3,394 | £2,023 |
| 2,400 | £8,125 | £1,248 | £93 | £2,708** | £4,049 | £4,076 |
*One human agent (£2,708/month) handling the remaining 35% of tickets (at 300 tickets/month this agent runs at 50% capacity; cost shown at actual cost, not adjusted). **One to two human agents.
The saving grows with volume because the AI’s cost per ticket (£0.80 fixed) does not increase with scale the way human agent cost does. At 2,400 tickets/month, the monthly saving is larger than a full agent’s monthly salary.
The break-even point
At £2.73/ticket (manual agent) versus £0.80/ticket (AI), the cost ratio is 3.4:1. Every ticket in the automatable category handled manually costs 3.4 times more than the same ticket handled by Ava.
For sellers below 200 tickets/month, the fixed platform cost makes the maths marginal. Above 200 tickets/month with a typical WISMO-heavy queue, every additional ticket tips further in AI’s favour.
The break-even on hiring a second agent versus adding AI sits at approximately 400-500 tickets per month. Above that, AI is the cheaper option for the automatable portion.
What this means for your next hiring decision
The typical pattern: hire first, calculate later. A seller at 600 tickets/month hires a second agent because the first is overwhelmed. Both end up occupied, so they feel justified.
The calculation misses: 390 of those 600 tickets could be removed from both queues entirely. The first agent was overwhelmed by volume that didn’t need a human.
Electrical World processes 2,000-3,000 tickets a month and deflects 80%+ of post-sales queries using eDesk. See the ecommerce customer service guide for the full context. The maths are why that model works, not an exception to it.
Book a Free Demo and bring your current ticket volume and agent headcount. The conversation is a modelled ROI, not a product pitch.
Pricing verified August 2026. USD/GBP conversion approximate. Agent cost assumptions use standard UK employment figures.
Key takeaways
- A fully-loaded UK support agent costs approximately £32,500/year. AI resolution costs £0.80/ticket. The cost ratio on automatable queries: 3.4:1.
- The break-even on AI versus a second agent sits at 400-500 tickets/month. Most 7-figure multichannel sellers are above this.
- At 2,400 tickets/month, the monthly saving on automated tickets exceeds a full agent’s monthly salary.
- The framing is not “replace the agent.” It is “stop the agent spending 65% of their day on questions a machine can answer.”
- Doing this calculation before the third hire usually reveals one fewer agent is the answer, not one more.
Action plan:
- Export your last 30 days of tickets. Count order-status, tracking, and return-status queries. That is your automation target.
- Multiply that monthly count by £0.80. That is your estimated Ava resolution cost.
- Compare it to your monthly fully-loaded agent cost.
- If AI is cheaper (it almost certainly will be above 200 tickets/month), model what one fewer hire means for your annual cost base.
FAQ
How much does it cost to automate ecommerce customer support with AI?
eDesk Ava charges $0.99/€0.99 (approximately £0.80) per automatically resolved ticket. Platform access starts from $39/month per agent. At 600 tickets/month with 65% automation, AI resolution costs approximately £312/month. The equivalent cost of a human agent handling those 390 tickets is approximately £1,354/month. The difference: £1,042/month in favour of AI on the automated portion alone.
At what ticket volume does AI support become cost-effective?
Using standard UK employment costs (£32,500/year fully loaded) and Ava at £0.80/ticket with 65% automation, AI becomes cost-effective between 150 and 200 tickets/month. Below that, the platform cost makes the maths marginal. Above 400 tickets/month with a typical ecommerce query mix, the automatable portion is clearly cheaper via AI than via agent.
Book a Free Demo to run the maths against your actual numbers.
