For most office-technology dealers, AI support beats an additional hire on pure math: Auralis resolves up to ~70% of customer requests automatically — around the clock, without ramp time or turnover — while a new support hire adds one person's daytime capacity at full salary. This page shows the model so you can run your own numbers.
Growing ticket volume forces the question eventually: add headcount, or add automation? Both are legitimate answers. The right one depends on your volume, your cost per ticket, and how much of your queue is repetitive. Let's build the model.
The ROI model in four inputs
You only need four numbers:
| Input | What it is | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly ticket volume | All support requests — calls, emails, chats | Your helpdesk or e-automate service queue |
| Automatable share | The repetitive portion: supplies reorders, meter/billing questions, status checks. Auralis resolves up to ~70% of requests automatically | Sample a week of tickets and tag them |
| Cost per ticket | Fully-loaded support payroll ÷ tickets handled | Payroll + your ticket count |
| Cost of the alternative | Fully-loaded cost of the hire you'd otherwise make | Salary + benefits + overhead + management time |
The comparison is then simple:
Value of AI = (tickets × automatable share × cost per ticket) − AI subscription cost Value of a hire = (tickets one person can handle × cost per ticket) − fully-loaded salary
A worked example (illustrative numbers — run your own)
Say your team handles 2,000 tickets a month, and your fully-loaded support cost works out to $10 per ticket — round, hypothetical numbers chosen to make the math easy to follow. Typical SMB service-desk benchmarks put fully-loaded cost per ticket in the $8–$25 range depending on channel mix — chat and email at the low end, phone-heavy desks toward the top — so $10 is a deliberately conservative midpoint.
| Option A: New support hire | Option B: AI support (Auralis) | |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity added | Say ~400 tickets/month (one person, business hours) | Up to ~70% of 2,000 = up to ~1,400 tickets/month, 24/7 |
| Monthly cost | Say $4,500 fully loaded (salary, benefits, overhead) | Subscription (varies by plan — get a real quote) |
| Value of work absorbed at $10/ticket | ~$4,000 | Up to ~$14,000 |
| Ramp time | Weeks to months of training | Days to weeks of setup |
| Coverage | Business hours, minus PTO and sick days | Nights, weekends, holidays included |
| Scales with growth | Linearly — more volume means another hire | Absorbs volume spikes without new headcount |
On these illustrative numbers, the hire absorbs about $4,000 of monthly work for $4,500 of cost — roughly break-even, which is why support headcount always feels expensive. The AI absorbs up to ~$14,000 of the same work, and the remaining ~600 complex tickets go to the team you already have — now supported by Assist as a co-pilot, which is how support teams become roughly 5x more productive overall.
Your numbers will differ. That's the point of the model — and why we built a calculator: run your own dealer ROI.
What the model deliberately leaves out (in your favor)
The simple math above ignores several real effects that favor automation — we leave them out so the core case doesn't depend on soft numbers:
- Turnover: when a support hire leaves, you pay recruiting and ramp again. The AI doesn't resign.
- After-hours revenue protection: a customer whose copier dies at 7pm gets an answer instead of a competitor's website — 28% of support requests arrive after hours (Gartner).
- Quality consistency: Audit scores every conversation, so quality is measured across bot and human — hard to price, easy to notice.
- Team retention: the humans stop doing toner-reorder data entry and do work that actually needs them.
Sensitivity: what if the numbers are half as good?
A model is only defensible if it survives pessimism. Cut every assumption in half — say the AI resolves only 35% of your 2,000 tickets, and your true cost is $5 per ticket. That's still ~$3,500 of monthly work absorbed, around the clock, before counting the productivity lift on your existing team. The hire's math, halved the same way (200 tickets at $5), absorbs ~$1,000 against the same salary. The comparison is robust because the two options scale differently: one adds fixed-cost hours, the other removes repetitive work. Test your own pessimistic case in the calculator.
When hiring is still the right call
Honesty matters here: if most of your queue is complex, contractual, or on-site work, another skilled human may be exactly what you need. AI support earns its keep when a large share of volume is repetitive — which, for most dealers (reorders, meter reads, status checks), it is. Many dealers do both: automate the repetitive layer first, then hire for the higher-value work with a clearer picture of what that role should be. Related reading: how to cut support costs at a copier dealer and 24/7 dealer support without hiring.