Support Cost Calculator
Calculate your cost per ticket and per agent
Converge Team
Your Support Team
Results
Cost per ticket is the fundamental unit economics metric for any support operation. It tells you exactly how much each customer interaction costs your business — and where the opportunities to improve efficiency are hiding. Pair this with your support ROI to see the full financial picture.
According to MetricNet's 2024 benchmarking data across 3,500 support organizations, the average cost per ticket is $15.56 for email support, $8.01 for live chat, and $22.13 for phone support. Self-service through knowledge bases costs just $1.17 per resolution — roughly 13x cheaper than email support.
HDI (Help Desk Institute) research shows that 69% of total support costs are labor. Software typically accounts for 10-15%, facilities for 8-12%, and training for 3-5%. This means the biggest cost lever is agent productivity — how many tickets each agent can resolve per day at high quality.
For growing companies, understanding cost per ticket is critical for planning. If you're handling 1,000 tickets per month at $15 per ticket, that's $15,000 in support costs. If your customer base doubles, you need to either double the budget or find ways to handle more tickets without proportionally increasing headcount.
How to Use This Calculator
- Enter team details: Number of support agents and average monthly salary (or total team salary).
- Add software costs: Monthly cost of your help desk, chat tools, and other support software.
- Enter ticket volume: Total tickets your team handles per month.
- Review cost breakdown: See cost per ticket, cost per agent, and monthly total with channel-based comparisons.
Pro Tips
- Include all costs: Don't forget benefits (add 25-30% to salaries), management overhead, training time, and workspace costs. Under-counting makes your cost per ticket look artificially low.
- Invest in self-service: Every ticket deflected to your knowledge base saves $14+ compared to email support. A good KB is the highest-ROI support investment.
- Track by channel: Chat support costs ~50% less per ticket than email. Phone costs 40% more. Steering customers toward efficient channels reduces overall costs.
- Improve first-contact resolution: Each follow-up interaction on a ticket effectively doubles its cost. Invest in agent training and better internal tools to resolve issues on first contact.