Do you know, down to the cent, what it costs when a customer calls, sends an email, or starts a chat with your customer service team? Most executives in the financial sector estimate this expense—and dramatically underestimate it. The true sum isn’t just hidden in a service agent’s salary but in a chain of processes, systems, and missed opportunities.

This article lays it all out. We’ll break down the anatomy of a service inquiry and show you why each one is more expensive than you think—and how you can not only save a large portion of these expenses but also turn them into real value.

The Anatomy of a Single Customer Inquiry

Imagine a typical customer inquiry: A customer emails to ask about the terms for opening an account abroad. What happens in the background?

• Personnel Costs: A qualified employee interrupts their current task, opens the email, finds the correct information, formulates a professional response, and documents the interaction. This isn’t just their gross salary but also includes non-wage labor costs, expenses for training, and the cost of the workstation itself.
• Infrastructure Costs: For every inquiry, expensive systems run in the background. Licenses for CRM, telephone systems, or email management tools—all contribute to a financial impact that must be allocated to each interaction.
• Management Overhead: Time spent by team leaders on quality assurance, reporting, and team coordination indirectly adds to the cost of handling each inquiry.
• Opportunity Costs: This is the largest and most frequently ignored cost block. Instead of answering a standard question for the tenth time, your employee could have been winning back a dissatisfied customer or proactively offering a new investment product to a premium client. Every routine question answered is a missed opportunity.

A Conservative Calculation

Let’s translate this effort into concrete numbers. We’re being deliberately conservative:

• Average handling time per inquiry: 6 minutes (0.1 hours)
• Average hourly personnel cost (including all associated costs): $55
• Cost per inquiry: 0.1 hours * $55/hour = $5.50

$5.50 per inquiry might not sound like much. But now, let’s scale it up:

With 5,000 customer inquiries per month (a realistic figure for a mid-sized bank), the costs already add up to:

5,000 inquiries * $5.50/inquiry = $27,500 per month

That’s $330,000 per year—just for answering customer questions.

The Game Changer: How an AI Assistant Transforms Your Customer Service

Now, imagine you could eliminate a large portion of these costs. Our practical experience shows that up to 80% of all customer inquiries are recurring, standard questions: “What’s the BIC?”, “Where can I find my statements?”.

An intelligently trained AI Assistant, accessing your verified knowledge base, can answer exactly these 80% of inquiries instantly, 24/7, and with no waiting time [, ].

What does this mean for our calculation?

• Deflected Inquiries: 80% of 5,000 = 4,000 inquiries
• Monthly Savings: 4,000 inquiries * $5.50/inquiry = $22,000
• Annual Savings Potential: over $250,000

Your service costs in customer service will drop to a fraction, while your employees can finally focus on the remaining 20%: the complex, high-value customer conversations.

Creating Value: From Customer Satisfaction to Scalability

The true revolution, however, goes far beyond mere cost reduction:

• Maximum Customer Satisfaction: Your customers get instant answers instead of being stuck in call queues.
• 24/7 Service as Standard: Your bank is always available, even at night and on weekends—a competitive advantage customers notice.
• Higher Employee Satisfaction: Free your best people from repetitive tasks and boost their motivation and loyalty.
• Perfect Scalability: Whether you have 5,000 or 50,000 inquiries a month, the AI Assistant handles them with consistent quality, without your expenses exploding.

Stop spending money on answering routine questions. Instead, invest in technology that improves customer service, delights customers, and empowers your employees.