How staff time handled works

Staff time handled is the receptionist time your client’s AI agents covered: the time a person would have spent on the conversations the agents resolved. It starts at zero and grows only with real, successful conversations, so it is a figure your client can trust and check.

Clients always see staff time handled. You can also show an estimate of what that time is worth, with the working one click away.

Where it appears

Overview: the Staff time handled tile, with the number of resolved conversations it comes from.
Analytics: when you show the money estimate for the client, Staff time handled leads the figures at the top, with a Staff time to date chart beside call volume.
Conversations, Agents and Numbers: staff time alongside the other figures.

Which conversations count

The portal looks at each conversation in the chosen period:

Conversation	Staff time credited
Resolved call	The call’s talk time plus 1 minute of follow-up
Call handed to a person (transferred)	Half of the above
Resolved chat, such as a typed web chat, WhatsApp or SMS conversation	3 minutes
Chat handed to a person (transferred)	1.5 minutes
Call shorter than 15 seconds	Not counted (hang-ups and misdials)
Voicemail	Not counted
Unresolved or failed call or chat	Not counted
Outbound call	Not counted

A chat has no talk time to measure, so each resolved chat is credited with 3 minutes, whether it came from an ElevenLabs, Retell AI or Vapi agent. Outbound calls are left out because they are reported in your campaigns instead.

How the money estimate is worked out

The estimate is shown only if you turn it on for the client, and only once there are enough conversations to be meaningful.

Add up the staff time from the counted conversations, in hours.
Work out the full hourly cost of a receptionist: hourly pay, plus employer taxes and benefits, plus other overheads.

hourly pay × (1 + employer taxes & benefits + other overheads)

Other overheads are Office space & equipment plus Admin & recruitment.
Multiply the staff hours by that hourly cost.
Take off 15% as a cautious adjustment, so the figure leans low rather than high.

The result is shown as, for example, ≈ £37 of staff time, labelled Estimate. Amounts under 100 are rounded to the nearest whole unit; larger amounts to the nearest 10.

A worked example

A UK client has 40 resolved calls in the last 30 days, each with 3 minutes of talk time. Using the UK defaults:

Step	Working	Result
Staff time	40 calls × (3 minutes + 1 minute)	160 minutes, about 2.7 hours
Hourly cost	£13 × (1 + 15% + 10%)	£16.25 an hour
Value before adjustment	2.67 hours × £16.25	£43.33
Cautious adjustment	£43.33 × 0.85	£36.83
Shown to the client	Rounded	≈ £37 of staff time

When the estimate appears

The money estimate appears once a client has 20 resolved conversations in the chosen period. Until then, they see Value estimate appears after 20 resolved conversations, with how many they have so far. Staff time itself is always shown.

Seeing the working

Next to the estimate, the info icon opens How this estimate is calculated. It lists:

Conversations counted, out of the total
Staff time those took
Receptionist hourly rate
Employer taxes & benefits and Other overheads
the Cautious adjustment of 15%
the Estimated value

It also lists what was not counted and why, for example unresolved conversations, voicemail, calls under 15 seconds and outbound calls.

Default rates

If no rates are saved for a client, the portal uses conservative defaults based on the client’s country:

Region	Hourly pay	Employer taxes & benefits	Other overheads
United Kingdom	£13	15%	10%
United States	$18	35%	0%
Everywhere else	15 in the client’s currency	20%	5%

Turn the estimate on or off, and set rates

Both are in the same place: open the client, select Client settings in the Agency only box, and go to the Staff-time value section.

Show or hide the money estimate with Show estimated staff-time value. Staff time handled stays visible either way.
Set the rates. When the estimate is on, the Staff cost fields appear, filled in with defaults for the client’s country if they are empty:
- Receptionist hourly pay, in the client’s currency
- Employer taxes & benefits, as a percentage
- Office space & equipment, as a percentage
- Admin & recruitment, as a percentage
A preview below the fields shows what one staff hour costs and an example value for 100 answered calls of 3 minutes.
Save. Select Save changes in the bar at the bottom of the page.

When you add a new client, the estimate is off unless you turn it on at the Staff-time value step of the Add client wizard. See Create a client workspace.