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How to Calculate Contact Cost per VRU

Voice response units (VRUs) are used to describe the productivity of call centers. Call centers are often used for customer support and to make sales. But, the effectiveness of a call center is often unclear. Furthermore, it is unclear as to how many employees or connection lines are needed in any one center. The contact cost per VRU is a measure of how much each single call costs the call center. If this number is too high, downsizing may be necessary.

Instructions

- 1
  Identify the total cost of running the call center over a certain period of time. For example, say a call center costs $25,000 per month to operate.
- 2
  Identify the number of individual calls handled by the call center over that same period of time. For example, suppose the call center handled 75,000 calls over that same month.
- 3
  Divide the number from Step 1 by the number from Step 2. In this example, $25,000 / 75,000 yields approximately 33 cents per call. This number is the contact cost per VRU.

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