Containment Economics

Containment Economics treats the share of inbound conversations an AI agent closes without a human as the single number that sets an agency's margin on a managed voice retainer. The framework splits every client engagement into three cost pools: contained interactions (near-zero marginal cost), escalated interactions (agent time plus tooling), and rework (a contained call that returns because the bot misread intent). Agencies that quote a flat per-seat price without measuring containment are pricing blind. Nectar Desk publishes a 40-65% autonomous resolution band for its AI Voice Bot, and that spread is the entire margin story: a client sitting at 40% containment carries roughly twice the human load of one at 65%. The practical move is to instrument containment before signing, then write the retainer so the agency shares upside when containment climbs and absorbs cost when it falls. Vertical-specific training data is what moves a client from the bottom of that band to the top, which is also what keeps the service from being resold on price alone.