Residual Labor Ratio

Residual Labor Ratio is the share of call handling that still needs a human after an AI voice agent goes live: exceptions, escalations, consent callbacks, and transcript review. It matters because agencies price retainers on the assumption that deployment removes labor, when in practice it relocates labor into supervision. The ratio is measurable before you quote: pull 100 real call recordings, count how many end without human touch, then multiply the remainder by your loaded hourly rate. A clinic booking line may resolve 80 of 100 calls end to end, leaving 20 escalations at six minutes each, roughly two hours of oversight per 100 calls. Platforms differ in how much they absorb: Trillet verifies caller identity and executes actions in live systems, while Goodcall leans on knowledge sources and CRM connections, and Ruby keeps trained humans in the loop by design. Quote the residual, not the demo.