The operating model and the catalogue · Owning a virtual employee

When to retire the lead handler

Decide whether a lead handler creeping toward its $2,000 line should be retired, kept or split, with the months left before its date in the sum.

casemediumExercise · 3 min · 74 of 75

On this page

An automation creeping toward its line looks ready to retire. Whether it is depends on what is causing the creep and how many months are left before its date. The lesson this practises is retiring an automation, on the handler from inbound lead handling.

The situation

Take a different year from the lesson's: the agency's lead handler is in month 10, and its retirement date is month 12. It handles 400 leads a month from four sources. By hand, an account manager takes 10 minutes a lead. Assume $30 an hour loaded for staff, $100 for the founder, and 4.33 weeks a month. This month:

Line	This month
Model calls and platform	$70
Every draft read before it sends	300 × 3 min
Leads handed to a person	100 × 8 min
Drafts rewritten	75 × 8 min
Owner's weekly review	30 min a week
Founder's prompt fixes	4 h

The monthly total was about $1,240 in month 7 and has risen about $150 a month since. A directory listing added in month 5 sends 120 of the 400 leads, and accounts for 90 of the 100 hand-offs and 60 of the 75 rewrites. The proposed fix is 6 founder hours: send directory leads straight to an account manager and keep the handler on the other 280, which brings the review back to 20 minutes and the founder's fixes to 1 hour a month.

The question

Decide at this review whether to keep the handler as it is, retire it, or split the directory off, and say what evidence would reverse your decision.

A strong answer · Rubric · Where answers go wrong

Write your answer first, then open

A strong answer

The line is 400 × 10 min = 66.7 h × $30 = $2,000. The handler costs $70; reading 15 h, $450; hand-offs 13.3 h, $400; rewrites 10 h, $300; review 130 min, $65; founder $400. Total $1,685, $315 under the line, and at $150 a month it crosses around month 12.

Retiring now costs $2,000 against $1,685, $315 a month more, plus about 26 account-manager hours. The sum says no.

The creep has one cause: the directory is 30% of leads but 90% of hand-offs and 80% of rewrites. Price the split. The directory by hand is 120 × 10 min = 20 h, $600. The handler on 280: $70; 10 hand-offs, $40; 270 drafts read, $405; 15 rewrites, $60; review $43; founder $100. That is $718, or $1,318 with the directory. It saves $367 a month, so the $600 fix pays back in 1.6 months, inside the two left.

Split the directory off now, a partial retirement. Cut over at a set hour: new directory leads go to the account managers' queue, and directory drafts already in review finish through the reviewer. At the month-12 review, rewrite the sums for the 280-lead handler: its own line is 280 × $5 = $1,400 against $718, so move the date 12 months.

Reverse it if rewrites on the other three sources do not settle near 15 a month within four weeks, meaning the directory was not the cause, or if directory-style leads grow to most of the volume, meaning the task itself has changed and the whole handler should go.

Rubric

prices this month line by line to $1,685, against a $2,000 line derived from 400 × 10 minutes × $30
projects the $150-a-month creep to the crossing, around month 12
traces the creep to the directory using its shares of hand-offs and rewrites
prices the split at $1,318 a month and pays back its $600 fix in about 1.6 months, inside the two left
rejects full retirement on the sum, and says what the month-12 review does with the date
names the evidence that would reverse the decision

Where answers go wrong

"Retire it: costs are up a third in three months and heading for the line." It is still $315 a month under the line, and retiring adds about 26 account-manager hours a month to remove a cost with one identifiable cause.

"Keep it and have the founder teach the prompt about directory leads." Four founder hours a month, $400, have already gone into that while rewrites rose. Most directory leads match no CRM record and never reach the prompt at all; a routing rule settles them for nothing.

"It is under the line, so move the date to month 24 now." The date moves only at a review with the sums rewritten, and today's sums say the handler reaches its line at month 12.