The metric
Cost per connected minute is everything a seat truly costs — wage, overhead, management, QA, attrition and retraining — divided by the minutes that seat actually spends in connected conversation. Not logged-in time: connected talk time. It's the only number that makes different floors directly comparable — human, AI, onshore, offshore.
Why the number surprises people
On a typical outbound floor, an agent's eight-hour shift contains roughly two to three hours of real conversation — the rest is dialing, ringing, voicemail, wrap-up, and breaks. So a seat's true conversation cost is three to four times its hourly cost. Floors that look cheap by the seat often aren't cheap by the conversation. Run your own numbers; the result usually reframes the build-versus-buy debate.
How AI changes the denominator
AI agents don't change what an hour costs so much as they change what an hour contains: no idle seats waiting on the dialer, no shrinkage, no night premium, parallel capacity during spikes. Pricing per connected minute aligns what you pay with what you earn on — which is why Revolv prices that way. Bring your current numbers to a demo and we'll walk the comparison against your own floor, honestly.