Cost and ROI
What an office admin costs vs a team of AI workers
The median receptionist earns $37,230 a year, or $17.90 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook. Add employer payroll costs and one person on the desk lands between $46,500 and $52,100 a year on our own 1.25x to 1.4x load assumption. A team of AI workers is billed by usage, quoted with a maximum before it starts, no seats, no subscription instead.
The wage line
BLS reports, for receptionists:
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Median pay | $37,230 per year, $17.90 per hour |
| Lowest 10% | under $13.60 per hour |
| Highest 10% | over $23.49 per hour |
| Number of jobs | 1,007,200 |
| Job outlook, 2024 to 2034 | 0% (little or no change) |
The load multiplier is our labelled assumption, not a BLS figure. Employers commonly add a quarter to two-fifths of base pay for taxes, benefits, and paid time off, and we use 1.25x to 1.4x as our working range: $37,230 x 1.25 = about $46,500, and x 1.4 = about $52,100. Treat it as an assumption we show on the page, not a sourced number.
Shift the base to the newer May 2025 survey and the picture does not change much: the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey puts the median at $38,010 a year, $18.27 an hour. Either base still leaves a full-time hire costing tens of thousands a year before the first missed call.
The costs the salary line hides
A hire covers about 40 hours a week, one call at a time. The phone does not respect those hours, and missed calls carry their own price:
- 62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered (oncehub).
- Roughly 30% of all incoming calls to a small business are from potential new customers (oncehub).
- One contractor logged 41 missed calls in a month. After filtering out junk and current clients, that left 9 lost leads. At an average job value of $800, that is $7,200 in a month (oncehub).
- Only 37.8% of incoming calls were answered by a live person, in a 2024 study of 85 businesses across 58 industries (getaira).
- 85% of callers who reach voicemail never call back, and 62% contact a competitor instead (getaira).
Worked cost table: owner time vs a hire vs a team of workers
| Option | Rough annual cost | What it covers | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| You do it | $0 cash | What you can reach between jobs | Stops when you are on a job, asleep, or with a customer |
| Hire a receptionist or admin | $37,230 median wage (BLS); $46,500 to $52,100 fully loaded at our 1.25x to 1.4x assumption | One person, about 40 hours a week | One call at a time; needs cover for breaks, leave, and holidays |
| Answering service | Priced per call or per minute | Answers and takes a message | The job ends when the call ends |
| A team of AI workers (TeamShift) | billed by usage, quoted with a maximum before it starts, no seats, no subscription | The office work end to end: calls, lead and quote follow-up, invoicing and collections, CRM entry and cleanup, inbox triage, scheduling drafts, reporting | Anything that sends, pays, or publishes waits for your OK |
Reading the table
If a full-time hire costs $46,500 to $52,100 and one contractor's missed calls alone were worth $7,200 in a month, the office work is worth more than the salary line suggests. That is the case for putting the reachable, repeatable work in front of a team that does not clock out.
It is also not a case for replacing every hire. If the job needs someone at a physical front desk, or licensed judgment, keep the person. The team covers the office work around them.
What to do next
Run your own numbers with the free missed-call revenue calculator, or read what a receptionist actually earns.