What is per-resolution pricing?

Why it matters

Outcome pricing changes who carries the risk. Under seats, you pay for capacity whether or not it works. Under per-resolution, the vendor only earns when the product succeeds. That is attractive, but it only holds if the definition of success is written honestly and audited.

What to know

• Read the definition first. A model that counts abandonment as a resolution is per-conversation pricing wearing a better name.
• Check whether human handoffs are billed. If they are, the vendor is paid for failing.
• Ask how disputes are handled and whether you can audit a sample of billed resolutions.
• A monthly spend cap turns a variable model into a bounded one, which is what finance teams need.
• Cost per resolution becomes a directly forecastable line item, which seat pricing never gives you.

How to calculate it

An example

Example: five thousand conversations a month, sixty-five percent resolved without a human, is 3,250 billable resolutions. At 0.59 dollars each that is 1,917.50 dollars. The 1,750 conversations that went to a human cost nothing.

Common mistakes

• Signing without reading the resolution definition in full
• Not setting a spend cap before going live
• Comparing a per-resolution price to a seat price without converting both to cost per resolved issue
• Assuming every vendor using the phrase means the same thing by it

Questions