Articles · Money

The agent works, the money doesn't follow: five reasons

12 October 2026

The owner of a travel agency was about to buy an AI assistant: 250,000 KZT, plus 60,000 KZT every month. The thinking was that the managers sold badly and spent half a day on tour shortlists. The assistant would have done its job honestly, and the shortlists would have got faster. But a shortlist takes 15–20 minutes, and the money was going somewhere else: in 13 weeks the agency lost 19 enquiries that had already been paid for, while the payment waited for the accountant to mark it as received. The travel agency is invented — it is one of our sample reports.

We test our audit agent on invented companies like this one: the right answer is known in advance, and the cause of the loss is hidden somewhere other than where the owner is looking. The agent wrote the reports on them. Below are five companies and five reasons why an agent in perfect working order adds no money. There is not one "bad" agent among them.

Reason one: the agent speeds up a step where nothing is being lost

At this agency a tour can be booked only once the enquiry is marked "Payment confirmed". The accountant does that, and she is in the office on Mondays and Thursdays. The owner believed payments were confirmed within the hour. The records show a typical gap of 1.9 days between payment and booking, and it can be as long as four.

The operator's price, in the senior manager's words, "lasts a day or two". When the booking is made within a day of payment, the operator fails to confirm 4 bookings out of 59. When the wait runs beyond three days, it is 12 out of 25. On 19 enquiries the client took their money back; the commission on them comes to 3,586,700 KZT.

An assistant at 60,000 KZT a month would have sped up the shortlist. Paid-for tours were being lost at a step where the first fix costs 3,000 KZT a month.

The fix is to give the senior manager the right to see the bank statement and mark a payment as confirmed on the day it arrives; the 3,000 KZT is what the bank charges. An agent speeds up one step. If that is not the step where the work is stuck, the work stays stuck for exactly as long as before.

Reason two: the agent improves a number nothing depends on

The fitness club in another invented example was choosing an assistant for enquiries: 390 EUR a month and 1,800 EUR to set up. The case made sense. 41% of enquiries arrive when no consultant is at work and wait for the next shift — typically 781 minutes. The assistant would answer at once.

The check fitted on one line. Among online enquiries, 35% of those answered within an hour joined, against 32% of those answered later. No real difference: someone who writes at night is content to wait until morning. The assistant would have turned 781 minutes into one, and on these numbers the club would have sold no more memberships.

Meanwhile the club was losing people at the other end. The system ended a membership by itself after two returned debits, and nobody phoned first. Of the 173 members whose membership ended at the end of April or May, 48 tapped their card at the gate afterwards and were refused. The desk says these people mostly "had no idea".

Reason three: someone has to check the agent's work, and that is hours too

A recruitment agency (invented; the report is here) was considering an agent that screens CVs. The vendor quoted a figure of 80% that nobody had measured. Take it on trust, and the agent would free 20.3 hours a month for the resourcer. It would also add 24 hours of checking what it had done.

The first figure looks like a gain until the second stands beside it. The checking cannot be dropped: without it the firm never learns whom the agent turned away wrongly. And it falls to the very person the agent was meant to relieve. All this in a firm where every application is already read the same working day.

Hence a question for the vendor before you buy: how many hours a month will go on checking the agent's work, and whose hours will they be. The answer belongs beside the promised saving, not after it.

Reason four: the agent brings in orders nobody is free to do

A device repair shop (also invented) wanted a bot at 150,000 KZT plus 25,000 KZT a month, so that customers got quicker replies and enquiries stopped going missing. Suppose the bot delivers and more requests come in. Each of them then has to become a repair.

For phones and tablets there is room: work on them starts the day they come in. But all 93 complex laptop repairs in three months were done by one technician, and he almost always has a queue. While he was on holiday, the 16 orders booked in during those days waited 14.55 days for work to begin. On top of that, one order in five waits for a part — typically 4.19 days.

That technician accounts for 17.1% of the value of the repair work. New requests for complex repairs will become a queue, not revenue. None of this is the bot's fault. But the bill for it will arrive on time, and the revenue from those orders will arrive when the bench is free.

Reason five: a rule creates the loss, and the rule can be changed for free

A cleaning company (invented; here is the report) pays overtime and is looking at a scheduling agent at 6,900 NOK a month. The agent is aimed at the right place: overtime does come from the schedule. But what produces it is the rule the schedule is built by. The planner copies last week so that each customer keeps the cleaner they know. The district comes second, and nobody checks the length of the day before the schedule goes out.

In the quarter, 319 cleaner-days were planned at least an hour over the contract hours and 337 at least an hour under. A long day is paid as overtime; a short day is paid in full. 60% of all overtime hours are matched by short days for the same cleaner in the same week. The team lead puts it more simply: "one day I have ten hours and the girl next to me has five".

The rule can be changed for free: fix each cleaner's districts by weekday and add one check — no day far over or under the cleaner's contract hours. The agent will be needed if that is not enough. Buy it sooner, and the firm pays 6,900 NOK a month for something that may well go away for nothing.

The five reasons share one root: an impression in place of a number

In each of the five companies the agent would have done what was promised: shortlisted, answered, screened, scheduled. It would have added no money because the owner answered the question "where are we losing?" by feel. "Half a day on shortlists" turned out to be 15–20 minutes; "payments are confirmed within the hour" turned out to be nearly two days.

There is a sixth reason as well: hours saved for salaried staff that nobody has turned into money. It works differently and has an article of its own: a hundred hours saved — how much money is that.

What to check in your own company today

1. State the loss in one sentence with a number in it. Not "the managers are slow" but "1.9 days from payment to booking". If you have no number, take your last 20 deals that fell through and mark the step at which each one stopped.
2. Find the longest wait. Your CRM or booking system holds the dates: received, picked up, passed on, finished. Write out the gaps for ten orders. If the step you are being asked to hand to an agent is not the longest, the agent will speed up the wrong thing. If there is a queue after that step, the queue will swallow everything the agent gains.
3. Check whether anything depends on the number the agent would improve. Split a month's enquiries into those answered quickly and those answered slowly. Compare the share that went on to buy. If it is the same, speed is selling you nothing. If it differs, that is grounds for a trial, not yet proof.
4. Ask what rule the work follows today. If the answer is "same as last week" or "when we get round to it", change the rule first. It costs nothing, and afterwards you will see what is left for an agent to do.

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