NextEraSolutionsMobile App ROI Calculator
What a client app actually returns in your niche: the payback period and exactly what makes it up.
Legal template applied. Every number below is editable.
An indicative model. We'll confirm the numbers on a short call.
How the model turns your numbers into payback.
Your four numbers
Choose a niche to load a starting template, then replace every number with your own. Volume is a monthly count: client inquiries, policies serviced, orders or customers, depending on the niche. Average value is what one of them is worth to you. Calls are the routine questions your team answers each month. Investment is the cost of building the app, and the cost calculator can fill it in.
Calls the app answers
Monthly calls × the share the app deflects × 12 months gives the calls avoided in a year. Each one is valued at the cost per call: £5.58 by default, ContactBabel's newest published cost of a UK inbound call. The scenario sets the deflected share: 15% Conservative, 35% Base and 55% Optimistic, capped at 20% for insurance. The page opens on Conservative.
Admin time you get back
Hours of manual admin per week × the loaded hourly cost of the people doing it × 52 weeks. This is work off the phone, such as status updates, emails and data entry, so it does not double-count the calls. The scenario does not change it; only your inputs do.
Revenue the app adds
Legal, insurance and Custom: yearly revenue from inquiries (inquiries × 12 × the share that becomes paid work × average value) × the share that comes from repeat clients × the retention improvement, 3, 7 or 12 percentage points by scenario. E-commerce: yearly order revenue × the mobile share × the share of mobile customers who move into the app (8–18%) × the uplift, which is the conversion multiple minus one plus the order-value uplift (1.8× and +15% in Base).
Payback
The yearly benefit is the sum of the three streams. Payback in months is the investment divided by one month of that benefit. The breakdown scales each stream to the payback date, so its rows add up to exactly the investment. A loyalty or referral add-on raises the investment by its build cost and adds its own yearly benefit. Loyalty is not offered for legal and claims work, which is mostly one-off.
Maintenance and three years
Annual maintenance defaults to 17.5% of the build, and you can change it under fine-tune. It does not affect payback. It feeds the three-year return that comes with your message: three years of benefit minus the build and three years of maintenance, as a percentage of that cost.
What the model leaves out: amounts are in today's money, with no discounting, inflation or tax. The full benefit counts from the first month, with no ramp-up while clients adopt the app, which is why the result assumes active client onboarding. Marketing to bring clients into the app is not included, and new customers are not counted except through the referral add-on. Euro and dollar amounts are converted from pounds at fixed ECB reference rates, not live ones. Start with the Conservative scenario and your real numbers: if the payback works there, the case does not rest on optimistic assumptions.
Where the numbers come from.
Cost per call
ContactBabel's UK contact-centre studies put a typical inbound call at £5.58-£6.26 (2023-24, 225 UK organisations surveyed).
Self-service deflection
Well-designed self-service handles 30-60% of routine contacts; every deflected call is money your team keeps.
Retention economics
HBR/Bain: acquiring a customer costs 5-25× more than retaining one, and apps roughly double repeat rates.
These are industry averages, not guarantees. We validate every assumption against your real numbers during discovery.
Need the investment number first?
Estimate your app's budget range in about 2 minutes and bring it back here.