How do I track cost per business outcome?

Add X-Cost-Outcome to calls that produce a measurable result — resolved tickets, signed contracts, processed documents. Get cost-per-outcome ROI your CFO can use.

Goal: Know the exact AI cost per resolved ticket, drafted contract, processed document, or any other business outcome — so AI spend has a denominator, not just a total.

Time: 15 minutes. Outcome data appears in the dashboard on the first tagged call.

Step 1 — Add X-Cost-Outcome to successful outcome calls

Add X-Cost-Outcome to the API call that confirms a result was produced. Tag it only when the outcome actually occurred — not on exploratory or failed calls.

This header feeds simple call-level analytics (visible alongside your other attribution tags) — it does not by itself populate the cost-per-outcome dashboard in Step 3. That dashboard is driven by a separate outcome-definition system: define an outcome (Step 2) and record events against it (Step 3) to see it there.

Use lowercase hyphen-separated names that describe what happened: ticket-resolved, contract-drafted, document-classified, lead-qualified. One name per distinct business result type.

Step 2 — Define the outcome

Go to Executive → Outcomes → Define Outcome. Give it a name (e.g. "Support ticket resolved"), pick a Correlation Method — By Session or By User — and a correlation Window (minutes), which controls how far back Cognocient looks to match AI spend to the event.

Step 3 — Record outcome events (when the result is confirmed downstream)

If the confirmation happens in a separate service — a ticketing webhook, a CRM event, a payment callback — call the Outcomes API from there instead of from the AI call itself. outcome_name must match what you defined in Step 2, and correlation_key is a session or user ID depending on the outcome's correlation method.

This API method works without any changes to your AI call code. If you already use X-Cost-Session to group conversation turns, pass that same session ID as correlation_key — Cognocient matches the outcome to the AI spend from that session within the correlation window.

Step 4 — Read your cost-per-outcome in the dashboard

Go to Executive → Outcomes and click into the outcome you defined. You'll see:

Field	What it shows
Total Outcomes	Count of recorded events
Total AI Investment	Spend from calls matched to those events
Avg Cost per Outcome	Total AI Investment ÷ Total Outcomes — your primary ROI metric

There's no success-rate, cost-per-failed-outcome, or trend line on this view today — it's cost against recorded events, not a ratio against attempted-but-abandoned sessions.

Step 5 — Use cost-per-outcome in your board report

Generate a board report from Reports → Generate Report, downloading the AI ROI Summary PDF. It includes your cost-per-outcome figure once outcomes are tracked, with an AI-written narrative that frames the ROI in CFO language.

Industry benchmarks to frame your numbers:

Outcome	Typical AI cost	Human equivalent	AI advantage
Support ticket (L1)	$0.15–$0.50	$6–$12	12–80×
Contract first draft	$1.50–$4.00	$150–$400	50–100×
Document classification	$0.01–$0.05	$1.50–$3.00	30–300×
Code PR review	$0.40–$1.20	$40–$80	35–200×
Sales outreach email	$0.05–$0.20	$5–$15	25–300×

Replace these with your actual Cognocient numbers when presenting to the board.