At 46,000 tickets a year, disciplined triage is worth $1.4m a year.
Arithmetic, not modelling. Two published-style rates multiplied by ticket volume: what manual processing costs against automated, and what gets paid out on a claim that should have been declined. Move the volume and every number moves with it.
10k45k300k
Processing cost, manual
$1.93m$42 per ticket · WarrantyHub / APQC benchmark range
Processing cost, automated
$0.92m$20 per ticket · same range, automated end
The gap, every year
$1.4mOf which $0.4m is claims that should have been declined
The distance between manual case handling and a disciplined, vision-assisted one, at this ticket volume. It is not a headcount plan — category and account managers stay; what moves is which tickets need them.
What it is not
Not a fraud-detection product. Most of this gap is ordinary process cost and ordinary misuse that a careless system pays out anyway, not deliberate deception.
The honest test
Take the queue below, run today’s tickets, and see how many actually needed a person. That is the real number this page is built to show.
Manual/automated cost per claim and cycle time from WarrantyHub, Claims Processing Benchmarks 2026, and APQC Open Standards Benchmarking. Misuse share from NRF, 2025 Retail Security Survey (9% of returns estimated fraudulent) against a 2% residual once entitlement and photo evidence are checked before anything is paid. Illustrative of scale, not a commitment.
The company
Bridgewater Trade & Safety Pty Ltd fictional
—annual sales
—active trade accounts
—SKUs catalogued
—third-party brands + own
—branches, distribution centres
—tickets, last 90 days
On the public record
What has already happened, cited
9%of returns estimated fraudulent, industry-wide
Most of it is not deliberate fraud so much as evidence never checked. The same discipline — a receipt, a photo, an entitlement window — closes most of the gap.
Conservative 2025 industry estimates. Vendors like Zendesk claim up to 80%; Gartner forecasts 80% of routine interactions fully AI-handled by 2026. The gap between those numbers is exactly where judgment still matters.
14 categories, own-brand Bridgewater Pro plus 13 third-party lines. Bars are annual sales; the figure is SKUs catalogued.
The account base, live
240 trade accounts. 30 raised a ticket today.
— low escalation— on watch— high escalationtoday’s showcasetouched today
Last 90 days
Tickets a day, needing a person
—touchless, 90-day
—median days to resolve
—mean vision-agent confidence
—with a manufacturer now
Run the day
Tuesday 15 September 2026 · 180 tickets
Every request, email, portal form and monitoring signal that reached the case desk today, in arrival order. Watch the agents clear the routine and hand the rest to a person. Click any row to open it in the chain.
0processed
—touchless
0to the gate
0declined, evidence clear
$0agent cost, whole day
$0misuse declined, value
Nothing processed yet. Run the day, or open a showcase ticket on the right.
Showcase tickets
30 scenarios worth watching closely
Planted in the data so every number reconciles with the receipt, the SKU and the account history. Filter by family, click to open.
01
Intake and visionEmail, portal, phone and monitoring signals resolved to an account and a SKU; the photo and receipt read before a person opens the ticket
Idle
02
Entitlement and brand routingReturn window, purchase evidence and misuse signals checked; own-brand stays internal, third-party routes to the manufacturer
Idle
03
Resolution matchingPolicy matched to the fault: replace, credit, repair or decline, checked against the delegation limit
Idle
04
Action and recoveryExecutes what is in policy, files the manufacturer or carrier claim, and prepares anything above the line for a signature
Idle
Human · Case manager decision
Nothing on this page approves a credit above the line, disputes a manufacturer or withdraws stock without a person.
No items awaiting approval yet.
The data behind the day
Accounts, SKUs, 90-day tickets and today’s queue, all synthetic, all reconcilable