Using AI to reduce your call center costs seems like a no-brainer. But a new study from AI-powered CX measurement company Laivly shows many companies aren’t truly giving it enough thought, and it’s costing them money. More than two in five projects are delayed, 53% are over budget, and 48% have lost revenue—28% because AI can’t handle customer needs, and 20% just aren’t sure why or how much. There is, however, cost savings and customer satisfaction to be found with AI. I talked to Laivly founder and CEO Jeff Fettes about how to successfully bring AI to your call center. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.Until next time. This is the published version of Forbes' CFO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief finance officers and other leaders focused on the budget. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.Economic IndicatorsDonald Trump greets Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House last year.Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty ImagesThe FIFA World Cup is over, and President Donald Trump is back on the trade offensive against co-host nation Canada. On Monday, he issued his latest broadside on the U.S.’s northern neighbor: a 50% tariff on most goods from Canada, including wine, dairy, cement, furniture and ice hockey gear. The new tax is justified by a 1930 law that allows presidents to impose tariffs of up to 50% on countries deemed to be discriminating against U.S. goods—which the Trump administration says Canada is doing with U.S. cars, alcohol and dairy. While this is more grounded in law than a threatened tariff over wildfire smoke that polluted air in the northeast sector of the U.S. last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said this is Trump’s latest action that goes against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, negotiated by Trump during his first term, and which Trump decided not to renew. The new tariffs go into effect in 30 days. Carney said the Canadian government is ready to negotiate with Trump to address “outstanding issues,” saying that Trump’s tariff war is costing American consumers. Looking at inflation numbers, it doesn’t seem to be having too steep of a cost now, but that’s likely because consumer prices as a whole fell about 0.5% between May and June, slowing the inflation rate to 3.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While this represents the largest one-month drop in inflation rates since April 2020, it may be short-lived. The majority of the drop came from stabilizing oil prices because of a pause in hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. But in the last week, the war again intensified, pushing average gas prices to more than $4 a gallon on Monday for the first time in a month. TaxesThe leadership hole at the IRS is getting deeper. Ken Kies, Treasury’s top tax policy official who has also been serving as acting chief counsel of the IRS, will be leaving government service, writes Forbes’ Kelly Phillips Erb. Kies was confirmed by the Senate as Treasury’s assistant secretary for tax policy in June 2025, and had been acting IRS chief counsel since November. In his dual role, Kies oversaw tax regulations and administrative guidance, as well as led lawyers advising the IRS on tax law. The chief counsel’s position is especially important in times of new tax law—like Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act from 2025.IRS leadership—designed with terms that outlast presidential administrations, potentially insulating the department from politics—has been a revolving door since Trump’s second election. The agency has no commissioner right now, and is currently run by the newly created position of IRS CEO, held by Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano. The IRS general counsel’s job, which needs to be confirmed by the Senate, has seen acting counsels fired and nominees withdrawn before the Senate vote took place. Last month, Trump nominated tax attorney James Gadwood—who has represented the Trump Organization—to permanently take the job, but his confirmation hearing hasn’t yet been scheduled.Off The LedgerHow To Ensure AI Is Actually Bringing Value To Your CXLaivly founder and CEO Jeff Fettes.LaivlyWhen it comes to using AI to cut costs, many CFOs turn to the call center. A new study from AI-powered CX measurement company Laivly shows that while this is a priority for more than half of companies—and 65% say their most recent AI project was a success—close to half say they’re actually causing revenue loss. Laivly founder and CEO Jeff Fettes walked me through the results and gave advice on how to actually save money with AI in the call center. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.What does the actual math look like when a company is trying to figure out AI call center automation?Fettes: Technology companies haven’t necessarily been on the front lines answering questions to customers. They have sort of this Hollywood vision of what a contact center and CX is, and they’re often selling use cases. Everyone’s used the IVA technology, where you call in and speak to an AI voice that can understand you in plain language. If it can solve your problem, the IVA solves it. If it can, it transfers you to an agent. This is relatively new technology, and a company says, ‘Hey, we can install this IVA and it’s going to handle 20% of your call volume.’ Let’s say it’s a 10% reduction in cost. Your call center bill, for any company, is one of the largest expenses. It sounds good on paper, but do the simple math: In order for that to work, 100% of the calls flow through your AI. Twenty percent of them get triaged off into this use case. But the other 80% go through to the call center, and that 80% have picked up some extra expense because they had to talk to the AI first. See what happens to the math there? When you net it out, you really don't have much savings at scale.You have to look at that adoption curve. Putting something in front of your customers and saying, ‘This is the way we’re going to do it now’ is a really bad place to start. A lot of companies get big headlines about some failure because they’ve tried to do that. The technology works fine, but nobody likes it and they’re going to avoid using it.People ask me, ‘Who are the companies that are winning at this?’ The answer is the ones that look at the entire workflow, using AI to address that entire workflow from beginning to end. If you’re flowing 100% of calls through an AI so that you can get adoption on 20%, and then it’s going to an agent. And if that agent is also using AI just the same way that you or I would, it’s making them more successful at their job. Now you’ve gotten some value. You can also have more efficient, pronounced coaching and development. It can circle back and make your human agent training better. Everybody’s happy. Your customer is getting a better experience. They don’t feel friction. They get everything they want. The ones that want to adopt that 20% at the beginning are getting that, but the ones that want to speak to a human are now getting a much better experience. Your management is getting value out of the whole ecosystem. Do you look at AI call center savings more as fewer salaries needed, or less customer friction—leading to more business?What we want to do is rethink the metrics. Things like customer satisfaction scores measure whether your customers are actually happy with the service they’re getting, and that probably has a direct relationship that you can formulate statistically on their desire to do business with you in the future. AI brings about opportunities to completely reimagine the way we see customer service. Traditionally with AI, people start with this idea that we should do the same thing we’ve always done, except we just want it to be faster and cheaper. And that doesn't necessarily play on the things that AI is good at. I worked with one company that always thought of their CX as a cost center: We have to get the cost down and the lower we can get it, the better it’s going to be, and that’s our goal. Every time someone reached out and a human answered, it cost them a couple of dollars. The more they spent, the more they had to load that into the price of their product. But when they were able to take some and reduce them down to 10 to 20 cents a contact, their cost center turns into a profit center because they’re able to drive considerably more engagement to their brand. Now they find that every time someone reaches out to the contact center, they’re making money they can measure. You want people to reach out more often because every time they do, they spend a little more, they get a little more loyal, they’re happier with your brand.What advice would you give to a CFO to really see where the costs and benefits are with AI in the call center and CX?Fully understand the value their CX program and their contact center is providing today. Invest in infrastructure, not in use cases. You’re investing in the ability for your team that you trust to do a better job of everything they’re doing and also to be able to respond to the problems of tomorrow and not just the problems you're having today. Build an AI infrastructure around your CX that’s going to allow you to deploy it as one of the tools among the many that you have, including coaching and development and using your peoples’ experience.Really focus the measurement and make sure they’re not looking at an outcome for one single use case. If measurement of success is just deployment, that’s pretty easy to achieve. You need to make sure you understand how what you’re deploying is going to impact the entire organization.Comings + GoingsFashion company PVH Corp. appointed Alexis Rollier as chief financial officer, effective early September. Rollier will join the company from Sephora where he worked as global chief operating officer and global chief financial officer.National security technology company Peraton elevated Salim Omar to its chief financial officer role, effective June 20. Omar had been working as acting chief financial officer, following more than a decade in senior finance leadership roles across the company.Water treatment and solutions company Pentair appointed Bob Fishman as interim executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective July 14, following the departure of Nicholas Brazis. The company has initiated a search to find a permanent replacement.Strategies + AdviceFinance transformation has been the top CFO priority for three years straight, according to Gartner’s Evanta CFO community network, signifying a readiness to leverage technology and new thinking to redesign the finance department. If this is your goal, here’s what to think about next.When you’re planning your enterprise AI strategy, it can actually pay off to go big. A new study from Blue Ridge Partners found that large-scale AI uses both brought more revenue over the long run and cost less.QuizWhich of these companies had its best quarter ever in its most recent earnings report?A. AMC EntertainmentB. NetflixC. Domino’s PizzaD. General MotorsSee if you got the right answer here.