What is Call Abandonment Rate? Top 7 Ways To Improve Call Abandonment Rate

Lost sales and lower-income are not the only indicators of abandonment. Abandonment even results in a loss of clients for some organizations.

Often, a customer support center’s call is dropped before it reaches an agent. There are a variety of reasons that customers may hang up; perhaps they were able to solve the issue with self-service content, or perhaps they got frustrated with the long wait time.

Whenever a customer calls a contact center and hangs up, the contact center loses the opportunity to resolve the customer’s issue. This lost opportunity is what we call the Abandonment Rate.

What is the Call Abandonment Rate?

Abandon Rate is not a new term in the customer support industry. It is a very important metric that has been around for many years now. Since the shift of customer support from call centers to social media, there’s been a breakthrough that has changed the way companies can measure this metric.

Here we will share what the customer support abandonment rate is and what strategies can be implemented to reduce it.

The call abandonment rate is the percentage of calls that are abandoned. If 100 customers call your business and 10 hang up before reaching the agent, your call abandonment rate would be 10%.

It is also known as the hang-up rate, which refers to how many calls (or leads, or emails) are terminated before the caller can be reached. It is applicable for both inbound and outbound calls.

The first step is to determine your customer service goals and the metrics you’re going to use. An example of the abandonment rate is the percentage of users who visit the contact page but don’t submit a ticket. It’s a good measure of how easy it is for customers to contact you. 

Calculating the Call Abandonment Rate?

Call abandonment rates are higher than 50% for many businesses.

With many aspects of your business time-sensitive, call abandonment rates, especially in the e-commerce field can be a headache.

A formula like Erlang A can be used to estimate telemarketing or customer service metrics. It helps you predict how many people will call back when you are running a contest or answering questions from customers. The number of calls that will be abandoned based on the call volume, the number of staff available, and the average patience of your callers can give you a great idea about how long you will be able to sustain those levels in terms of manpower. 

The “A” in the Erlang A means “abandonment”.

The studies have shown that call abandonment rates are higher when following these common practices:

• talking over schedule during a scheduled series of calls,
• not explaining and training about how the caller service process works,
• not being receptive to the challenges that some callers present, and not adding or managing complexity.

In general, abandon rate varies throughout the day based on certain metrics, such as service level performance and queue management strategies, including on-hold messages, hold music, IVR options, etc.

Next, let’s talk about some techniques you can use to lower your call abandonment rate.

Provide 24-hour customer service, 365 days a year.

Make sure that your agents are available at all times so that your call abandonment rate can be reduced. As an example, if you currently have phone hours from 8:00am to 8:00pm and you have a call abandonment rate of 20% at 8:00am, you may want to try extending them to 8:00am to 10:00pm and see if that reduces your abandonment rate.

• Keep your Customers Engaged
• The Importance of Implementing a Call-Back-Service
• Hire more agents to handle peak times
• Provide customers with a time estimate
• Educate your staff and equip them with the appropriate tools
• Managing Troubleshooting Calls Effectively

Keep your Customers Engaged

When customers are waiting in the customer support queue, they may get tired of listening to music continuously on a loop. There is no other thing on a customer’s mind besides the person who will help them, so there is always a certain amount of frustration.

If this is the case, why not get them to participate in some activity while they wait instead, which will surely reduce the perceived amount of time they’re waiting?

Here is an idea: you can ask customers for some information about themselves before asking them the question or meeting them face-to-face so that you can get started sooner like an address or account details, for example!

Agents only need to enter information about the customer into the system once before they can transfer calls, which reduces the time that customers have spent waiting. As a result, agents can begin solving their callers’ problems straight away and leave less time for issue-based conversations.

The Importance of Implementing a Call-Back-Service

Consider implementing a callback service that helps customers and agents alike by allowing customers to opt for keeping their place in the queue without having to wait on hold. Instead, the system will call them back when an agent becomes available, allowing them to go on with their day while waiting for you to get back in touch.

When your customers know they can reach an agent even when they don’t have the time to wait around in a long queue, they’re more likely to stick around rather than hang up. Implementing a callback service helps improve your business by earning you more customer loyalty!

Hire more agents to handle peak times

Hiring more agents may be the perfect solution to eliminate phone call abandonment if your budget didn’t matter. But, not all businesses have unlimited budgets at their disposal.

Increasing the number of agents, however, does not provide an immediate or short-term solution to reducing wait times. It is most important that callers are answered within a reasonable amount of time by someone who can and is willing to help them.

Consider utilizing technologies and resources such as social media platforms and live chat to accomplish this objective, which allows customers to be helped immediately without waiting on hold, thereby lowering abandonment rates and improving customer satisfaction.

Provide customers with a time estimate

Customers may become frustrated when they are not sufficiently informed about a process. When they do not know what to expect, they do not have an accurate idea of how long they need to wait. It is important to provide the customer with an accurate estimation so that there is no confusion which leads to frustration and in turn, lost calls and more customers on hold.

Educate your staff and equip them with the appropriate tools

Another way to reduce your call abandonment rate is to make sure that your agents are prepared. This can be in the form of training or scripting. Training will ensure that your agents are knowledgeable about your products and services and that they know how to handle the different scenarios that may come up. Scripting will ensure that your agents are saying the right thing at the right time.

Managing Troubleshooting Calls Effectively

Contact center customers often call because of a problem, like a defect in a product or difficulty accessing your website. Call volume, long wait times, and high abandonment rates are all signs that you need to fix the issue that caused the high volume in the first place.

This will not be solved by your support team on their own as it will be a collaborative effort with other teams working in different areas – but you can communicate this feedback to them so they know where to focus their efforts to fix these important problems.

Fixing these issues will naturally reduce your call center’s call volume as well as reduce the time that people spend waiting on hold, so you will soon see a positive effect on your call abandonment rate!

The bottom line:

Providing customers with effective abandonment solutions that hit the sweet spot between cost and value will increase customer engagement. When thinking about creating a cross-sell sequence that can be used as an abandonment solution, you have to consider coordinating costs involved with ensuring your abandoned customers feel valued, paying attention to how the solution provides information about their commitment level, and so on.

DialDesk provides you with a cost-efficient way to approach this problem while having a measurable impact on your Call Abandonment Rate success metrics.

Author Profile

Deepak Kashyap

A CX expert, keynote speaker, and author, Deepak Kashyap has over 25+ years of experience. His talks on the subject are published on most prestigious forums, and his books have helped to spread awareness about how improving customer experiences can boost sales. Deepak is a prominent speaker who shares his expert opinion about customer experience.

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