Abandon Ship: Reducing the Frustration of High Call Abandonment

High call abandonment can be devastating to the profitability and service quality of your contact centre.

Call abandonment—the telltale sign that your contact centre has failed.

Well, failed might be a little harsh. Call abandonment is a complex metric, affected by countless variables that are impossible to track. Call abandonment is impossible to prevent completely, but high abandonment rates are typically correlated with longer wait times, congested queues, and frustrated callers … all of which are bad news for your customer service goals.

Let’s examine call abandonment in the contact centre and what you can do to keep your callers from jumping ship.

Calculating Call Abandonment

Before we go trying to fix our outrageous call abandonment rates, we must first know how to measure them.

Abandon Rate is the percentage of calls that are ended in the queue. These are the callers who couldn’t wait to speak to a live agent. Don’t beat yourself up about it, though. This can happen for any number of reasons outside of your contact centre’s control. Call abandon rates can be calculated with this formula:

[Number of calls offered – Number of calls handled] / [Number of calls offered] * 100 = Abandonment rate %

This will tell you what percentage of calls are considered “abandoned.” A good benchmark for this is around two percent. Anything less than five percent is passable. Above that, and you might start seeing some problems. Armed with our call abandonment calculations, let’s review a few possible culprits that may be raising your abandonment rates.

The Usual Suspects

The best way to tell what’s causing your call abandonment is to utilize the wealth of data your workforce management tools provide. There are several metrics that can be leveraged to offer insight into where the weak link of your service chain is.

Call volume is the metric counting the total number of client calls to your contact centre. Our instant gratification society hates waiting for service, and high call volume usually means callers in a queue. Research compiled by NewVoiceMedia found that 53 percent of customers get frustrated when they can’t speak to a live agent right away.

Calls routed to your IVR are counted separately—meaning call volume only measures calls that make it to the queue. Call volume can’t always be anticipated, but can be forecasted with data to a relatively high degree of accuracy. This forecasting is essential for keeping your call volume manageable. Anticipating peak traffic lets you staff your centre appropriately to keep waiting times low. Our other key metrics include:

Average Speed to Answer (ASA): How long your customers wait before you pick up. High ASA rates indicate understaffed or overtaxed workforces.

Average Handle Time (AHT): How long it took the agent to resolve the complaint. High AHT suggests that your agents may need training to work more efficiently.

Reducing Abandonment

Improving abandonment rates involves efficient allocation of resources and appropriate planning. To make a dent in your call abandonment rates, you’ll need to ensure your staff is well-trained, your call centre technology is optimized, and that you have enough data to make meaningful predictions:

• Better Forecasting: Call volume patterns can be measured and predicted for better allocation of your workforce. More lines open means fewer callers waiting in the queue.
• Employee Training: Though complex problems will always require some extra effort, ensuring that your staff is flexible and well-trained can help reduce abandonment. Each employee working efficiently contributes to lower handle times, and ideally, fewer frustrated callers.
• Call-back Technology: Offer callers an opportunity to enter a call-back ticket into the queue. This will save your customers the headache of waiting in line, and ensures they receive service as soon as possible. Calling customers back when an agent is available can do wonders for reducing caller frustration and inevitable call abandonment. Data by Fonolo found that 32 percent of contact centres experienced fewer abandoned calls after implementing call-backs.
• In-queue Messages: Examine your IVR to see if callers are hanging up after hearing a queue message. You can customize these responses to keep callers on the line longer and reduce the number of callers that abandon. Typically, callers will hang up after the first automated message ends. Using this time to provide information or compliance messages can help keep them on the line long enough for one of your agents to take over.

Keep Them on the Line

Reducing call abandonment is no easy feat. High call abandonment suggests significant problems with your contact centre. As such, comprehensive changes to your policies may be necessary to right the ship. Evaluate your staffing needs, employee abilities, and IVR systems to see what part of your service is tripping you up. Above all, utilize the data at your disposal to better prepare your contact centre to meet the demands of your callers. Interested in other ways to reduce your call abandonment rates? Download our free whitepaper!