How to Prevent Call Abandonment

If you were a restaurant owner, and a customer sitting at one of the tables in your café got up and left before they were served, you’d wonder why. And you’d probably try to figure out why that happened.

Was it slow service? Was the music annoying? Was it something else?

Well, if you’re in charge of a call center or contact center, and callers hang up before agents can answer their calls, you should probably look into that too. And you should try to understand what your abandon rate is and why it is.

Here are some common reasons for call abandonment and how you can prevent them in your contact center environment.

Initial Wait Times Matter

If you walked in a restaurant and the hostess told you there was a long wait, or you had to go through an elaborate maze just to place your order with a cashier, you might decide to go someplace else to eat. The same is true for people who use contact center IVRs.

If they have to answer a lot of questions and tiers before even reaching a human being, callers may get frustrated and drop off the line early in the process. When it comes to customer service, reducing customer friction is paramount.

So contact centers should analyze the customer experience provided by their IVRs – the first “face” that contact center callers see. Tweaking your IVR, when needed, to make sure it allows callers to quickly and easily get to the people and other resources they need can enable you to lower your call abandon rate.

Remove the Hate from the Wait

Of course, whether we’re talking about a restaurant or a call center, a bit of waiting is inevitable. Because it’s simply not possible to have a cook and waiter, or a contact center agent, dedicated to each customer.

So make customer waits as pleasant and productive as possible. If you’re in the restaurant business, that may entail handing out water, inviting patrons to get a drink at the bar, or offering them a menu to peruse during their waits. If you’re in the contact center arena, you might consider serving up information about your organization that can answer customer questions, offer them new services and solutions, or providing them with the option to get a callback later rather than waiting on hold.

Use Your People Skills

While wait time is often part of the contact center experience, organizations that use workforce management to accurately assess call volumes and needed staff can make sure wait times aren’t onerous. WFM software can ensure contact centers have the right number of agents, with the right skills, on every shift – so all calls can be answered within a reasonable amount of time and call abandonment is kept to a minimum.

Edited by Maurice Nagle