Strategies to Reduce Abandoned Calls in the Contact Center

Abandoned calls are those calls that were dropped by customers while waiting for an agent, usually because the agent is taking too long to connect. Whatever the reason for a dropped call, they’re bad for business, and every contact center should be striving to reduce them. While they may not be matters of extreme importance (except in cases of abandoned calls in emergency 911 or 311 centers), behind every abandoned call is customer who needed help and who remains unsatisfied.

Call abandonment is a key performance indicator that every contact center should be tracking. The number is the percentage of calls abandoned compared to the total number of incoming calls. There are a variety of ways contact centers can reduce abandonment rates. These include:

Better scheduling. Adopt a workforce management solution that uses relevant daily and weekly information as well as historical data to more precisely estimate how much staff will be needed for any given 15-minute interval of each day. Better forecasting means better scheduling, and better scheduling means fewer abandoned calls. This may mean you need to reallocate hours to better meet call volume spikes.

Announce estimated wait time. Consider using a system that will announce estimated wait time for callers, so they can decide at the beginning whether they wish to hold for an agent or wait for a callback.

Dial back abandoned calls. Consider putting a policy into place that abandoned call numbers are called back by agents during quieter times of the day. This way, you may be able to recover some of the business lost through abandonment.

Use media blending. If phone-based agents are swamped, consider bringing agents assigned to other media, such as web site requests and chat, onto the phones to take the pressure off call queues.  

Use informative hold entertainment. Rather than blaring your company’s marketing message on repeat or hurting callers’ ears with staticky easy listening, consider providing news, culture information or something else people might actually want to listen to.

Offer self-service. There’s nothing more frustrating for customers than waiting on hold for information they could have found themselves. Ensure your self-service channels are up to date with the latest information and direct any callers on hold to the web site, social media accounts or IVR that contains this information.

Have an overflow resource. If call volume spikes get too high, consider partnering with a third-party business process outsourcing (BPO) company to take extra calls. Alternatively, you can build your own overflow resources with home-based workers who can hop on to take calls during busy times.

For more tips to calculate and reduce abandonment rates, visit Monet Software’s blog.

Edited by Maurice Nagle