Call Abandon Rate

Hi All,

We are a small Member service centre working our way towards meeting the industry standards so we can expand and grown our business.

With the new enhanced systems that we purchased last year my review shows me that though our service levels have improved our abandon rate although dropped is still high.

Is there any method to calculate what should be the actual abandon rate, based erlang we do have sufficient staff available to cater to the volume of calls and our service levels are quite good.

I need assistance with identifying and improving our abandon rate from the present 15%

Completely agree with Tony. You can only improve your abandon rate if you understand your caller tolerance. If you understand the point at which the majority of customers hang up you can either change your service level to get the average speed of answer below that time or if you have the option to add messaging, make sure your delay messages kick in just before that point. This should encourage customers to hold just a bit longer. Although, personally I'd always advise avoiding the cliche of 'your call is important to us' as clearly it's not important enough to schedule sufficient agents to answer the call!

From my experience, designing content (in-queue) that reflects not just the brand, but also, the caller that's in this space will have a big influence on your abandonment rates. Generally callers ring centres for varying reasons, and often their selection will give you a clue as to the mood/motivation of the caller - sales, service, technical etc.

So, take a step back and look at it from your callers perspective - who are they and what do they want? Then think about what's most appropriate to play them - music (& what type), marketing messages, and/or a combination? Remember also to take a check on the average and longest queue lenghts so whatever your queue treatment it's suitable in length for the queue.

Whatever you do, it'll be really easy to see if it works!!

Good Luck

Kev