Reporting Call Abandonment Rates

Answers

• Posted at 12:00AM on Jul 1, 2000

  I sat on a national benchmarking board last year for AAA. We, too, struggled with this number and it is still an issue internally within the organization. We arrived at two standards:

  1. The systemwide abandonment rate was calculated from the time the call hit the switch. This is the most basic, hard-and-cold version.
  2. The "delay" abandonment rate was calculated from the time the call taker could effect the call. This leaves out the system time, IVR/CTI interactions.

  We recognized both because many of us compensate our staff on this issue. I can only count the time an agent could affect the call when calculating the abandonment rate when figuring bonuses. On the other hand, the systemwide abandonment rate can tell you if your frontend technology is too long or complicated. -- Paul Myers, Director, Member Services, AAA Minnesota/Iowa

• Posted at 12:00AM on Jul 1, 2000

  The calculation in the ACD reports varies by manufacturer, but most have the flexibility to change the calculation to ignore calls shorter than whatever threshold you choose. Talk to your vendor about how to do this. -- Maggie Klenke

• Posted at 12:00AM on Sep 1, 2000

  When I report my abandon rate it is straight off the ACD report. I do, however, also track daily the average time to abandon. Hope that helps you some. -- Jeff Lord, Mattel

• Posted at 12:00AM on Sep 1, 2000

  With the aim of constantly improving customer service in mind, I would suggest that it is important to measure all abandoned calls in your abandonment rate. If the customer chooses to abandon, then there must be a reason. The 15-second abandon time suggests that your target ASA of 30 seconds may be too high, and that your customers might be experiencing frustration with your frontend system. On the other hand, an abandonment rate of less than 3% to 4% is perfectly acceptable, as people abandon for many reasons, including an interruption or wrong number. Rather than focus on the actual abandonment rate and how it is measured, shift the focus to improving it over time. The important thing is to measure your customer satisfaction to find out why people are hanging up. Hope this helps! -- Mike Lucas, Ceridian Canada Ltd

• Posted at 12:00AM on Oct 1, 2000

  Abandonment rate is an important tool for any customer contact center. It has many uses, including:

  1. Developing staffing requirements
  2. Gauging customer satisfaction
  3. Evaluating call flow processes
  4. Identifying queuing bottlenecks

  We provide an information and counseling service to our callers. Callers hear mandatory advisory messages and instructions on the front end of their call. The caller is then queued to the counselors. If the callers, after hearing the introductory announcements, decide that they do not want or need to speak with a counselor, the appropriate response is to hang up. We do not count calls that hang up during or within 5 seconds of the introductory announcements.

  Callers that hang up during or within 5 seconds of the introductory announcements most certainly did not intend to speak with a counselor. They hung up in accordance with the instructions, dialed a wrong number, or were dialing the number out of curiosity. Five seconds is just short of one full ring-cycle. Our analysis shows that callers wishing to speak with an agent will wait at least one full ring-cycle after the introduction before abandoning. We have also seen that most non-interested callers hang-up well before 5 seconds, while serious callers abandon well after 5 seconds. We would not want to use the straight ACD abandonment rate for staffing decisions to try and catch callers who did not wish to speak with a counselor. Nor would we want the non-interested abandons to affect the measure of effectiveness or efficiency of our center because those calls never intended to reach our center.

  By not counting the non-interested caller abandons in our abandonment rate, we have more valid information to evaluate the performance and requirements of our center as well as gauging caller satisfaction. We have just completed another most successful URAC accreditation process. -- Lewis Athow

• Posted at 12:00AM on Nov 1, 2000

  We are a manufacturing environment, and in our customer service contact center, we look at all abandons no matter how quickly they occur, i.e., 5 seconds, 10 seconds, or more. We assume if the customer dialed into us, they have a need to speak to a representative. Most of our customers are fairly patient in queue, but some just decide they cannot wait at that time and end up abandoning. We watch our service levels very closely so that we are providing optimum service to our customers. Discounting the quicker abandons skews your true abandon rate – you can make your stats look better than they really are. For our center, all calls are important, so all abandons need to be calculated. -- Kathy Lee

• Posted at 12:00AM on Dec 1, 2000

  I agree that all calls abandoned are important. While we do count all calls that are abandoned (regardless of wait time before abandoning), we evaluate each circumstance against the day’s activity. If the average speed of answer is less than our target (20-30 seconds) for the specific day and there are abandoned calls, some investigation needs to take place. By investigating each call, how long it waited and what time of day, you may be able to spot trends. We found that although our targets were being met (TSF and ASA), and abandoned calls were not too high, there were specific times of the day when abandonment was high. After investigating, it was determined that agents during those time periods had decided to take breaks, go on not ready or whatever. Supervisors monitored those specific times of the day a little closer and improvements were noticed immediately. Regards. -- Steven Moro, Direct Line Insurance

• Posted at 12:00AM on Dec 1, 2000

  I prefer reporting directly off the ACD. If we had a chance to answer the call but didn’t, I feel it should be counted as an abandon. If the call queued and an agent could have gotten to it but didn’t, that’s our lost call. Time, in my opinion, should be irrelevant be it from one second to 10 minutes. Now if you want to pull reports showing how many calls abandoned before your 30-second threshold, that could be a good internal report, but not one you publish to your customers. I’ve heard of some strange ways of reporting the abandoned call. I once knew of an organization that skewed their numbers so badly, they ended up with a negative abandon percentage. Don’t ask me how or why they did it. -- Kevin Craft

• Posted at 12:00AM on Dec 1, 2000

  We track all abandoned calls, regardless of duration. It is optimal to look at all abandoned calls to determine the true level of service being provided to your customer base. More importantly, specifically for trending purposes, it is ideal to look at the amount of time that your customers are willing to hold before they actually abandon. It is through this data that you begin to learn more about your customer tolerance rates. These tolerance rates can end up being fairly consistent or could, in fact, be variable by season or time of day. Over the years, I have found that many organizations create abandon rate goals without truly knowing what is tolerable to their customer base. A good first step is to analyze your internal customer tolerance rates (time holding before abandoning) and then take a look at some of the industry abandon rate standards (i.e., less than 5% abandoned). -- Nita Mosby Henry

• Posted at 12:00AM on Dec 1, 2000

  We are a small center, about 20 agents, and have a service level for time to answer of 20 seconds. We count all abandons above this number when measuring our performance to standard. Abandoned calls under 20 seconds are reported as short abandons on our system, and we consider the majority of these to be calls where the caller had a change of mind and terminated the call for reasons other than our ability to answer timely. Many people in business will dial a number and then hang up if someone comes into their office or another line rings in, these type of calls should not be considered in service levels. -- David Crawford

• Posted at 12:00AM on Dec 1, 2000

  Abandons in the first five to 10 seconds may very well represent wrong number dialers, people who realized they didn’t have the necessary information ready for the call (like their account number, credit card, etc), folks who reject being monitored and abandon when the message suggest it will happen, etc. They are not all people who genuinely represent true customers who could be served even if agents are idle. It is important to understand that most ACDs have a setting to identify when a call queue starts. If you have a 10-second announcement and the timer starts as the message starts, then that 10 seconds is the time that callers identify they reached the wrong number, etc. If you force the announcement as many do to inform callers about monitoring, then you will have this 10 seconds of time whether agents are idle or not. Is it really reasonable to count this time in the calculation of speed of answer? Discuss these issues with your ACD vendor to discover when timing starts and what your optional settings can be. Then discuss it with senior management and determine what really makes sense for your business. Industry standard does not matter here. What matters is what your customers experience and how your management will judge your performance. -- Maggie Klenke

• Posted at 12:00AM on Jan 1, 2001

  I manage a center of approximately 120 technical phone agents. Our client requires that we report two separate abandonment rates. The first deals with our contractual agreements of answering calls within service level and meeting a less than 5% abandon rate. The second deals with what is actually happening. This allows us to spot trends of high "short" abandons that could point to confusing or lengthy IVR options, announcement outages/problems or other correctable but otherwise uneasily identifiable situations which could lead callers to hang up prematurely. Most newer switches allow for customization of what a "short" abandon time is and, in our case, we have set it to record data in 20-second intervals up to our service level agreement. To answer your question, it really depends on the needs of your customers and your client, as well as the technology available to you in your center. – Phillip Morris, Convergys