An abandoned call refers to a call or any other type of contact proposed to a call center but ends before any communication takes place. Call abandonment rate better known as “Abandon Rate” further refers to the percentage of inbound phone calls made to a call center or service desk that are abandoned by the customer before speaking to an agent.
Types of abandoned calls:
- Short abandoned calls:
- Calls abandoned in the IVR:
- Transferred calls
Calculating abandon rate:
The mathematical formula to calculate abandon rate is as follows:
Abandonment rate % = [Number of Calls offered – Number of Calls handled] / [Number of Calls offered] * 100
There exists a revised formula for the above calculation which excludes shortly abandoned calls ( occurring due to various reasons):
Abandonment rate % = [Number of Calls offered – Number of calls abandoned in 5 seconds – Number of Calls handled] / [Number of Calls offered – Number of calls abandoned in 5 seconds] * 100
Common mistakes regarding abandon rate calculation:
i) Excluding short abandoned calls:
Generally, calls that abandoned in the first 5 seconds are excluded due to two reasons:
- Customers dial the wrong number and only realize when the call is connected.
- They dial the right number but think they may have dialled a digit incorrectly and then hang up and redial just to be sure.
ii) Failure to measure calls abandoned in the IVR:
The correct procedure of calculation is measuring the abandon rate from the telephone network side of the system and not the agent queue. But unaware of this fact, many people fail to measure calls being abandoned in the IVR. The reason being that they had chosen to only start the statistics from the moment that people left the IVR and joined the queue proper.
iii) Counting transferred calls as two different ones:
This is yet another mistake that people often make. It is not a correct method of abandon rate calculation if you count transferred calls as calls that have been handled twice.