Abandoned Calls

[clalonde]

For forecasting and staffing purposes, I am trying to locate a standard calculation or formula used to determine how many of my abandoned calls will call back to thus figure out what our true call volume would have been on days of high abandonment. And if so, will they call back once, twice, three times before they are provided service?

I was informed the industry standard is 1/3 of your abandoned calls will call back.

Example:

1000 Calls Offered
700 Calls Answered
300 Calls Abandoned

Using the formula mentioned above, 100 of 300 abandoned calls will call back. Which means, your adjusted call volume would have been 800 calls (calls answered + 100 callbacks).

Does anyone have any insight?

[gkern]

It depends on the type of call (sales, customer service, support) and the type of caller (consumer, business). The only real way to track it is to do something like ANI recognition in which you have the switch identify the inbound phone number and track repeat calls from that number. That will be slightly inaccurate if you have a lot of calls originating from businesses. Your best guess is to go off of a normal forecasting process from days in which you were staffed appropriately and assume that to be accurate.

The formula you described will be off because you are only talking about people that call back. You are missing the people who never call back.

Give me a call if you want to talk more.

Greg Kern
CallTech
512-261-0409

[Seymour]

We had for many years addressed the problem of abandoned, or "dropped" calls.

If you're using a toll-free number, the ANI's may be readily available, but not immediately. If Caller ID is used to identify callers, remember that lots of people *67 to disable it.

If your center gets a great many calls from people who travel a great deal, then your system is unlikely to recognize who's calling from some hotel in East Podunk.

The best way, we've found, to address abandoned or "dropped" calls, is to keep them to a minimum. For this, you need to know specific reasons for the abandoned calls, and then address the reasons. VERY OFTEN, THE REASON FOR THE ABANDONED CALL IS NOT DUE TO TOO FEW REPS!!!

The drops may be (and I know you probably don't want to hear this) due to the way the caller is effected mentally, both in conscious and unconscious ways, by your auto attendant, IVR, VRU, ACD.

If these features haven't been thought through, and PROFESSIONALY voice scripted and recorded, the way they sound to the caller can be very annoying.

The simple fact is this: "How you 'sound' over the phone is at least as important as the way you 'look' in print or on your web site."

Endless menus, and a hold queue program with elevator music and vectored mailbox recording of some guy who works in the PBX room saying "Your call will be answered in the order received" will really annoy callers. Annoyed callers hang up!

At our firm, Advertel, Inc. Pittsburgh PA, we specialize in addressing this type of situation. We analyze the 'audience' on the phone system. In the end, the ideal situation is for the marketing, branding, and PR people to be involved. The budget for this "image" material also should rest in the marketing. branding and PR departments; not with IS.

GKB, Advertel, Inc. Pittsburgh

[JoeB]

I’d like to agree with previous posts and alert against using “industry standards”. Each industry and user population is different, and inferring from one to the other and extrapolating data, especially of unknown nature, is risky. I worked with call centers whose average hold time was well above 10 minutes, which for that particular industry was considered OK; in most software support call centers the “average” caller abandoned the call after less than 20 seconds. Averaging these numbers is meaningless.

As Seymour pointed out, abandonment is mostly driven by human behavior, and so is the rate in which these caller call back – some call back immediately thinking they will beat the system, some call back much later. My own research confirms this assertion: within a single organization or user population, the abandonment “behavior” is very consistent (there are qualitative metrics to define it).


Joe Barkai
DIAGNOSTIC STRATEGIES
http://www.DiagnosticStrategies.com/
Tel. 781-433-0833

[yooo]

Hi

Is abondoned and dropped call the same thing? How do we distinguish a "dropped" call?

In my call center, when a customer hangs the phone whether in the middle of a call or after the call is finished, we get a message in our head-phone "The caller hung up". AND when we don't get that message and the call gets disconnected, it is considered a "drop call".

Please let me know what can be categorised a drop call and is it the same as an abodoned call?

Thanks.

[JoelDup]

There is no industry standard. Such talk is bogus IMO. IVR and auto-attendant scripting and voice can be a big factor but so is call and industry type.

eg. Call to Auto Club vs. Call to Courier Company

Gathering such data however is difficult and often very subjective.
A CTI app that recognizes ANI could give you some empirical data as well as what customers (or potential customers) to call to find out why they hungup.

You should also run reports on call blockage as well. If its high you might find some relationship between the abandon and inadequate staff metrics.

[Veronica]

I work for a hotel company and our reservation call center is outsourced.
They're contracted for 5% call abandonment and 85% service level.
I see that most of you stay away from norms, but does this sound about right to you?
Thank you!

[JoeB]

You may want to think about it this way – what are the potential losses represented by 5% abandonment? Is the customer experience under the SLA of 85% (in what timeframe?) enjoyable enough to make them come back? If the losses are significant you may want to consider improving the call center’s performance.

This is a prefect example why relying on “general” averages doesn’t always make business sense – the loss of a hotel reservation (and possibly losing the customer for life) may be much higher than in situations when you have a captive customer base that has no alternatives.

Joe Barkai
DIAGNOSTIC STRATEGIES
http://www.DiagnosticStrategies.com/
Tel. 781-433-0833