Abandonment Rate

[marton19]

We are a small inbound call center. Our abandonement rate was always between 3-6%, which was acceptable for us. Then, a few weeks ago, we downsized and lost a few good people. Of course, we're experiencing a hiring freeze now. Since then our abandonment rate has soared. One day it was up to 30%!!!. Does anyone have suggestions on how we can lower this rate? At this point I'll be happy with 12-15%.

[JoeB]

Although you are not saying it directly, the assumption is that the increased abandonment rate is a result of longer ASA caused by the reduced headcount and possibly longer AHT.

1. Check the abandonment time sensitivity and adjust your ACD to ring longer.

2. Check the call volume in small increments (15-30 min.) throughout the day and staff accordingly (headcount and skill level) to reduce the peaks in abandonment.

3. Look for methods to shorten resolution time by improving knowledge sharing: better documenting known solutions, etc.

4. Another factor to investigate is whether your resolution rate has deteriorated and the rate of repeat calls has increased, which will put the focus on agent skills.

See http://www.diagnosticstrategies.com/...c_modeling.htm for more about the traffic characteristics and the parameters driving it, and feel free to contact me if you want to discuss in detail.

[Michcall]

I agree with the items JoeB posted. Here are some other thoughts:

>Check your lunch & break schedules. What may have worked during full staff might need to be modified now to have fewer people off the floor at a time. Also, check your shifts---perhaps you may need to overlap shifts during peak to lessen abandons.

>Do you have the ability to front-end your IB queue with a message? You can either put the option to leave a voicemail or perhaps record messages relating to frequent calls to lessen their wait time---where to send payment, how to find a retailer, etc..Or can you funnel the easy calls to a subset of the team to try and process through as many of those as quickly as possible?

>Ask your agents for ideas....they are probably being stressed and stretched with the reduced staff, so they might welcome the chance to be part of the solution. Agents often have good ideas that can make their jobs easier.

>In the short term, you can try a swat team approach----during peak times it's "all hands on deck"---supervisors on the phones, no training, no off-phone activities. You can also take this a step further by answering the easy calls but either taking messages on the more complex situations. Of course, you'll need to use staff to return the calls at less peak times, but it might get you through your worst call times.

>Can you bring in temp workers? If so, they can either help with backoffice items to focus more trained workers on the phones or they can be trained minimally to take the "easy" calls (assuming you can segment those out of the queue).

>Can you borrow workers from any other areas for peak times? It's often good for other departments to experience the call center to see what decisions they make have an impact on call volume---and call centers are the most visible aspect of the company to the outside world, so you can probably make a business case that this sharing is for the benefit of all.

>Can you minimize after call work? If you have standards for entering cases in your system, can you revise those for the short term to enter only essential information?

Hope this helps.....Good luck.

[Jesse]

Go back to basics.
When you don't have the number of agents that you had you reduce the phone lines that you use.
Remember if you reduce the number of phone lines per agent down to one per agent you turn your dialer into a superdialer and your drop becomes Zero.
When you're at this level your agents are slower than if they were dialing by hand but from this starting point you begin to add phone lines until you are happy with drop and busy level of your agents.

[Alan Clayton]

All the above are good suggestions, but they fail to get to the root of the problem. When you downsized, what did your management expect would be the result? If you already were abandoning some calls, and 3-6% is about the right amount to abandon, not too many and not too few, then cutting heads would guarantee to increase the ASA and the resulting abandon rate.

What does your management say about the new figures? Are they aware of them? Are they concerned with them? You do not mention what kind of call center you run... are the customers captive, meaning that they must come to you or do they have a choice? Will continued poor service cost you customers? If so, you can put a price on that and prove an ROI for getting more CSR's...

You also do not mention if you already have an IVR in place. While many hate them, if your company does not have a functional IVR, you might be able to implement that and keep the staff size at its lowered levels....

waaaaaaaay tooooo much to be able to answer in a short brief answer...

feel free to call .... we can talk

regards