Call center metrics: Abandon Rates

In follow up to our post about call center metrics goals, we are now starting to talk about specific metrics; the first one is Abandon Rates. Abandon rate is the percentage of calls that hang up before an agent could take the call (and did not get a busy signal).

What it measures:

• It can be considered a measure of customer satisfaction. If customers hang up a lot, they might not like the speed of service.

Potential causes and implications:

• The longer it takes to answer a call, the higher are abandon rates
  
• People who might have called wrong number hang up when they notice it (typically in first 10 seconds)
• High abandon rates can inflate future call volumes (2nd, 3rd try of same caller), resulting in even higher rates