What is an abandoned call?

It is a call in which the caller abandons, disconnects or cancels the connection before the conversation begins with the call center agent/professional manning the help desk of the outsourcing company. In most instances, customers gets irritated waiting in the queue, or get frustrated listening to the recorded messages, before finally terminating the call. The rate of abandoned calls is more in inbound call center processes compared to outbound. The possible reason for disconnecting or abandoning inbound calls is customer’s frustration with call hold time. A high number of abandoned calls is an indication that caller is waiting in the queue for too long. This eventually wanes the brand name.

Outbound calls get abandoned due to unexpected breakdown of connection or the call gets disconnected by the automated dialer when a live agent is not available to take up the call. There are three types of abandon metrics: abandon at the VRU (prompt or self-service); abandon in queue; and abandon at the end of call center agent.

Customer satisfaction is a cornerstone of call center service providers. Abandoned calls bring negative impact on business. Thus, to mitigate abandoned calls, call center companies are following some new strategies and methods to reduce the number of abandon calls, which in turn help in increasing customer satisfaction. Call centers are employing predictive caller or call back technology. A predictive dialer is a telephone control system that helps in automatically calling on the list of phone numbers in sequence.