What is abandon rate?
Definition: Abandon rate, or abandonment rate, is a KPI used in call centers to measure the percentage of callers who hang up the call before reaching a customer support agent.
This metric helps call centers gauge their efficiency in handling incoming calls and identify potential bottlenecks or issues in the call-handling process.
A high abandon rate can indicate long wait times, insufficient staffing, or technical problems with the call routing system. Monitoring the abandon rate is essential to ensure timely and effective customer support.
Abandon rate formula
The formula for abandon rate is:
Abandon Rate = (Number of abandoned calls / Total number of incoming calls) x 100
What shouldn’t be included in the abandon rate
- Short abandons: Calls that are abandoned within a few seconds (usually 5-10 seconds) of being connected. These calls are often the result of misdials, immediate disconnections, or automated systems and do not reflect the call center's performance.
- Dropped calls: Calls disconnected due to technical problems, such as network issues or call drops, should be excluded since these factors are unrelated to the call center's efficiency.
- Voicemail or IVR completions: Calls that are successfully directed to voicemail or resolved through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system should not be included, as they do not represent abandoned calls while waiting for an agent.
- Outbound calls: The abandon rate calculation should only consider incoming calls, as outbound calls made by call center agents are irrelevant to this metric.
