2024 Key Performance Indicators for Customer Service: Call Abandonment Rate

The importance of having a low Call Abandonment Rate 

Call Abandonment Rate is the percentage of calls that are dropped before a customer reaches an agent. This happens due to a variety of factors which can include long wait times, a complicated phone menu tree (IVR), or technical difficulties. Abandonment often coincides with customer frustration.

For 2024 and beyond, we suggest that contact centers keep their call abandonment rate to 2% or lower. Now if you want to compete with the best contact centers in the world, your customer support team should be able to achieve and maintain a call abandonment rate of 5% or less. Never underestimate the importance of phone support. While its popularity may have dwindled in the past several years, you would be surprised to know that in McKinsey’s customer care survey, they found that 71% of gen z consumers said that live phone conversations is ranks highly as one of their preferred customer service channels.

After spending many hours sifting through numerous data from over 150 publicly available sources, we’ve finally been able to update our CX KPIs ebook. If you still haven’t gotten your copy, you can still download our 2024 Key Performance Indicators for Customer Service ebook today.

Benchmarks 

We’ve aggregated all the data we’ve gathered from different reliable sources to come up with the benchmarks for the best, average, median, and worst abandonment rates. Don’t be intimidated by these figures. Instead, use them as a guide for your customer service team so that they’ll know what their abandonment rate goal should be.

Lower call abandonment rate with these tips

If you’re aiming for a good customer experience, understanding why people drop out (and fixing those issues) is vital. So check out these helpful tips.

Identify when your customers abandon.

Some customers are willing to wait 5 minutes, others drop out after 30 seconds. Identify the maximum wait time for your customer base and staff your team to meet it.

Offer callback options.

Offering customers the option to request a callback instead of waiting on hold can turn the experience around. Now they can have their issue resolved at a more convenient time for both parties, rather than abandoning the call.

Implement automated self-service options.

Automated systems can allow customers to perform self-service actions through the phone system, like checking order status or their account balance. These are a great way to ensure a speedy, immediate resolution to a large number of calls without having them each handled by an agent.

Reduce wait times.

Call abandonment happens when customers are tired of waiting. All the typical techniques to manage the queue, ensure adequate staffing, and schedule the right number of agents at the right times are essential here too.

Entrust your phone support to a reliable partner 

If your call abandonment rate isn’t improving despite all your efforts, then the problem might be bigger than you think. Whether your support team is understaffed or maybe they’re poorly trained, or maybe you have policies and workflows or an outdated tech stack that keep your customer service representatives from solving one customer issue faster, you need to fix it now and fix it fast. Customers don’t know need to know the reasons–or excuses–as to why your customer service agents can’t answer their calls almost immediately or quickly because that’s not why they purchased your product or subscribed to your service.

One of the best ways to lower your call abandonment rate is to partner with an award-winning BPO like Peak Support. Business process outsourcing companies can take off so much from your plate when it comes to forming a top-notch customer service team. An outsourcer can also greatly lower your operational costs while still maintaining high customer satisfaction ratings. Schedule a meeting with our sales team today so they can better explain to you why partnering with Peak Support is going to be a win-win situation for your company.