Consumers expect an immediate response when they call a business for customer service, with recent research estimating that 90% of them feel this way. If they are kept waiting too long, they may hang up and abandon the call, resulting in missed opportunities for providing excellent customer service. These are five strategies to reduce abandon rates in your call center and enhance the customer experience.
Importance of Low Call Abandon Rates?
Abandon rate is the percentage of callers hanging up before speaking to an agent compared to the total number of incoming calls. Call center abandoned rates are calculated by dividing the total abandoned calls by the total number of calls.
Abandon rates can provide insight into the overall performance of your contact center. On average, the globally accepted abandonment rate is 5% to 8%, although top-tier companies strive to keep theirs below 5%, with 2% being the target.
If your call abandonment rate is higher, your customers are not gaining enough value from your service experience. This ultimately leads to poor customer experience, reduced loyalty, and diminishing retention. As such, reducing your abandon rate is essential to running a successful contact center.
5 Tips to Reduce Abandonment Rates in Your Call Center
The following are some of the tips to reduce call abandonment rates in your call center:
Optimize Your Support Workflows
This seems like an obvious tip, but it is often overlooked due to its simplicity. Understanding your staffing levels based on peak seasons and peak times of the day can help you scale your workforce appropriately. Being properly staffed can reduce wait times and decrease your abandonment rates.
If your budget doesn’t allow you to hire more agents during busy periods, consider optimizing employee schedules to match peak call times. Leverage appropriate technology that allows you to implement responsive employee work schedules. This way, you can plan for peak call times and offer employees greater flexibility to optimize job satisfaction and productivity.
Implement a Call-back Solution
One of the most effective ways to reduce abandonment is to offer your customers a call back as an alternative to waiting on hold. According to Forrester, 75% of consumers surveyed prefer a call-back solution to hold times. Compared to waiting on hold, a call-back solution releases customers from the waiting list, so they engage in other activities while they wait for an available agent to call them.
No customer enjoys feeling like they are wasting valuable time when looking for a resolution to a pressing issue. Giving your callers the option to get a call back instead of forcing them to remain on call can improve the client experience and reduce abandoned calls.
Offer Omnichannel Solutions
Many customers don’t have time to wait for long before reaching your agents. Fortunately, you can provide various channels of support to give customers more choices and reduce call abandonment rates.
Customers generally like the freedom of choice and ability to manage their time. Omnichannel solutions can help reduce abandon rates by reducing overall queue times.
Some channels that can help include:
- Help desk
- Live chat
- Social media
- Knowledge bases
Implement Self-serve Solutions
Recent studies reveal that 67% of consumers prefer self-serving to speaking to a customer service representative. Self-serve technology is a crucial alternative to contact centers. It helps reduce the strain on your call centers and gives customers an alternative communication channel they prefer to phone.
Several self-serve technologies can help reduce your call abandonment rates, including:
- IVR systems and AI: Interactive voice response systems can help customers find answers and perform simple tasks themselves. AI can answer some commonly asked questions without the need for agent interactions. These technologies are specifically valuable during times of high call customers helping increase customer satisfaction and improve contact center KPIs.
- Chatbots: Chatbots are cost-effective and adept at automating common high-volume inquiries. They are an excellent place to start when implementing automation technologies in a contact center.
- Online FAQs: Online FAQs are web pages that offer quick answers to typical customer questions. FAQs links to related content to provide your customers with a deeper experience of your website.
Offer Clear Communication
Typical call center systems are programmed to notify callers that agents are busy and will take their call as soon as possible. Listening to a boring, irritating message every 60 seconds can be frustrating. The repetitive, vague nature of such looped messages can annoy customers and make their wait seem even longer.
The longer they wait, the more they feel that your company doesn’t value them. A better alternative to this system is to give callers a clear estimate of their hold time. You can express this as an estimated wait time or inform the customers of their number in the queue.
In customer service relationships, clear communication is vital. It helps customers know what to expect whenever they call your busy agents, which is an excellent step to decreasing your call abandonment rate.
Improve Your Customer Experience with CallTools
High call abandon rates can ruin your customer experience and your business reputation for your contact center. Reducing these rates will ensure your customers are happy while improving the efficiency of your agents. If you need a custom solution to reduce your call center abandonment rates, CallTools Power Contact Center is a perfect match. CallTools provides top-notch options to help manage your campaigns for better connections with your customers and prospects. Contact us today to schedule a demo.
