What is call abandonment rate?
Call abandonment rate is the percentage of inbound calls where the caller hangs up before an agent answers. Contact centers track it closely because it shows how many people tried to reach you and gave up.
A high abandonment rate usually means callers are waiting too long, and it tends to go hand in hand with lower customer satisfaction.
How to calculate call abandonment rate
[No. abandoned calls ÷ Total no. inbound calls] × 100 = Call abandonment rate (%)
For example, if you received 2,000 inbound calls last week and 120 were abandoned, your abandonment rate was 6%.
You can also work it out from the number of calls answered:
[(Calls received − Calls answered) ÷ Calls received] × 100 = Call abandonment rate (%)
This version counts every unanswered call, including calls that timed out. It will often come out slightly higher than the first.
Agree what counts as “abandoned”
Before you start reporting, decide which calls you’ll count. Teams often disagree on whether to include callers who hang up in the IVR, callers who reach voicemail, or callers who hang up after only a few seconds. Each decision changes the number, so write your definition down and stick to it. Otherwise you’ll end up comparing figures that weren’t measured the same way.
Where calls get abandoned
Callers can hang up at several points, and each one points to a different problem.
- In the IVR. The caller hangs up while going through the phone menu, before reaching a queue or an agent. If this number goes up, the menu may be confusing or have too many steps.
- In the queue after a short wait. The caller hangs up within a few seconds (more on this below).
- In the queue after a longer wait. The caller waited, then gave up. This is the clearest sign that you don’t have enough agents available or that calls aren’t being routed well.
- On hold. The caller got through to an agent, was put on hold, and hung up before the agent came back. Long holds, silence on the line, or no idea how long they’ll be waiting are the usual causes.
- In voicemail. The caller reached voicemail and hung up without leaving a message.
A single abandonment rate mixes all of these together. Splitting abandoned calls by where they happened tells you what to fix. A rise in IVR abandons calls for a different fix than a rise in on-hold abandons.
Short-abandoned calls
A short-abandoned call is one where the caller hangs up within a few seconds of joining the queue. These callers usually haven’t had a bad experience. They dialed by mistake, changed their mind, or found the answer another way.
Many support managers take short abandons out of their main abandonment rate. Then the number reflects people who gave up after waiting, which is what the metric is meant to show. It’s still worth tracking short abandons on their own, because a sudden rise can show you something about caller behavior, such as a lot of calls coming in after hours.
10 seconds is a common threshold, but 5, 15 or 20 seconds may suit your service better. Whichever you choose, keep in mind that excluding short abandons lowers your reported rate. Mention it when you compare your figure with industry benchmarks.
To set this up, see how to track short-abandoned calls with Geckoboard.
Other ways to measure abandonment
Each version below starts from the same inbound call data but includes or excludes different calls. The formulas use a 10-second short-abandon threshold, which you can change.
| Metric | Calls counted | Divided by |
|---|---|---|
| Call abandonment rate | All abandoned calls | All inbound calls |
| Abandonment rate excluding short abandons | Abandoned calls − short abandons | Inbound calls − short abandons |
| Long abandon rate | Calls abandoned in the queue after 10 seconds or more | Inbound calls − short abandons − IVR abandons |
| Non-answered call rate | Abandoned calls + timed-out calls | All inbound calls |
| Inbound completion rate within agents’ control | Completed calls | Inbound calls − short abandons − IVR abandons |
Abandonment rate excluding short abandons
[(Abandoned calls − Short abandons) ÷ (Inbound calls − Short abandons)] × 100
Short abandons are removed from both the top and bottom of the calculation, as if those calls never happened. Use this when you want your headline rate to reflect callers who waited and then gave up.
Long abandon rate
[Calls abandoned in the queue after 10+ seconds ÷ (Inbound calls − Short abandons − IVR abandons)] × 100
Only queue abandons after at least 10 seconds count as abandoned. Short abandons and IVR abandons are taken out of the total because those callers never waited in the queue. On-hold abandons aren’t counted as long abandons either, since those callers had already reached an agent. This leaves demand your team could have handled but didn’t, which makes it a good metric for spotting staffing or queue design problems.
Non-answered call rate
[(Abandoned calls + Timed-out calls) ÷ Inbound calls] × 100
Any call that never reached an agent counts, whether the caller hung up or the call timed out. Nothing is excluded from the total. It shows how many attempts to contact you went unanswered, so it will always be the same as or higher than your abandonment rate. Because it combines different causes, use it alongside a breakdown of where calls were abandoned.
Inbound completion rate within agents’ control
[Completed calls ÷ (Inbound calls − Short abandons − IVR abandons)] × 100
This uses the same total as long abandon rate, but counts the calls that were completed instead of the ones that were lost. Short abandons and IVR drop-offs are removed because agents couldn’t have answered them. It’s a fairer measure of agent performance than a completion rate based on all inbound calls. Track it alongside long abandon rate to see both sides.
What is a good call abandonment rate?
Around 5% is generally considered acceptable, and rates between 5% and 8% are typical. As you get closer to 10%, your abandonment rate is high.
Benchmarks are only useful if you measure the same way they do. If you exclude short abandons or IVR drop-offs, your figure will be lower than one that counts every unanswered call.
Why callers hang up
- Long wait times
- IVR menus that are hard to follow or have too many layers
- Being transferred between departments too many times
- Long holds, or silence while on hold
- Too few agents in the evenings, at weekends or out of hours
- Calls dropping by accident
- The customer solving the problem themselves while they wait
How to reduce call abandonment rate
- Monitor queues in real time. Keep track of hold times and how many calls are waiting, so team leads can react before the queue gets out of hand.
- Schedule agents around demand. Use your call patterns to match staffing to peak times, including evenings and weekends if those show spikes.
- Offer callbacks. At busy times, give callers the option of a callback instead of waiting in the queue.
- Simplify the IVR. Cut unnecessary menu options and layers, and get callers to the right queue faster.
- Improve the on-hold experience. Tell callers roughly how long they’ll wait and avoid long silences.
- Add out-of-hours messaging. Let callers know when you’re open and where else they can get help.
- Expand self-service. Good help content and other channels reduce the number of people who need to call at all.
- Shorten handle times. Better training and tools help agents resolve calls faster, which frees them up to take the next one.
A low rate doesn’t guarantee a good experience
A low call abandonment rate tells you people are getting through. It doesn’t tell you whether their problem was solved. A customer who waited a long time, spoke to an agent and still had to call back won’t appear in your abandonment rate. Track it alongside metrics like first contact resolution and customer satisfaction.
Tracking call abandonment rate in Zendesk
The basic abandonment rate is easy to work out. The other versions above are harder. To exclude short abandons, take out IVR drop-offs or count calls abandoned on hold, you have to filter calls by how long the caller waited and where the call ended. In some tools, including Zendesk Explore, that means writing custom formulas. In others, you can’t do it at all.
Geckoboard makes it easy. Connect your Zendesk account and apply these filters in a few clicks, with no formulas, so you can track whichever version of abandonment rate suits your team. Then show it on a real-time dashboard. Everyone can see how the queue is doing and step in before callers start hanging up.
FAQs
What is a short-abandoned call?
A call where the customer hangs up within a few seconds of joining the queue, usually under 10 seconds. Many teams leave these calls out of their main abandonment rate because the caller didn’t really wait for service.
What’s the difference between an abandoned call and a non-answered call?
An abandoned call is one where the caller hangs up before an agent answers. Non-answered calls include abandoned calls plus calls that timed out without being answered, so the non-answered rate will always be the same or higher.
Should IVR drop-offs count as abandoned calls?
It depends on what you’re measuring. If you’re judging agent or queue performance, leave them out, since the caller never reached a queue. If you’re looking at the overall customer experience, include them, or track them separately so you can see whether your IVR is putting people off.
Does call abandonment rate include voicemail?
Not always. Some teams count calls that end in voicemail as abandoned and some don’t. Pick one approach and use it every time you report.
