5 Effective Ways Your Call Center Need to Avoid Abandoned Calls
Do you know all the processes of a call center? Are you able to maintain customer satisfaction and build effective customer loyalty? Why have most of the calls been dropped off? What are abandoned calls and rates? There are so many questions you need to answer when you have a call center to run.
Call abandonment gives you valuable insight into your call center’s performance by studying the abandonment rate. KPI (key performance indicator) plays a vital role when measuring customers’ behavior – supporting managers to improve productivity.
If your call center is witnessing an increase in call abandonment – it’s time for immediate action. To help you best, we’ve classified 5 effective ways your call center needs to avoid abandoned calls.
But before that learn what’s abandoned calls?
Abandoned calls are the calls that were dropped by customers while waiting to connect with an agent. A wide array of effective reasons can be highlighted for abandoned calls: either the customer dialed the wrong number, the customer was not ready to wait, lines were busy, and many more on the list.
Whatever the reasons are, you can reduce abandoned call rates in your call center. Now, abandoned call rate (ACR) is one of the most significant KPIs of call centers, helping to manage and control call center’s rejection rate.
ACR can either increase or decrease your customer satisfaction. The more successful your call center is, the more calls you will get, likely increasing – the hold times and leading to a high abandoned rate.
By the way, abandoned rates between 5% and 8% are considered normal. Meanwhile, based on different situations, like time of day and industry, these rates can rise to 20%. However, one abandoned call is bad for business, affecting the loyalty and satisfaction of a customer. So, how can you engage more customers effectively, reducing the abandoned rate?
Here are the five effective ways to do it.
Add More Channels of Communication
The existence of new media and communication platforms – ‘call it omnipresent’ – has expanded the way of communication. Nowadays, customers are available everywhere. Before calling an executive, a customer will prefer utilizing; digital channels to get assistance.
At present, 88% of all organizations are delivering a multi-channel service experience, and as per studies, around 77% of customers utilize more than one communication channel for the service. Additionally, the customer expects companies to have 10 different channels to reach out to.
Improve Queueing Strategy
There are many ways to reduce hold time and enhance customer experience. Remember, communicating with customers while they are on hold will improve your call abandon rates. You can use these simple steps to diminish abandoned call metrics.
Increase initial ring time in IVR
Instead of sending callers directly to the IVR, increase the ring time. It’s a great way to get a few extra seconds. People are programmed to wait for 10-20 seconds without questions as the average phone rings for about 20 seconds before going to voicemail. Increase your ring time and witness the change in abandon call rates.
Inform Customers Regularly
Customers appreciate honesty and the feeling of being prime. On the days of high call volumes and hold-times, inform your customers by preparing a message in the IVR or ACD about the estimated wait time or indicating a period of high call volumes. Don’t use those stagnant, boring messages “your call is important to us.” Instead, inform them that they are in the queue.
Change Welcome Message & Hold Music
There may be a chance that your welcome message and hold music are putting people off, thus, affecting the abandoned call curve. Experiment with your welcome message, and hold music to reduce abandoned calls. Maybe some extra information and good music can help manage the abandoned call curve.
Implement Callbacks to Customer
One of the best features within the IVR system is ‘callback’ – an alternative to waiting on hold. Some refer to it as ‘virtual queuing’ or ‘virtual hold’, greatly helping to downsize abandoned call rates. Following the report of Forrester – 75% of people prefer to hold their place in the queue and go on to do something else. Additionally, 32% of call centers witnessed lesser abandoned call rates after adding callbacks to the system.
Invests in Agents & Adjust Schedules
Investment is one of the ways to make a fruitful future. Call centers can make a massive difference by training and educating agents regularly. It will improve productivity with best practices and techniques – supporting agents to enrich customer experience. Also, adjusting agent schedules to match peak calling windows will be economically feasible.
Offer Self-Service
This can be the first way to reduce the abandoned call rates in your call center. Imagine customers can solve their problems on their own with just a few simple clicks. Self-service is that solution a call center can offer. It will reduce frustration and add satisfaction among customers to get what they want. This will add customer loyalty thus, improving call center metrics.
Leverage Cloud Call Center Software to Avoid Call Abandonment
The aforementioned ways will help you avoid abandoned call rates, giving the customers the level of services they require. Take your business to the next level with the features mentioned above and use effective call center software for your business.
Speaking of call center software; nothing is best than a centralized system of cloud. Cloud call center services of Sarv will improve your team’s efficiency and metrics over time. Everything will be available for you under one roof with options to customize as per preferences and needs.
Do you know all the processes of a call center? Are you able to maintain customer satisfaction and build effective customer loyalty? Why have most of the calls been dropped off? What are abandoned calls and rates? There are so many questions you need to answer when you have a call center to run.
Call abandonment gives you valuable insight into your call center’s performance by studying the abandonment rate. KPI (key performance indicator) plays a vital role when measuring customers’ behavior – supporting managers to improve productivity.
If your call center is witnessing an increase in call abandonment – it’s time for immediate action. To help you best, we’ve classified 5 effective ways your call center needs to avoid abandoned calls.
But before that learn what’s abandoned calls?
Abandoned calls are the calls that were dropped by customers while waiting to connect with an agent. A wide array of effective reasons can be highlighted for abandoned calls: either the customer dialed the wrong number, the customer was not ready to wait, lines were busy, and many more on the list.
Whatever the reasons are, you can reduce abandoned call rates in your call center. Now, abandoned call rate (ACR) is one of the most significant KPIs of call centers, helping to manage and control call center’s rejection rate.
ACR can either increase or decrease your customer satisfaction. The more successful your call center is, the more calls you will get, likely increasing – the hold times and leading to a high abandoned rate.
By the way, abandoned rates between 5% and 8% are considered normal. Meanwhile, based on different situations, like time of day and industry, these rates can rise to 20%. However, one abandoned call is bad for business, affecting the loyalty and satisfaction of a customer. So, how can you engage more customers effectively, reducing the abandoned rate?
Here are the five effective ways to do it.
Add More Channels of Communication
The existence of new media and communication platforms – ‘call it omnipresent’ – has expanded the way of communication. Nowadays, customers are available everywhere. Before calling an executive, a customer will prefer utilizing; digital channels to get assistance.
At present, 88% of all organizations are delivering a multi-channel service experience, and as per studies, around 77% of customers utilize more than one communication channel for the service. Additionally, the customer expects companies to have 10 different channels to reach out to.
Improve Queueing Strategy
There are many ways to reduce hold time and enhance customer experience. Remember, communicating with customers while they are on hold will improve your call abandon rates. You can use these simple steps to diminish abandoned call metrics.
Increase initial ring time in IVR
Instead of sending callers directly to the IVR, increase the ring time. It’s a great way to get a few extra seconds. People are programmed to wait for 10-20 seconds without questions as the average phone rings for about 20 seconds before going to voicemail. Increase your ring time and witness the change in abandon call rates.
Inform Customers Regularly
Customers appreciate honesty and the feeling of being prime. On the days of high call volumes and hold-times, inform your customers by preparing a message in the IVR or ACD about the estimated wait time or indicating a period of high call volumes. Don’t use those stagnant, boring messages “your call is important to us.” Instead, inform them that they are in the queue.
Change Welcome Message & Hold Music
There may be a chance that your welcome message and hold music are putting people off, thus, affecting the abandoned call curve. Experiment with your welcome message, and hold music to reduce abandoned calls. Maybe some extra information and good music can help manage the abandoned call curve.
Implement Callbacks to Customer
One of the best features within the IVR system is ‘callback’ – an alternative to waiting on hold. Some refer to it as ‘virtual queuing’ or ‘virtual hold’, greatly helping to downsize abandoned call rates. Following the report of Forrester – 75% of people prefer to hold their place in the queue and go on to do something else. Additionally, 32% of call centers witnessed lesser abandoned call rates after adding callbacks to the system.
Invests in Agents & Adjust Schedules
Investment is one of the ways to make a fruitful future. Call centers can make a massive difference by training and educating agents regularly. It will improve productivity with best practices and techniques – supporting agents to enrich customer experience. Also, adjusting agent schedules to match peak calling windows will be economically feasible.
Offer Self-Service
This can be the first way to reduce the abandoned call rates in your call center. Imagine customers can solve their problems on their own with just a few simple clicks. Self-service is that solution a call center can offer. It will reduce frustration and add satisfaction among customers to get what they want. This will add customer loyalty thus, improving call center metrics.
Leverage Cloud Call Center Software to Avoid Call Abandonment
The aforementioned ways will help you avoid abandoned call rates, giving the customers the level of services they require. Take your business to the next level with the features mentioned above and use effective call center software for your business.
Speaking of call center software; nothing is best than a centralized system of cloud. Cloud call center services of Sarv will improve your team’s efficiency and metrics over time. Everything will be available for you under one roof with options to customize as per preferences and needs.
