Abandonment rate measures the time, in seconds, before a caller or a chat customer abandons a contact. They may abandon in mere seconds, or after several minutes of waiting. The vast majority of support organizations count all abandoned contacts, regardless of the time to abandon. Ideally chat and voice abandonment rates should be tracked separately, as any significant difference between the two abandonment rates could indicate an imbalance in staffing between the two channels. Why is this important? Although everyone wants a low abandonment rate, many set targets for this metric that are too aggressive. The result is that costs go up because more staff is needed to keep the abandonment rate low. But a low abandonment rate does not necessarily lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction. The real driver of customer satisfaction is first contact resolution rate, not abandonment rate. So, while customers are unlikely to penalize you for an occasional abandoned call, they are far less forgiving of calls that are not resolved on first contact. Learn more in the HDI Metric of the Month!
