What Percentage of Abandoned Callers Call Back?

Spin Rate. What Percentage of Abandoned Callers Call Back?

We’re working on a 6-Sigma project looking at the revenue up-side of reducing our abandon rate from 3-5% (our current contract SLA) to less than 3% (we are an outsourcer billing by the talk minute).

Here’s the rub: Our technology limitations right now keep me from capturing ANI data to see what percentage of callers that abandoned actually called by the same day or same week. Does anyone out there have any idea?

We are in the Direct-To-Consumer space. I did find some data that HealthCare centres see a 90% call back rate in the same day. As our business is straight inbound order entry and customer service, I don’t think the return call rate is that high. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Question asked by Cliff

Holding Message

The easiest way may be to have a more “encouraging” hold message when callers are in the queue.

Try it, it can have a huge effect.

With thanks to Eamon

Excellent Advice

Excellent advice! I presently play the caller an expected wait time time prompt, and then various other behavior modifiers at 30 & 60 seconds. At 90 seconds, I offer voicemail to the caller.

The client(s) here like that mix, and we’re currently in SLA for Abandon Rate, so the question is still there: How many actually call back?

Our savings model can’t be considered valid until we factor out those that would call back as we’d end up capturing that revenue in the end. We already understand the headcount cost that would be necessary to create additional supply for the call demand; that’s straight workforce management.

It’s tough to build an ROI on this without data on the callbacks…but if this business were too easy, none of us would be here, eh?

With thanks to Cliff

Repeat Call or CLID Report

Scottie can probably remember better than I however I do recall it’s possible to get a repeat call or CLID report from the telco.

This would give you the number of attempts over a set period of time that numbers have dialled yourselves.

Knowing your calls to resolution figures will then give a repeat call rate.

This (In my opinion) is going to be the easiest way of doing it.

With thanks to Dave

Exclude Callbacks from Abandon Rate?

Do you exclude those who take the callback option from abandonment rate calculations?

With thanks to Eamon

What Percentage of Abandoned Callers Call Back?

Per client contract, I penalize myself for handling the call out of service level, but do not consider it abandoned.

Thanks for the TELCO angle…I’ll try to track that down. We’re using an old switch and the reporting just isn’t what I got spoiled with using a better ACD.

Thanks to you both for your ideas!

With thanks to Cliff

How Many DO Call Back.

My centre uses an ACD as well. A large part of our business is actually tracking now how many people call back…but how many time they call in… (really the same thing)

We are a financial firm that calculates how many times a person calls in based on the financial holding of our consultants.

ie: A consultant who works for us has $10,000 assets but calls in 5 times a month…BAD

A consultant who works for us and has $4,500,000 assets calls in 20 times a in a month…GOOD

We sorta assign our own SL to each consultant.

My point you ask? It can definitely be tracked. We get a report (raw data) from our telco and use an access database to extrapolate.

I’d can’t really give you a generally percentage though as our business is rather unique…we have the same handful of people calling in on behalf of many other people.

With thanks to Justin

Repeat Callers Can Be Difficult

Remember that some people will call back from a different phone (home, mobile, work, etc..) and therefore you’ll have to assume it’s slightly higher than the telco figures suggest.

With thanks to Darryl

Telco Troubles!

We use multiple telco vendors as many of our clients already have existing contracts/providers. AT&T is completely unable/unwilling to help. I’ve already gotten great data from Sprint (within 2 hours of request, I might add!) and BellSouth is a non-starter.

The mention of return calls from different numbers could be mitigated if our CRM tool managed contacts via customer account or customer order…

Really appreciate this site and all the advice I’ve gotten here. I’ll definitely be spending more time out here.

With thanks to Cliff

Good Stuff

Nice to know that you’ve found the community useful.

I’ll definitely be spending more time out here.

I think this is where John steps in to tell you all about the benefits of being a premium member! 😉

Incidentally, surely your CRM system wouldn’t be any use for abandoned repeat calls? I understand using it to check for first time call resolution, but if it hasn’t been answered then it can’t be in the system.

With thanks to Darryl

Author: Jonty Pearce