Are you tracking your abandoned calls? You should be. A high rate of abandoned calls indicates dissatisfied customers, which will directly affect your image and inevitably your bottom line.
Calls abandoned before the customer speaks to a service rep usually results from one of two things. A confusing or faulty direction system, or a lengthy hold period.
With automated direction systems generally the customer who gives up is simply annoyed at the procedure. It is possible that they missed their prompt, but most of the time the process is simply too confusing and they find themselves pressing any number at all in the hopes of speaking to someone. Most of the time they will just hang up intending to call again.
Customers who give up while waiting on hold can be put off by bad music choices, irritating messages or long hold times. In todays age of instant service via online contact centres and social media, tolerance levels for wait times has gone way down.
Imagine now that those customers try to reach your business a number of times and experience the same problems, those who finally manage to get a hold of a customer service rep will be going in with an already negative attitude which does not set up the best environment for a good customer interaction. Others will simply give up, take their business elsewhere and potentially result in damaging feedback.
To remedy this is simple. Take a proactive approach to tracking your abandoned calls and commit yourself to on-going improvement.
Take a look at utilising analytical software to see where your calls are being lost, all businesses who experience a high caller volume will be losing calls, don’t assume because you don’t hear about it that it isn’t happening to you.
Using this software you will be able to identify exactly where in the process calls are being terminated. After a confusing set of instructions, an annoying message, or at the 2 minute holding mark for example. From here you will be able to directly pin point the moment you lost your customers and work to improve their experience.
Some businesses choose to go the extra mile to keep customers happy and offer a call back option which is perfect for those who experience dropped calls due to long holds. Others utilize special number recording technology which enables them to call back customers who hung up during instructions, asking them how they could help and improve the experience.
As wonderful as it would be to have enough staff to instantly pick up every call that came through, it just isn’t a reality for busy companies. Using and monitoring an effective messaging or auto direction system is the only way to combat those dreaded abandoned calls.