Are You Concerned About How Much Abandoned Calls Cost Your Business?

Are you concerned about abandoned calls at your business? If not, you should be! An abandoned call is an inbound caller who initiated contact, and abandons the call (hang-up) before you ever get the chance to serve them. Abandoned calls are missed opportunities. When inbound calls are abandoned, it is often because the caller is frustrated with the time on hold. Every caller who hangs up while waiting on hold is a potential loyal customer who may be easily tempted to choose a competitor. Abandoned Calls = Abandoned Customers.

Statistics indicate, that failure to address caller abandonment results in negative consequences for your organization, and costs that can be staggering. In fact,70% of all business callers are placed on-hold, of which, nearly 45% hang-up within less than 60 seconds, and 37% of callers who hang-up will never call back. This can result in a substantial loss in revenue!

Most business rely on the telephone calls as its revenue lifeline, and while you can’t prevent someone who is stuck on hold from hanging up the phone, your organization should be doing everything in its power to make sure that the callers remain on the line, feel confident in your responsiveness and your overall customer care. Deploying an on-hold message solution has proven to be the most effective strategy in mitigating caller frustration and abandonment rates. Studies show that with an effective on-hold message, callers will wait up to 3 minutes longer than those confronted with silence or canned music. Without one, you might as well hand callers over to your competition.

There can be no single “acceptable” level of abandoned calls, so the urge to reduce wait time is undoubtedly important. The obvious reason is lost revenues, customer dissatisfaction and the negative impact it has on customer loyalty. Message on hold is not only effective in reducing abandon calls, but studies also show that it’s an effective marketing tool to promote your brand, build customer loyalty, strengthen relationships, educate and raise awareness as well as provide increased revenues. US West Communications reports that businesses experience a 20% increase in offers mentioned on-hold.

If you’re concerned about long on-hold wait-times, and caller abandonment at your brand, then consider the lifetime value of satisfied customers and the high cost of losing and re-acquiring customers. Reducing the number of dissatisfied customers should be your top priority! Which begs the question: Are you investing in on hold messaging solution to minimize risk, and reducing the number of abandoned calls?