Nearly 10% hang up in phone queues
During 2023, an average of 8.4 percent of callers abandoned the call before someone answered.
Long wait times make more people hang up
ContactBabel's annual industry report uses data from 225 contact centers. It shows that the average wait time before an answer was 116 seconds. The report links the higher share of hang-ups to the longer wait times. Between 2004 and 2019, the figure stayed between 5 and 6 percent almost every year. In 2022, the share was 9.1 percent. That is the highest recorded.
AI phone agents remove the queue time
Calls that the AI phone agent handles directly have no queue at all. It answers when the phone rings. An AI phone agent shortens the queue for human employees. The calls it resolves itself never end up in the queue.
Book a call with us to discuss how this works in practice.
Source: ContactBabel, The UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers' Guide 2024, a survey of 225 British contact centers, refers to 2023. Image: Sundsvallsväxeln 1926 by Tekniska museet, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
