# What Is Call Abandonment Rate? Formula & Fixes

Source: https://insertchat.com/glossary/call-abandonment-rate

> Call abandonment rate is the share of callers who hang up before reaching anyone. Learn the formula, what drives abandonment, and how to bring it down.

Call abandonment rate is the percentage of incoming calls where the caller hangs up before reaching anyone, while ringing, during a phone menu, or on hold. It is calculated by dividing abandoned calls by total incoming calls and multiplying by 100. A high rate usually means callers wait too long or can’t find the right option.

## How to measure call abandonment

Most phone systems report abandoned calls directly. Many teams exclude very short abandons, a few seconds, because those are often misdials. Compare the rate by hour of day: abandonment usually clusters at peaks, such as lunch, Monday mornings, or right after a promotion.

The causes are almost always time and friction: long hold queues, menus that don’t fit the caller’s problem, and calls ringing with nobody free. The fixes follow from that: shorter menus or none, a sensible ring time, and an [overflow](https://insertchat.com/glossary/overflow-calls) destination that answers instead of queuing.

## Example: a restaurant on Friday evening

A busy restaurant puts callers on hold during the Friday dinner rush while staff seat guests. Its phone report shows many calls abandoned between 6 and 8 p.m., mostly reservation and takeout-hours questions. Sending unanswered calls to an AI assistant after a short ring turns those hold queues into answered calls and booked tables. This scenario is illustrative.

## How InsertChat removes hold queues

InsertChat’s [AI receptionist](https://insertchat.com/product/phone) answers every call it receives without a hold queue or a keypad menu, because each call gets its own conversation. Use “AI when unanswered” to ring your team for 5 to 60 seconds first, then let the assistant answer.

Calls that end before a conversation starts show up as missed calls in the Today view. See the [restaurant setup](https://insertchat.com/industries/restaurants).

## How do you calculate call abandonment rate?

Divide abandoned calls by total incoming calls for the period and multiply by 100. State whether you exclude very short abandons, so the number is comparable over time.

## Is a call abandoned if it goes to voicemail?

Definitions vary. Many teams count a caller who hangs up at the voicemail greeting as abandoned, since they never reached anyone and left nothing.

## Related terms

- [Overflow calls](https://insertchat.com/glossary/overflow-calls): Overflow calls are incoming calls that arrive when everyone who normally answers is busy or unavailable, so they would otherwise ring out, hit voicemail, or wait on hold.
- [Missed call](https://insertchat.com/glossary/missed-call): A missed call is an incoming call that ends before anyone answers, because nobody picked up, the line was busy, or the caller hung up while ringing or on hold.
- [IVR (interactive voice response)](https://insertchat.com/glossary/ivr): IVR, or interactive voice response, is an automated phone system that interacts with callers through recorded prompts, keypad tones, and limited speech recognition.
- [First call resolution](https://insertchat.com/glossary/first-call-resolution): First call resolution, or FCR, is the percentage of customer calls or contacts fully resolved during the first interaction, without a callback, transfer, or repeat contact.
- [Call routing](https://insertchat.com/glossary/call-routing): Call routing is the set of rules that decides where an incoming call goes and who answers it.

## Related InsertChat pages

- [AI receptionist](https://insertchat.com/product/phone)
- [After-hours and overflow answering](https://insertchat.com/product/after-hours)
- [AI receptionist for restaurants](https://insertchat.com/industries/restaurants)