What is abandon rate?
Abandon rate is the share of calls that end without reaching a live agent, whether dropped by a dialer after an answer or hung up by a waiting caller.
Outbound and inbound meanings
In outbound calling, a call is abandoned when a person answers but no agent is connected to them, for example because a predictive dialer placed more calls than there were free agents. The prospect hears silence or a hang-up.
In inbound calling, abandon rate counts callers who hang up while waiting in a queue before an agent answers.
The usual formula is abandoned calls divided by calls answered by a person (outbound) or by calls that entered the queue (inbound).
Why it matters for sales teams
Every abandoned outbound call is a prospect who answered and got nothing. It wastes a pickup, and the prospect's first experience of the caller is silence or a dropped line.
It is also regulated. In the US, FCC rules bar abandoning more than three percent of telemarketing calls answered live by a person, measured over a 30-day period for a single calling campaign, and require a prerecorded message naming the business whenever no rep is available within two seconds of the person's greeting. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule treats abandoned calls as abusive unless the caller meets its safe harbor. See the call abandonment rule for details.
Example
A team runs a dialing session where several prospects answer at nearly the same moment. Only one rep is free, so one prospect is connected and the others hear silence before the line drops. Each of those dropped calls counts toward the abandon rate, even though the team never spoke to those prospects.
This is a general definition, not legal advice.