Abandon Rate Calculator,
Measured the Legal Way

Abandoned calls divided by calls answered by a live person, never by total dials. Both the US Telemarketing Sales Rule and Ofcom's abandoned call rate arithmetic use the live-answer denominator. Measuring against dials makes the number look several times better than the legal calculation, which is exactly how floors drift over the line while their dashboard shows green.

A US provision in the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, mirrored by FCC rules: abandon no more than 3 percent of calls answered by a live person, measured per calling campaign over each 30 day period, ring at least 15 seconds or four rings, connect answered calls to an agent within two seconds of the person's completed greeting, and play a compliant recorded message on any abandoned call. Miss any condition and the shelter is gone. Our TCPA abandonment guide covers it in full.

Not any more. Ofcom withdrew the 3 percent safe harbour in its December 2016 policy statement, in force since March 2017. Any level of abandoned or silent calls can now be treated as persistent misuse, with the daily abandoned call rate used to prioritise enforcement rather than to excuse conduct. UK floors still measure it daily, but there is no number that makes you safe.

Almost always because it is reporting abandons against total dials or total connects including voicemail, not against live answers. On a list where one dial in five reaches a person, the per-dial figure looks five times better than the regulatory one. Check the denominator before trusting any compliance report, ours included.

Slow the pacing before anything else: abandonment is the exhaust of dialling ahead of the agents you actually have. Then look at answering machine detection false positives, which count as abandons, and at whether fresh lists have lifted your answer rate past what the pacing was tuned for. Our predictive dialler settings guide covers the levers, and the free Health Check scores your wider setup.