Abandonment rate and the 3 percent rule

A predictive dialer that places more calls than its agents can take will sometimes connect a person to nobody. Federal rules call that an abandoned call, and for telemarketing they limit how often it can happen. The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule and the FCC's TCPA rules share the same core numbers, which are two seconds to connect, 3 percent of live answers per 30 days, and at least 15 seconds or four rings before hanging up on an unanswered call. This Impact Dialing guide covers how each one is measured and what a dialer has to do when it can't connect in time.

What counts as an abandoned call

A call is abandoned when a person answers and isn't connected to a live sales representative within two seconds of finishing their greeting (16 CFR 310.4(b)(1)(iv); 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(7)). The clock starts when the greeting ends, so a dialer that waits for someone to finish "Hello, this is Sam" and then takes three seconds to route the call has abandoned it.

Answering machine detection complicates this. AMD listens to the first moments of an answer to decide whether it's a person or a recording, and that listening uses up part of the two seconds. When AMD wrongly decides a live answer is a machine and hangs up or plays a voicemail message, that's an abandoned call too. The article on optimizing predictive dialer settings covers how AMD sensitivity trades those errors against agent time.

How the 3 percent is measured

To use the FTC's safe harbor, a seller has to keep abandoned calls at or under 3 percent of all calls answered by a person, measured over the whole campaign if it runs less than 30 days, or separately for each 30-day period, or part of one, that it continues (16 CFR 310.4(b)(4)(i)). The FCC's version is a flat prohibition with the same math, no more than 3 percent of telemarketing calls answered live, per campaign, per 30-day period (47 CFR 64.1200(a)(7)).

The denominator is calls answered by a live person. Dials that ring out, hit a busy signal, or reach an answering machine don't count, so a dialer report that divides by all dials or all connects will show a lower number than the rule does. For example, a campaign that reaches 12,000 live people in a 30-day period can abandon at most 360 of them, and that limit stays the same whether the dialer placed 40,000 calls or 100,000 to reach those 12,000.

The measure runs per campaign, so a campaign that ran hot early in its 30-day period has less room later in the same period. Track campaign-to-date abandonment along with the hourly figure, and pull the dial ratio back as the running total approaches the cap.

The other conditions of the safe harbor

Staying under 3 percent is one of four conditions in the FTC's safe harbor, and the FCC's rules require the same practices. A program also has to do the following.

• Let an unanswered call ring for at least 15 seconds or four rings before disconnecting it (310.4(b)(4)(ii); 64.1200(a)(6)).
• Play a recorded message whenever a representative isn't available within two seconds. Under the TSR it states the seller's name and phone number. The FCC's version says the call was for "telemarketing purposes," names the business, gives a number for do-not-call requests during business hours, and includes an automated opt-out that adds the number to the seller's do-not-call list and ends the call (64.1200(a)(7)(i)).
• Keep records that show compliance with each of these (310.4(b)(4)(iv); 64.1200(a)(7)(iii)).

The recorded message spares the person a silent hang-up, but the call still counts as abandoned in the 3 percent calculation. The one exception is a prerecorded telemarketing campaign that the called person gave prior express written consent to receive, where a message that starts within two seconds of the greeting isn't an abandoned call (64.1200(a)(7)(ii)).

Which calls the rule covers

Both versions apply to telemarketing, meaning calls that sell goods or services. The FTC's rule also covers for-profit telemarketers soliciting charitable contributions, since its definition of an outbound call includes them. The FCC's rule excludes calls made by or for tax-exempt nonprofits (64.1200(a)(7)(iv)), and political calls aren't telemarketing under either rule.

Campaigns and nonprofits outside the rule still have reasons to keep abandonment low, since every abandoned call is a voter or donor who answered and heard silence or a recording. Holding to 3 percent is a reasonable internal standard even where the rule doesn't reach, and phone banking for political campaigns covers the rules that do apply to campaign calls.

Keeping a predictive campaign under the cap

Set the dialer's abandonment target below 3 percent so ordinary swings don't cross it, and watch the campaign-to-date figure during every session. Abandonment climbs fastest when answer rates jump or agents log off, so lower the dial ratio before breaks and shift changes and raise it again only once staffing is back.

Small teams have less room, because the dialer has fewer agents to absorb a cluster of answers, and a team of a handful of agents may do better in power mode at one line per agent. The call center metrics guide covers the abandonment formula alongside idle time and contact rate, the two numbers that move with it.