Monet Software has been posting some good info about call center metrics, how to use them to set goals, what they mean, exactly.

Take abandon rates. As Monet officials explain, that means the percentage of calls that hang up before an agent could take the call - it does not mean calls that get a busy signal.

So what does it mean? It might show that your customers are ticked off having to wait so long on the phone. Face it, you don’t like waiting forever for an agent to take your call, nobody else does either.

As Monet’s blog post notes, generally speaking, the longer it takes to answer a call, the higher are abandon rates. Again, we’re not talking about people who are hanging up because they got the wrong number, that happens the first ten seconds or so. We’re talking people who are tired of listening to the Muzak.

“Good,” some of you might be thinking. “Didn’t want to listen to those ugly suckers anyway.” Nope, it doesn’t work that way. They call back. So if you don’t take care of them the first time they call, odds are good that they’ll call back, inflating call volumes, even higher call rates.

As Monet officials said on their earlier blog post, “there are many call center metrics you can track, so the key question is often: What is really important for my call center?”

To help you out with that they compiled a list of call center metrics that are usually used to measure performance, cautioning that before plunging in with the metrics, “you should first establish the overall goals and objectives for your specific business and call center operations.”