What percentage of contact centre volume is avoidable?
There is no reliable industry average, and anyone quoting one confidently should be asked how their study defined the term. Published figures vary enormously by sector and methodology. The only number that will survive scrutiny inside your organisation is one measured on your own contacts.
Why we don’t publish a number
Failure demand rates depend on the sector, the maturity of upstream processes, and — decisively — how the study drew the line between failure, value and context demand. A figure lifted from someone else’s research is the fastest way to have your business case dismissed in the first meeting.
How to measure your own in half a day
- Pull 200 contacts at random from a recent, representative month. Avoid seasonal peaks.
- Read each one and classify it as failure, value or context demand against the taxonomy.
- Have a second person classify 30 of them independently. If you disagree on more than a handful, your definitions need tightening before the numbers mean anything.
- Report the failure share as a range, not a point estimate.
Then use the low end
If your sample says 40%, build the case on 30%. A number nobody can attack is worth more than a bigger one that spends the meeting being argued about.
We are building The European Failure Demand Index from anonymised, opt-in aggregate data to eventually supply the sector benchmark that doesn’t currently exist. Until the sample is large enough to be meaningful, we would rather publish nothing than publish a number we can’t stand behind.