Live chat is the preferred support channel for nearly two-thirds of customers—and it’s easy to see why. It gives people exactly what they want: instant answers, no phone menus, no wait music, no friction. Just quick and convenient help—customer satisfaction at its best.
But here’s the problem: most businesses still obsess over average handle time while completely overlooking other important live chat KPIs—like the chats that never connect in the first place. Or the ones that drop before an agent even says hello.
The truth is, missed chats can impact overall service quality and customer satisfaction, as they represent lost opportunities to engage and resolve customer issues promptly. In this guide, we break down:
- why missed chats should be a core KPI in your customer service team’s support strategy
- how to measure these metrics properly and how your chat metrics stack up against industry benchmarks
- some tips to minimize this specific KPI
Why missed chats matter in customer service
A missed chat, also called an abandoned chat, is when a customer initiates a chat and then leaves before an initial response is meade.
If a customer initiates a chat, they’re doing so with a purpose. They want help, clarity, resolution—and they want it right now. Therefore, a missed chat is a signal that you have gaps in your customer service team’s performance. Aside from that, missed chats also impact your business. Check out these benefits of having effective chat support, as compiled by Livechat.
- 60% of customers say they’re more likely to return to a website that has live chat.
- 63% of customers are more likely to buy from websites that have a live chat widget, showing how chat support contributes to conversions
- 79% of companies say live chat has helped increase customer loyalty, revenue, and sales
- 42% of customers prefer live chat over phone calls because they can avoid the experience of waiting on hold
Why do chats get missed?
Missed chats negatively impact the overall support experience and can lead to lower overall customer satisfaction scores—and they usually point to these three root causes:
Long wait times
Most of the time, when a customer initiates a chat inquiry, it’s because he or she needs answers fast. When customers expect quick responses in problem-solving mode, but then your chat queue is long, wait times aren’t visible, or there’s no sense of progress—users will jump ship. And fast. Online behavior is dynamic, meaning your customers are probably multitasking, toggling tabs, exploring multiple channels, and jumping between different online activities.
Monitoring your current response times and average resolution time can give you an idea of where you stand. Then, your customer service team can proceed to strategies that will help reduce long wait times and improve customer satisfaction.
Technical difficulties
Sometimes it’s not your team’s performance that’s the issue—it’s your tech. Browser glitches, broken chat widgets, slow-loading pre-chat surveys, or poor mobile compatibility can tank a conversation before it even starts. If the platform fails, then you fail.
Monitor your live chat metrics to identify technical issues that impact customer satisfaction levels.
Clunky user experience
What does a clunky user experience look like? Basically, it’s when these scenarios happen:
- A customer has to hunt for your live chat widget. Burying support behind a wall of clicks guarantees lower engagement and higher abandonment. It’s like you’re avoiding inquiries!
- No proactive chat trigger—even when they need it.
- You’re still asking users for the same information they already gave via pre-chat forms, emails, or other channels. Worse, asking for too much upfront (name, email, plan details).
- A chatbot that loops endlessly and doesn’t provide any real solution and prevents customers from reaching live agents.
A clunky user experience can create pain points in the customer journey, leading to higher abandonment rates.
What high missed chat rates really tell you about customer satisfaction
If your team is regularly missing chats, you’re losing the opportunity to assist a customer, resolve his/her issue, or drive revenue. Actually, if the missed chats support metric is high, there’s a deeper diagnosis:
- There’s capacity misalignment in your CS team
- Your customer service tools aren’t serving you
- Or your workflows or processes are breaking down
- High missed chat rates often result in negative customer feedback, highlighting the importance of support agents in addressing these issues.
So in a nutshell, a high missed chat rate (MCR) is telling you that your support system isn’t matching the expectations of your customers. The first thing to do is to calculate your MCR (the formula is straightforward, but the result is crucial for measuring your customer service effectiveness):
Missed Chat Rate = (Number of Missed Chats / Total Chat Requests) × 100
The higher your missed chat rate is, the faster your customer satisfaction rate or even net promoter score will decrease. This means there are serious service gaps and unmet customer expectations. Your goal is to minimize it.
MCR benchmarks and live chat metrics you must know
Key metrics like missed chat rate, average resolution time, or customer satisfaction rate are essential for understanding and improving customer service performance.
So, how does your customer service stack up? Tracking your missed chat rate in isolation won’t move the needle. To truly understand what the number means—and what you should do about it—you need context. That’s where benchmarks come in.
Remember: Benchmarks don’t just apply to all. Your ideal range depends on factors like industry type, chat volume, team size, service hours, and the complexity of your support workflows.
What’s the best case scenario?
This is how elite and top-performing teams operate:
- Chat inquiries are hardly missed—keeping their missed chat rate between 0% and 2%
- Every conversation is accounted for.
- Staffing models are dialed in.
- Chat routing is airtight.
- Proactive outreach plugs gaps before they open.
- Top-performing teams often monitor how long customers wait, the agent utilization rate, and other live chat metrics to maintain low missed chat rates. But let’s be clear: maintaining this level takes serious investment in real-time coverage, technology, and process refinement.
Chat metrics to keep an eye on
Here are chat metrics that we recommend you to track and monitor, as they help tell the complete story behind your chat support performance. These stats are from Superoffice:
- The average missed chat rate across various industries is approximately 21%.
- The average wait time for live chat responses from support team is 2 minutes and 40 seconds
- The average handle time for a chat request is 6 minutes and 50 seconds
Tips to reduce missed chats (so you consistently provide timely support)
To keep missed chat rates at a minimum, you need the right people, processes, and systems working in sync so you meet real-time demand of customer inquiries. Focusing on live chat metrics is crucial for improving customer satisfaction and reducing missed chats as much as possible. Let’s describe what that entails in practice.
#1. Optimize scheduling with intentional staffing models
If you don’t have enough agents available when customers reach out, missed chats are inevitable. So what do you do about it? When your staffing doesn’t match your chat volume, service gaps are real. Optimizing scheduling can enhance the productivity of each support team member and improve overall agent productivity.
For larger teams, workforce management (WFM) tools are non-negotiable if you are aiming for increased customer satisfaction. These tools help ensure the right people with the right skills are in the right place at the right time. For smaller teams, even a basic queuing model is enough, so every request in the chat queue is acknowledged and addressed in order.
#2. Be strategic with availability
Strategic availability can improve customer retention and ensure effective use of communication channels.
The temptation to offer 24/7 support might seem like the ultimate commitment to customer service. However, extending your availability beyond your capacity isn’t really recommended. Worst case, it can lead to more missed chats and a poorer overall customer experience. Don’t automatically offer 24/7 support if you’re not ready. You might end up doing more harm to your customer retention.
Instead of trying to cover the entire day right away, start with your peak engagement windows. Start with a 2–4 hour window when chat volume is highest. Focus on delivering a stellar experience during that window, then build outward as resources allow. And if your product has a mix of high-touch and low-touch users, consider offering live chat only to the segments that need it most—or are most likely to convert.
#3. Hire people who can actually multitask
Want a successful chat operation? Then choose your chat agents wisely, too. The risk of missed chats increases when your customer service department constantly shifts between conversations and tasks, yet they still opt to maintain conversation threads simultaneously, each with its own context, emotional tone, and resolution path.
Hiring multitasking support agents can help manage multiple chats efficiently and reduce the occurrence of the same query being asked repeatedly.
This is where training and job design come in. Build roles that respect the complexity of chat. And provide specific CS training on how to effectively manage their time, prioritize chat interactions, and minimize distractions.
#4. Use chatbots to deflect volume
We’re not just talking about a handful of queries here. In many cases, AI-powered bots can deflect up to 75% of chat inquiries by resolving common requests (order status, password resets, shipping info) before they ever hit the queue.
Chatbots can handle routine customer inquiries using canned responses, freeing up human agents for more complex issues. By effectively handling a large volume of routine inquiries, chatbots allow your human service reps to concentrate their time and energy on more complex problems. CS issues that require critical thinking, empathy, and personalized solutions.
Outsourcing chat support as a solution
Now, if your internal support team still struggles to keep up with chat volume or you just don’t have enough reps to keep your missed chat customer service rate low, rethink how your support operation is structured. One of the most effective ways to close the gap is by customer service outsourcing.
Outsourcing can enhance the efficiency of the customer service department and improve the net promoter score by providing better coverage and faster response times. A reliable outsourcing partner delivers three specific advantages:
1. Reduced missed chats
One of the most immediate benefits of customer support outsourcing is the significant decrease in your missed chat rate. They have more capacity for better coverage and reduced customer wait times. CS outsourcing means access to a larger pool of agents and access to sophisticated live chat software.
In essence, outsourcing can improve customer satisfaction levels by reducing average resolution time and ensuring timely responses.
2. Consistent 24/7 coverage
Building an in-house support team that operates around the clock can be resource-intensive and logistically complex. But with outsourcing, you can extend your support hours without burning out your internal team or compromising quality. All thanks to staffing agencies with a global team. So, missed chats that happen while your team is offline can be replaced with chats that get an instant response.
Outsourcing also enables handling multiple chats simultaneously, which can improve the customer effort score and customer experience by providing quicker resolutions.
3. Improved scalability and service consistency
When the volume of chat interactions spikes, you need to scale fast. Most internal teams can’t ramp up quickly enough to meet those bursts, resulting in a longer chat queue. A good outsourcing partner can scale with you, adding trained chat agents as needed. Best of all, these BPO companies bring solid processes. They come with experience in optimizing live chat systems, building agent playbooks, and implementing technology that actually support agent performance.
Outsourcing partners can provide valuable insights by monitoring live chat performance metrics, helping to improve service consistency.
The key is to choose a partner with a proven track record in live chat performance. You have to look for those who specialize in: High-velocity support environments, multichannel strategy, and metrics-driven optimization, including KPI customer service such as missed chat rate.
Transform your chat support today
Customers won’t wait. If there’s no agent available or able to respond to that chat timely, they’ll abandon the chat. And what does that lead to? Another missed opportunity to resolve an issue and lower customer satisfaction scores.
Focusing on first contact resolution can help minimize missed chats and improve the net promoter score (NPS) by ensuring customer issues are resolved promptly.
But there’s no need to panic! Your missed chat rate is also one of the metrics you can improve. With the right strategy, you can turn your live chat from a liability into a competitive advantage—one that scales with your business.
That being said, let LTVplus help you with live chat support and other customer service KPIs. We specialize in integrating seamlessly with your existing team and providing tools to deliver 24/7 coverage, reduce missed chats, shorten response time, and elevate every customer touchpoint. Book a call today for more details about our service.
