Transfer Rate: Why Customers Get Passed Around, and How to Stop It
Transfer rate is the percentage of customer contacts that are passed from the first agent who handles them to another agent, team or queue before the customer's need is met.
It is one of the simplest numbers in the contact centre to calculate, and one of the easiest to misread.
A transfer is not always a failure. Some contacts genuinely belong with a specialist. But every unnecessary transfer means the customer waits again, explains again and trusts you a little less.
The goal is not a lower number at any cost. It is fewer avoidable transfers, and better handling of the ones you need.
Why it matters
Transferred customers are less satisfied and less likely to have their issue resolved.
Each transfer also adds a second wait and a second handle time to the same contact, so cost rises along with customer effort.
Why it's tricky
Most transfers are caused by routing, menus and permissions, not by the agent who makes them.
Push agents to transfer less without fixing those causes and they hold on to contacts they can't resolve, which is worse.
What this guide covers
A clear definition and formula, the four types of transfer, and why the headline rate hides what matters.
Then how to reduce avoidable transfers, measure the rate properly, and avoid the most common mistakes.
What is Transfer Rate?
Transfer rate measures how often a contact has to move from the person who first handled it to someone else. It applies to calls, chats and messages alike, although it is most often reported for voice.
A transfer can go to another agent, a specialist team, a supervisor or a different department. Some centres also count referrals to another organisation or phone number, which we recommend (see the types below).
The formula
| Step | What to use | Practical example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Contacts transferred | Contacts transferred at least once by an agent during the period | 1,560 |
| 2. Contacts handled | All contacts answered or handled by an agent in the same period | 12,000 |
| 3. Divide and multiply by 100 | Contacts transferred ÷ contacts handled × 100 | 1,560 ÷ 12,000 × 100 |
| Transfer rate | 13% |
✓ Transfer rate is
- The share of agent-handled contacts moved to another person, team or queue
- A signal of how well routing, skills and permissions match customer needs
- A measure of the customer's journey, not just the agent's behaviour
- Most useful when split by reason, destination and entry point
✕ Transfer rate is not
- The IVR sending a call to a queue before anyone answers
- Automatically bad — some contacts belong with a specialist
- A fair target for individual agents on its own
- The full picture — it doesn't show how many times one contact was moved
Plain-English Definition
Transfer rate is how often a customer has to be handed on to someone else to get what they came for.
If 13 out of every 100 customers you answer hear "let me put you through to the right team", your transfer rate is 13%.
The more useful question is how many of those 13 should have reached the right person the first time.
Why Transfer Rate Matters in CX
A transfer is the moment a customer finds out they were in the wrong place. How often that happens, and how it's handled, shapes how hard your organisation feels to deal with.
For CX leaders
Transfers are a direct driver of Customer Effort Score. The customer waits twice, repeats themselves and starts to doubt anyone can help.
Transfer patterns also show where your organisation's structure, rather than the customer's need, is shaping the journey.
For contact centre leaders
Every transferred contact is handled at least twice. That inflates workload, Average Handling Time across teams and the staff you need to meet Service Level.
It also drags down First Contact Resolution, so it belongs next to your other core call centre metrics, not buried in a system report.
For routing and service designers
A high transfer rate from one IVR option, queue or chat entry point tells you the front door is sending customers the wrong way.
It's one of the clearest signals for fixing menus, Skills Based Routing rules and who is allowed to do what.
What the research says
Source: SQM Group, "Call Transfer and Hold Performance Impact on CX" (December 2021), based on post-call surveys across North American contact centres.
Reading these numbers honestly
These figures are context, not a target. They come from North American voice customers, and the 19% is an average across very different operations.
A specialist insurer with a single triage team will run a very different rate from a utility with a dozen product queues.
The finding that holds everywhere is the direction: transferred customers are less satisfied and less likely to get a resolution. SQM also found warm transfers score significantly better than cold ones, which tells you how you transfer matters as much as how often.
The Four Types of Transfer
Not all transfers cost the customer the same. Track them separately, because the right fix depends on the type.
Warm transfer
The agent stays with the customer, speaks to the receiving agent first and passes on the details before handing over.
Also called an attended or consult transfer. The customer doesn't have to repeat themselves, which is why it scores best.
Cold transfer
The agent sends the contact to another person or queue without speaking to them first. Also called a blind transfer.
Fast for the agent, slow for the customer, who often waits in a new queue and starts again from the beginning.
Conference or three-way
The first agent brings a colleague or specialist into the conversation and all three talk together.
Useful for complex or sensitive contacts, and a good way for newer agents to learn. Decide upfront whether it counts as a transfer in your reports.
External referral
The customer is told to call another number, visit a branch or contact a different organisation.
Most systems don't record this as a transfer at all, yet for the customer it is the worst kind. Capture it with a wrap code so it shows up.
Necessary or avoidable?
The most useful split isn't by type. It's by whether the transfer should have happened.
A necessary transfer sends a contact to a specialist skill you have deliberately kept separate, such as hardship, fraud or complex claims. An avoidable transfer happens because the contact was misrouted, the agent lacked the knowledge or permission, or a system wouldn't let them finish the job.
Avoidable transfers are the ones to remove. Necessary transfers are the ones to make warm.
How to Reduce Avoidable Transfers
Start with the causes, not the agents. SQM's research found the main reasons customers are transferred are the IVR routing them to the wrong agent and gaps in agent knowledge and skills — and both are design problems.
Find out why contacts are transferred
Add a short list of transfer reasons to your Wrap Codes — misrouted, needs a specialist skill, needs authority, system access, customer request — and have agents select one each time.
Then listen to a sample of transferred calls to check the codes match reality. The QA Sample Size Calculator tells you how many to review.
Fix the front door
Trace transfers back to the IVR option, chat menu or phone number the customer used. If one entry point produces most of the misroutes, the wording or the routing behind it is wrong.
Write menu options in the customer's words, not your department names, and test them with real customers.
Check your skills design
Every extra skill group creates another place a contact can land by mistake. Over-segmented queues are one of the biggest sources of avoidable transfers.
Where two groups handle similar work, consider cross-skilling and merging them. Larger pools are also more efficient to staff, thanks to the Pooling Principle.
Give agents the authority to finish the job
Many transfers happen because the agent knows the answer but isn't permitted to act on it — a refund limit, a fee waiver, an account change.
Review which transfers exist only because of a permission, and widen authority where the risk is low.
Close the knowledge gaps
If agents transfer because they don't know the answer, the fix is usually better Knowledge Management Systems and targeted training, not a lecture about transfer rate.
Look at transfer reasons by tenure to see whether the gap is in onboarding or in the knowledge base itself.
Make the necessary transfers warm
Set a standard: introduce the customer, pass on what's been done, and confirm the receiving agent has it before letting go.
Make sure notes and context travel with the contact across teams and channels — a theme in omnichannel customer service. Agent call-handling training such as Phone Customer Service Training covers taking ownership of the call.
Benefits of Reducing Avoidable Transfers
Higher resolution
Contacts that reach the right person first are more likely to be resolved in one go.
That lifts First Contact Resolution and cuts repeat contacts.
Lower customer effort
One wait, one conversation, one explanation.
Customers notice when they don't have to tell their story twice.
Less wasted capacity
Every avoidable transfer is handled at least twice and often queued twice.
Removing them frees capacity without asking anyone to work faster.
Better routing data
Transfer reasons show exactly which menu options, queues and rules aren't working.
That turns routing changes from guesswork into evidence.
More confident agents
Agents with the knowledge and authority to finish the job feel more capable.
They spend less time apologising for a process they can't change.
Fewer complaints
Being passed around is one of the most common customer frustrations.
Fewer bounces mean fewer contacts that turn into complaints.
Common Pitfalls with Transfer Rate
Setting a transfer rate target for agents
Most transfers are caused by routing, permissions and knowledge gaps the agent doesn't control. A personal target pushes agents to hold contacts they can't resolve, guess at answers or ask customers to call back.
The fix: use agent transfer data to find coaching and knowledge needs, and target the causes at team and system level. See how to set KPIs that drive the right behaviour.
Chasing a generic benchmark
A "good" transfer rate depends entirely on how your operation is designed. A centre with many specialist queues will transfer more than one with a single generalist team, and that may be the right trade-off.
The fix: compare yourself with your own history and measure the avoidable share, not an industry average.
Counting only one transfer per contact
The headline rate counts a contact once, whether it was moved once or four times. A customer bounced around three teams looks the same as one sent straight to a specialist.
The fix: report transfers per transferred contact alongside the rate, and investigate anything moved more than once.
Missing the hidden transfers
"Please call this other number", "I'll get someone to call you back" and "you'll need to go into a branch" usually aren't recorded as transfers. They can make the rate look good while customers do the work.
The fix: capture referrals and callbacks with wrap codes and include them in your transfer reporting.
Cold transfers to save handle time
A cold transfer looks efficient on the first agent's AHT. The customer then waits in another queue and repeats everything, so total handle time and effort go up. Very short handle times deserve a closer look for this reason.
The fix: make warm transfer the standard for anything that isn't a simple redirect.
Over-segmenting skills
Splitting work into ever more specialist queues looks tidy, but every boundary is a new reason to transfer. Overflow rules that send contacts to less-skilled groups at busy times add more. Overflow needs careful design.
The fix: merge queues where the work overlaps, and cross-skill agents for the most common transfer paths.
Warning: If your transfer rate falls while handle time, repeat contacts or complaints rise, agents may be keeping contacts they can't resolve.
A lower transfer rate is only good news if First Contact Resolution holds or improves at the same time.
How to Measure Transfer Rate Properly
The headline number is a starting point. These steps turn it into something you can act on.
Agree what counts
Write down whether warm, cold, conference and external transfers are included, and whether supervisor assists count.
Exclude IVR routing before an agent answers. If the definition changes, the trend means nothing.
Report the rate and the bounces
Track the transfer rate and the average number of transfers per transferred contact.
A steady rate with rising bounces means customers are being passed around more, not less.
Split by reason, entry point and destination
Break transfers down by transfer reason, by the IVR option or channel the contact came in on, and by where it went.
This is where the fixes come from.
Measure what happens after the transfer
Check whether transferred contacts are resolved by the receiving team, and how long customers wait after being transferred.
A necessary transfer that resolves quickly is fine. One that leads to another queue and a callback is not.
Look at the spread across agents
Agents well outside the team's normal range usually point to a knowledge, confidence or permission gap worth exploring in coaching.
Treat it as a question to ask, not a score to rank people on.
Practical example: what sits behind a 13% transfer rate
The figures below are illustrative, to show how splitting by reason changes the picture. They are not a benchmark.
| Transfer reason | Necessary or avoidable? | Transfers |
|---|---|---|
| Misrouted by the IVR | Avoidable | 520 |
| Agent not permitted to approve the request | Avoidable | 310 |
| Agent didn't know the answer | Avoidable | 220 |
| Hardship or vulnerable customer team | Necessary | 280 |
| Fraud or security team | Necessary | 150 |
| Customer asked for a manager | Depends | 80 |
| Total transfers | 67% avoidable | 1,560 |
The rule
Judge transfer rate on two things together: how many avoidable transfers you have removed, and how well the necessary ones are handled.
In the example, two-thirds of transfers trace back to the IVR, permissions and knowledge. None of them would be fixed by telling agents to transfer less.
How well do your agents handle transfers?
Send a sample of your transferred calls to ACXPA's Call Quality Assessment. Expert assessors score each one against 18 quality behaviours plus the compliance checks you choose.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is transfer rate in a contact centre?
Transfer rate is the percentage of contacts handled by an agent that are passed to another agent, team or queue.
It shows how often customers fail to reach the right person first time.
How do you calculate transfer rate?
Divide the number of contacts transferred at least once by the total number of contacts handled by agents, then multiply by 100.
For example, 1,560 transferred out of 12,000 handled is a 13% transfer rate.
What is a good transfer rate?
There isn't a universal good number. It depends on how many specialist teams you run and what kinds of contacts you handle.
A better question is how many of your transfers were avoidable. Measure that, then work to bring it down while keeping the necessary transfers warm.
What is the difference between a warm and a cold transfer?
In a warm transfer, the agent speaks to the receiving agent first and passes on the details, so the customer doesn't repeat themselves.
In a cold transfer, the contact is sent on without that handover. Warm transfers are associated with higher satisfaction and resolution.
Should agents have a transfer rate target?
No. Most transfers are caused by routing, permissions and knowledge gaps that agents don't control.
A personal target encourages agents to hold on to contacts they can't resolve. Use agent-level transfer data for coaching conversations, and set improvement goals for the causes at team and system level.
How does transfer rate affect First Contact Resolution?
Transferred contacts are less likely to be resolved on first contact, and some definitions treat any transfer as a failure of first contact resolution.
Removing avoidable transfers is one of the most direct ways to improve it.
Does an IVR count as a transfer?
Not usually. Routing by the IVR before an agent answers is not counted as a transfer.
But IVR design is one of the main causes of transfers, because misrouted customers reach the wrong agent and then have to be moved.
Does transfer rate apply to chat and messaging?
Yes. A chat passed to another agent or team, or moved from a chatbot to a person, is a transfer from the customer's point of view.
Report digital transfers separately from voice so you can compare like with like, and make sure the conversation history goes with the customer.
Where to Next
Summary
Transfer rate is the percentage of agent-handled contacts that are passed to another agent, team or queue. It's simple to calculate: contacts transferred divided by contacts handled.
Behind that simple number sit very different problems, from a confusing menu to an agent who isn't allowed to approve a refund.
Some transfers are necessary, and those should be warm. Most of the rest are caused by routing, skills design, permissions and knowledge gaps — the system, not the person making the transfer.
That's why agent-level transfer targets backfire and why the avoidable share matters more than the headline rate.
Measure transfers by reason, entry point and destination, and track what happens after the handover. Judge success by fewer avoidable transfers and stable or rising First Contact Resolution.
When customers reach the right person first, everyone does less work.
