Why Customers Are Abandoning Your Website for the Phone (And What You Can Do About It)

Here's a statistic that should concern every customer experience leader: UK customer preference for using the phone to solve urgent issues has increased by a staggering 350% since 2020.

It's a huge increase and shows how customers still feel that 'speaking with someone' is the fastest way to get their problems solved. However, the real issue isn't just how to manage more phone calls (although we will come to that) the first question is to explore why this has happened, and more often than not It's because current digital self-help channels are letting customers down.

According to ContactBabel's latest research, almost 20% of inbound calls come from customers who have already tried—and failed—to resolve their issues through web self-service. These aren't cold contacts; they're frustrated customers who've already invested time and effort trying to help themselves, only to hit a dead end.

For mid-size businesses without dedicated contact centres, this creates a perfect storm: overwhelmed phone services, overstreteched resources, frustrated customers, and spiralling costs.

The Digital-to-Phone Escalation Challenge

The Customer Journey Nobody Wants

Picture this common scenario: A customer visits your website with an urgent query. They try your chatbot or self-service portal, but it doesn't understand their request or can't handle the complexity. Frustrated, they then pick up the phone.

After waiting in a queue, they finally reach someone only to have to repeat everything they've just explained to your digital systems. They spell out their account details again. They re-explain their issue from scratch. Any goodwill has evaporated.

This broken experience reveals two critical failures:

1. Current digital self-service isn't good enough Traditional rule-based chatbots can only handle pre-programmed questions. When customers ask anything outside their narrow scope, they fail. Research shows that 52% of contact centres receive calls about issues that could be resolved online with the right approach.

2. Most channels don't talk to each other The Contact Babel research highlighted that only 15% of UK contact centres even consider passing calls to the employee who last spoke to that customer, a continuity opportunity that's being missed. When your web chat, chatbot and phone systems operate independently, customers pay the price through repetition and frustration.

For today's price-sensitive and time-poor customers, this kind of negative experience can be the difference between retention and churn - and the companies who get it right can create a genuine competitive advantage.

The Cost of Failed Digital Service‍

When customers abandon your website for the phone, several things happen - none of them are positive:

• Costs multiply: A web self-service interaction costs between 40-100 times less than a live call to a human advisor.
• Customer satisfaction plummets: Having to repeat information is one of the most frustrating customer experiences.
• Your team gets overwhelmed: Phone lines become clogged with queries that should never have reached them.
• First contact resolution suffers: Human advisors begin calls with frustrated customers and incomplete context.

The irony? Businesses have invested heavily in digital channels to reduce call volumes, only to see those calls increase because the digital experience is inadequate.

3-Ways to Move Forward with Smarter Solutions

The good news is that used well modern technology can help you to solve both problems, both improving your digital channels and connecting them seamlessly to either voice support or direct to your human team when needed.

1. Upgrade to Generative AI-Powered Self-Service for Chat and Voice

The first step is acknowledging that your current chatbot probably isn't cutting it. Traditional rule-based systems need to evolve, or incorporate conversational AI that better understands customer intent. Systems which incorporate Generative AI enable you to both enhance the experience for customers as well as improving back-end workflow capabilities to deliver more sophisticated processes that can support your team and save them time.

What this looks like in practice:

• Natural language understanding: Customers can explain their issues in their own words, not rigid menu options
• Contextual awareness: The system remembers what customers have said and can handle follow-up questions naturally
• Continuous learning: Machine learning improves responses over time based on real customer interactions
• Complex query handling: AI-enabled workflows can guide customers through sophisticated processes, not just FAQs

Modern platforms like Assist-Me make it possible to deploy generative AI chatbots without requiring technical expertise specific AI skills, or even a contact centre/CCaaS, transforming your website from a barrier into a genuinely helpful resource.

2. Implement Intelligent Voice AI for Integrated Support

When customers do decide to call, the latest Voice AI means that the experience can be just as good as speaking with someone within your team, with natural and very human sounding voices - you can even choose one to reflect your brand experience. If following a web interaction the call should also be seamless, with any web interaction information carried across to the conversation - avoiding any frustrating restarts.

Voice AI technology can now:

• Access full conversation history: The voice assistant knows exactly what the customer tried to do online and where they got stuck
• Pre-authenticate customers: Using information already gathered digitally, eliminating the need to repeat account details
• Provide context-aware routing: If human assistance is needed, calls are directed to the right person with full background information
• Handle complex triage: Natural language recognition allows customers to explain issues in their own words, improving routing accuracy
• Provide a  human-like experience: From regional accents to empathy and adaptive tone of voice, through to speed of response and exceptional intent identification.

The result? Customers feel understood rather than ignored, and your team receives calls with complete context—ready to solve problems rather than gather information.

3. Integrate Chat, Voice and Phone Channels for a Better Customer Experience

The most powerful solution connects all your channels into a unified system where information flows more seamlessly.

Key capabilities include:

• A single customer view: Whether someone contacts you via web chat, phone, or email, agents see the complete interaction history
• Automatic information sharing: During or after calls, send out relevant documents, links or confirmations without manual effort
• Intelligent channel switching: Let customers move between voice and chat channels mid-conversation without losing context
• Consistent experience: Deliver the same quality and knowledge across every touchpoint

When your digital and voice channels work together rather than in isolation, you can eliminate the repetition and frustration that drives customers away. Only 58% of UK contact centres currently provide agents with full customer history including non-voice interactions—meaning 42% are making their agents (and customers) work harder than necessary.

Turning digital experience into a competitive advantage

Here's what most mid-size businesses miss: while your competitors are also seeing that 350% increase in phone preference, most haven't connected the dots about why it's happening or what to do about it.

By fixing both the digital experience and the escalation journey, you can:

• Reduce call volumes by providing self-service that actually works
• Improve customer satisfaction by eliminating repetition and demonstrating you value their time
• Lower your costs by deflecting routine queries while handling complex ones efficiently
• Build customer loyalty in a price-sensitive market where service quality drives retention

The businesses thriving in today's challenging financial climate aren't those with the biggest contact centres—they're the ones who've made it easy for customers to get the answers they need, whatever channel they choose.

Conclusion

The 350% surge in phone usage for urgent queries isn't a sign that digital channels have failed—it's a wake-up call that they aren't yet quite good enough. Customers are trying to help themselves; they're just not finding most web self-service that useful.

By upgrading to generative AI-powered self-service and implementing intelligent Voice AI that maintains context across channels, mid-size businesses can turn this to their advantage. The goal isn't to force customers away from using the phone—it's to make every channel work so well that customers can choose based on preference, not frustration.

In a market where every interaction matters, and customers are quick to switch, seamless service across channels isn't a luxury—it's essential for survival.

Ready to stop losing customers in the gap between digital and voice? Speak with one of our team to discover how our unified platform can connect your channels, upgrade your AI capabilities, and deliver the seamless experience your customers expect—without the complexity or cost of traditional contact centre infrastructure. Speak with our team today.