2022 Australian Contact Centres Best Practice Report
For the past three years, the team at Smaart Recruitment has produced the most comprehensive report on the Australian contact centre industry. The 2022 Australian Contact Centres Best Practice Report again raised the bar.
From 48 pages in 2019, this year's report ran to a massive 236 pages, with over 250 contact centres contributing and close to 1,200 individual submissions — by far the most robust industry data available at the time.
COVID presented a number of unique challenges for the industry, and this edition captures them. Note that the survey was completed toward the end of 2021, when NSW and Victoria in particular were still in lockdowns.
This article is our summary of the key findings. The full 236-page report is produced and owned by Smaart Recruitment and is available from them at contactcentrebestpractice.com.au.
236 pages, 250+ centres
Close to 1,200 individual submissions — the most robust industry dataset to that point.
The COVID edition
Surveyed during lockdowns, capturing the peak of remote work at 76% of agents.
The frontline heard
A first: over 600 frontline agents surveyed directly — and they didn't always agree with management.
📌 Looking for the latest insights?
Newer editions are available: the 2023 report, the 2024 report and the 2025 report.
Contributing authors and companies
Pulling together such a comprehensive report is no easy task, and a big shout-out to James Witcombe from Smaart Recruitment, who has again done a brilliant job — supported by local industry experts who contributed writing, commentary, best-practice tips and future predictions.
ACXPA has contributed to every edition of this report since 2020, with our CEO Justin Tippett authoring the Role of the Contact Centre Manager section this year. Their support, and that of their companies, enables the report to be produced at no cost to the industry.
Key Findings from the 2022 Report
With 236 pages, there is no shortage of information available. COVID reshaped nearly every part of the contact centre — from where people worked, to how they were recruited, to what they were paid.
Demographics
The report would not be possible without strong industry participation. Over 200 senior managers, 200 team leaders, 600 frontline agents, 50 workforce managers and 30 recruiters all contributed.
The contact centres surveyed range from small operations through to large corporates, across sectors including banking and finance (20%), utilities (16%), insurance (12%) and the public service (11%), through to not-for-profits, education and retail.
Victoria (metro) was the most popular location, and over 31% of respondents reported having a regional contact centre.
Remote Working
There is no question COVID rapidly changed work-from-home dynamics, and contact centres saw some of the most rapid change of all.
It's important to note the survey was completed toward the end of 2021, when NSW and Victoria were still in lockdowns. Post-lockdown, many contact centres continued with a high percentage of staff working from home.
- During COVID lockdowns, close to 76% of contact centre agents worked from home.
- Post-lockdown, approximately 48% of employees continued working from home.
- 58% of contact centres offer high-to-full flexibility on working from home — and it's a sought-after requirement for many employees looking to change roles.
- 44% claim working from home is just as effective as the office, 36% claim it's slightly less effective, and 9% claim it's more effective.
- Mental health is the biggest concern for managers (20%), followed by employee engagement (13%), when running a remote workforce.
- 52% of contact centres report absenteeism is lower for staff working from home (42% see no difference; just 5% say it is higher).
- 87% have the ability for team leaders or QA to listen and coach during live calls.
- 66% reported no change to customer satisfaction; 15% reported slightly higher satisfaction when agents work in the contact centre, versus 6% when working from home.
Absenteeism & Attrition
Managing absenteeism and attrition has never been far from most contact centre managers' minds, with the industry typically running higher than many other sectors.
With work-from-home now a key feature and recruitment challenges across all sectors, this year's report offered up some changes — though it's hard to gauge whether this is the new normal or just a symptom of the current landscape.
Absenteeism
- Average absenteeism reduced from 10% in the previous report to 9.2%.
- Leading causes were an increase in illness (26%), an increase in the challenge of the work (16%) and a seasonal spike in work (11%).
- Compared with pre-COVID rates, 25% of contact centres reported higher absenteeism, 47% lower and 28% the same.
- 73% reported that absenteeism has improved with greater flexibility.
Attrition
- 26% is the average attrition rate over the past 12 months.
- 52% of contact centres averaged between 10% and 30% attrition, while 17% averaged 50% or higher.
- Best practice attrition is less than 10%, achieved by around 20% of contact centres.
- 61% of agents leave the company altogether; 39% leave for internal roles.
- The primary reasons for leaving are pursuing a different career (30%), personal reasons (19%) and financial reasons (16%).
- Overall retention after 12 months has dropped from 73% to 69%.
Employee Engagement
Close to 60% of respondents have tools to specifically measure employee engagement within the contact centre, with 25% of those being real-time pulse surveys. Over 70% use organisation-wide surveys, and 15% have no formal way to measure engagement at all.
- 64% share results with frontline employees and actively engage them in developing actions and initiatives; 17% do not share results outside the leadership team.
- The average employee engagement score was 75.6/100, with best practice (the top 10%) scoring 88 or above.
- 52% claim their engagement scores improved on the previous year.
- Leading contributors to improved scores: better communication (30%), flexible working arrangements (18%), increased activities (17%) and greater development (14%).
- Asked how likely they'd be to recommend their organisation as a place of employment (an NPS-style question), the average score was 8.3 — an Employee Net Promoter Score of +38.
Modern Ways of Working
You may have heard terms like the "agile contact centre", bringing a new methodology to how contact centres are managed. This section explored new ways of thinking and how aligned managers and employees are with business objectives.
- 88% of respondents were clear about the purpose of the organisation, and 97% were clear on how their role brings that purpose to life.
- 90% of contact centre managers say they are fulfilled by their work.
- 72% of managers felt they could be better aligning and delivering goals.
- Only 34% felt they were spending enough time working on strategy (the next one to three years).
- 35% of interactions into a contact centre were driven by failures of the business — known as failure demand.
- 25% felt the true value they deliver is not well understood by their organisation.
Contact Centre Performance
With many retail fronts and offices closed during lockdowns, the contact centre often became the sole contact point for many businesses.
- Average Speed of Answer across the industry was 132 seconds, with 11–30 seconds the most common (29%). 11% averaged 0–10 seconds, while 6% took in excess of 8 minutes.
- Average Abandonment Rate was 7%, with 3–4% the most common (33%). Of note, 15% had abandonment rates in excess of 15%.
- 80/20 is the most common Grade of Service target (with 80/30 the next most common), though there is a very wide spread. Across all targets, 38% reported they were not achieving them.
- The Average Customer Satisfaction Score is 75 out of 100.
The metrics given the greatest importance were grade of service (23%), NPS or CSAT (22%), sales or conversions (14%), average speed of answer (13%), abandonment rate (12%) and first call resolution (12%).
Technology Adoption
Technology continues to play a significant role in the modern contact centre, and this year is no exception.
- Call recording has the largest adoption outside the core platform, with 70% of contact centres using it.
- Speech analytics (25%), automated quality management (18%), real-time agent assist (17%) and robotic process automation (13%) are starting to feature — with around 8% planning to invest in these in 2023.
- Considered close to standard kit: workforce management (50%), cloud-based CRM (47%), email management (45%), enterprise knowledge management (33%) and intelligent virtual assistants / conversational AI (13%).
- The technology flagged by most respondents for investment in 2023 was intelligent virtual assistants / conversational AI (15%), followed by enterprise knowledge management (8%).
- Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) is becoming commonplace, with 30% now relying on third parties to deliver and maintain their infrastructure and software.
- Gamification is firmly on the radar — 10% already use it, and just over 9% plan to invest in 2023.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is becoming widely adopted throughout society, with general acceptance and usage increasing thanks to mainstream applications like Apple's Siri and Tesla.
In a contact centre setting, AI predominantly relates to chatbots and virtual assistants (54%), speech analytics (41%), predictive call routing (35%), robotic process automation (30%) and natural language IVRs (24%).
Overall use of AI within contact centres is currently low, but expected to increase:
- Using AI to a high level (1%)
- Using AI in an experimental way (10%)
- Using AI to a low or moderate level (23%)
- Not using AI but looking to implement in 2023 (35%)
- No plans to implement (27%)
- Don't know / unsure (3%)
Of those using AI, on whether it has helped improve customer satisfaction scores: 26% said yes, 24% said no, and 46% were unsure (4% other).
- 53% reported AI enabled them to reallocate resources to where they were better suited.
- 68% plan to invest more in AI solutions in future.
- 80% believe AI will help human agents rather than replace them, and 81% think AI can improve the contact centre experience.
Mental Health & Wellbeing
With the toll of lockdowns still present, it's not surprising that mental health and wellbeing is a major focus for society as a whole — and that extends to the contact centre, where changes to working arrangements, reduced staffing and changes to support structures have all contributed.
- Asked to define the impact of COVID on mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, 76% said it had been negatively impacted, 22% were mostly unaffected, and 2% were positively impacted.
- When concerns are raised about psychological safety or mental health, 69% strongly agree there is a full and immediate investigation, and 24% agree.
- 91% have a good understanding of what defines mental health and mental ill health.
- 91% either strongly agree (33%) or agree (58%) that they can positively impact psychological safety and mental health in the workplace.
- On stigma: 74% do not believe there is a stigma surrounding mental health in the workplace, and only 4% strongly agree there is.
- Most believe workload increased due to COVID — strongly agree (26%), agree (24%) and slightly agree (21%).
- 90% believe people treat each other with respect in their organisation (just 2% slightly disagreed).
Customer Experience
There has been a lot of talk over the years about the importance of customer experience and the role the contact centre plays in contributing to the overall result.
- The most common CX metrics are NPS (62%) and CSAT (53%), followed by retention rate (28%), customer churn (16%) and Customer Effort Score (15%). Internally developed metrics also rated highly (24%).
- Immediate after-call survey usage has increased from 45% to 50%.
- Email continues to be the most popular method to capture customer satisfaction (62%), followed by post-call surveys (35%).
- The most common survey response-rate band is 11–15% for email surveys and 21–30% for post-call surveys.
- Only 24% are using speech analytics to improve customer insights or assist quality management.
- 39% have integrated tools enabling communication across multiple channels; 48% use independent channels depending on what the customer selected.
- 43% report more than five metrics to senior executives — an increase from 34% last year.
- 3–4 calls per agent per month is the most common number assessed for quality, with an increase in centres measuring 5–10 calls. Centres assessing more than 10 calls has dropped.
- There has been a slight increase in contact centres using a knowledge management platform (54%, up from 50%).
Offshoring Trends
During COVID there was a significant pivot in the use of offshore contact centres, as many common outsourcing destinations (the Philippines in particular) were significantly impacted — leaving many Australian organisations with little to no contact centre support.
- Compared with pre-COVID levels (around February 2020), 16% of contact centres have reduced offshoring, 29% have increased it, and 55% reported no change.
- Asked whether the benefits of onshoring back to Australia have outweighed the costs: 33% said yes, 11% said no, and 56% said it's too early to tell.
An important caveat
This report sought responses only from organisations with Australian-based contact centres. The responses in this section may therefore not be completely reflective of the whole industry.
Recruitment
When talking with contact centre leaders throughout 2022, one constant challenge emerged — recruitment.
- The top challenges are the low volume of applicants (68%), salaries not being competitive (36%), and workload being too high for the talent team (25%) — followed closely by the challenges of hiring and onboarding remotely (18%).
- On average, one member of a recruitment or talent team is trying to fill 10–20 vacancies at any one time, and 32% of internal recruiters have more than 50 vacancies open at once.
- 42% estimate they'll be recruiting more agents across 2022 (or at least trying to), 15% fewer and 42% about the same.
- 46% expect to increase their hiring of remote workers, and only 12% expect it to decrease.
- On candidate quality, 46% reported a decrease, 38% about the same and 15% cited an improvement.
- 62% of organisations understand the challenges of recruiting agents in the current market — yet 38% underestimate just how tough it is.
- Recruitment agencies fill around 17% of vacancies, and around 25% of contact centres rely on agencies to fill 30% or more of theirs.
Workforce Planning & Optimisation
A new inclusion for 2022, workforce planning and optimisation provides insight into a critical function designed to maximise the efficiency of your workforce.
- 90% of respondents have dedicated workforce planning processes in place.
- The larger the contact centre, the more dedicated WFM people — ranging from 1.3 people for centres with 0–50 seats through to 18.5 people for centres with 1,000+ seats.
- The most common roles are Workforce Manager (77%), Scheduler (71%) and Real-Time Analyst (63%).
- 50% of WFM employees started their career on the phones.
- 88% of new WFM hires receive in-house training on the WFM system and 60% on best-practice principles — but just 13% receive third-party training on best-practice WFM principles.
- The most popular WFM vendor systems are Genesys (40%), Microsoft Excel (35%), Aspect/Alvaria (33%) and Verint (27%).
- For centres without a WFM platform, 67% are looking to invest — and of those, 43% within the next 12 months.
- Forecasts are mostly created in a WFM system (48%) or Excel (46%), with 96% measuring forecast accuracy, most commonly at daily intervals (40%).
- On roster types: 92% have fixed rosters, 89% use rotating shifts, 70% use preference-based, and 62% provide a fully flexible roster where agents control the shifts they work.
- The most common notice period for shift times is 4 weeks (67%), followed by 3 and 6 weeks (10% each).
- Scheduled adherence is a performance metric for 86% of agents, with 91% the most common target.
The Role of an Agent
In another first for 2022, significant effort was extended to understand the perspectives of frontline agents — with over 600 frontline agents responding from a range of different-sized contact centres.
A revealing disconnect
There is not always clear alignment between what agents report and the data reported by management earlier in the report. That suggests a disconnect in some centres between what the management team believes and what frontline agents actually experience.
- 50% of agents believe they only have a small say in how they go about delivering on the purpose of their work; 35% say they have a large say.
- Asked what percentage of time they'd work from home if given the choice, the most common answer was 100% of the time (30%), followed by 90–99% (15%) and 80–89% (14%).
- The most common benefits cited for working from home: not having to travel (35%), overall convenience (26%), a sense of being trusted (9%) and getting work done more effectively (9%).
- Since COVID, 28% of agents feel less connected, 55% about the same, and 17% more connected.
- The initiatives valued most to improve engagement: virtual team activities (36%), gifts such as hampers or gift cards (23%), increased shift flexibility (18%), professional development (16%), health and wellbeing programs (14%) and additional paid leave (14%).
- 3.9 hours is the average amount of coaching received each month — with 22% saying this is not enough and 17% unsure.
- The two most common reasons agents believe others leave: to pursue a different career (47%) and dissatisfaction with the work (45%).
On career aspirations within their contact centre: aiming for a specialised role (30%), staying with the company but outside the contact centre (26%), not looking beyond their current role (25%), aiming for a team leader role (12%), and not planning to stay beyond the current role (7%).
The Role of a Team Leader
Often described as the most important role in the contact centre, the team leader has one of the most demanding jobs — with huge influence over culture and performance.
- The majority of team leaders find their job fulfilling (32%) or quite fulfilling (57%).
- On taking calls: only escalations (45%), yes (18%), only occasionally (16%), no (15%) and very rarely (7%).
- Team leaders identify coaching and development as their most important duty — yet 40% don't believe they have enough time to execute it.
- 48% believe they spend too much time in meetings, followed by dealing with remote issues (29%) and reporting and analysis (22%).
- The duties they'd most like removed: dealing with remote working issues (49%), coordination and rostering (46%) and dealing with escalations (23%).
- 91% have KPIs they need to meet, with quality, average handling time, adherence and productivity metrics all prominent.
- 80% feel well equipped to manage agents remotely; 11% are not well equipped and 5% are getting there.
- The most common frequency for one-on-ones with agents is monthly (37%), followed by fortnightly (34%).
- 30% of team leaders receive no training to increase their skills as a team leader — the next most common frequency being quarterly (27%).
- 52% of contact centres have no structured, ongoing learning and development program for team leaders.
On career aspirations over the next three years: advance within this contact centre (40%), advance in the same organisation but outside the contact centre (21%), happy to focus on being a team leader (20%), advance in another contact centre (7%), leave the industry (4%) and unsure (7%).
Salaries & Bonuses
With the challenges in recruitment well documented, it's not surprising there has been an increase in both salaries and bonuses for contact centre employees.
💰 Looking for the latest salary data?
The figures below are from the 2022 report and reflect that point in time. For the most current benchmarks across every contact centre role, see our Australian Call Centre Salaries page — always kept up to date.
The most common frontline role — customer service — increased approximately 5% on the previous year, from $53,066 to $55,800 + super. Over 40% of frontline agents reported receiving some form of bonus or commission, up significantly on the previous report.
Frontline agent salaries (2022)
| Role | Average base | Average bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Helpdesk Level 2 / Senior | $66,500 | Rare / small |
| Collections | $62,700 | $2,000–$5,000 |
| Customer Service – Senior | $61,750 | $5,450 |
| Inbound Sales | $56,300 | $9,900 |
| Customer Service | $55,800 | $4,150 |
| Helpdesk Level 1 | $54,500 | Rare / small |
| Outbound Sales | $54,100 | $9,500 |
| Lead Generation / Appointment Setting | $52,100 | $3,100 |
Leadership and specialists (2022)
- Customer Service Team Leader roles have risen by 10%, with the average base now $82,200 + super and an average bonus of $10,585. Team leaders working in an outsourcer or BPO sit approximately 20–25% below that average.
- Workforce Planning Leads are also in high demand, on an average of $124,800 + super.
- Senior roles are in high demand, though a wide range of role definitions significantly influences salaries. As a guide, they range from a Customer Service Manager ($119,500 + super, with a $13,200 average bonus) through to a General Manager in excess of $200,000 + super, with a $66,100 average bonus.
All salaries + super. Source: Smaart Recruitment 2022 Australian Contact Centres Best Practice Report. For current benchmarks, see Australian Call Centre Salaries.
See What Customers Actually Experience
The data in this report is self-reported by contact centres. Since this edition was published, ACXPA has launched the Call Centre Rankings — the only national mystery shopping program that measures what customers actually experience when they call.
Real calls are made every month and scored against the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards across more than 80 metrics, covering accessibility, agent mastery and overall CX. It's the independent counterweight to self-reported data — and it's live right now.
Conclusion
There is no question there is a significant amount of diversity in the Australian contact centre industry.
One of our aims at ACXPA is to keep providing you with valuable information to help you benchmark, learn and share — so we can all prosper as an industry.
You can also view the latest Australian Call Centre Rankings — revealing wait times, quality performance, navigation times, talk times and more across a range of industry sectors, updated monthly.
Get the Full Report
This article is our summary of the key findings. The full 236-page 2022 report is produced and owned by Smaart Recruitment and is available from them at contactcentrebestpractice.com.au.
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