🏆 Australian Call Centre Rankings · Q2 2026
Australian Energy Retailers Q2 2026 Call Centre Rankings
Energy is one of the few markets where a customer can change provider in a single phone call — and that call is almost always the moment the decision is won or lost.
These rankings show how well Australia's energy retailers handle it, based on real mystery shopping calls made as households and small businesses comparing plans, chasing a better deal, or setting up a new connection.
Every call is independently assessed against 48+ CX metrics aligned to the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards, covering both how easily the caller reached a person and how well that conversation was handled. Nobody is told when we are calling, so what you see here is what a customer sees.
The stakes are straightforward. An unanswered call, a long queue or a confusing quote is not a service problem in this market — it is an acquisition problem.
The enquiry was already qualified, the customer had already chosen to pick up the phone, and the marketing spend that got them there has already been paid. Every one of those calls that ends badly is a competitor's new account.
In Q2 2026 the sector reversed three consecutive quarters of decline, driven almost entirely by faster, easier access — while the quality of the conversation once customers got through moved in the opposite direction. The full picture is below.
What you're looking at. This is the public snapshot — the headline sector results, and a fraction of what each assessed call generates across 48+ individual metrics. ACXPA Members see considerably more: retailer leaderboards, monthly and quarterly trends, lifetime averages, and provider-level results for a selection of retailers.
But membership is still a view of the sector. It is not a view of you, and it does not open up the full dataset.
The only way to see your own contact centre's complete results — and to benchmark against the specific competitors you nominate — is through our Energy Benchmarking Services.
Australian Energy Retailers · Q2 2026
Executive Summary
After three consecutive quarters of decline, Australia's energy retailers finally moved forward. Overall CX averaged 59.4% in Q2 2026 — a gain of 4.0 percentage points and the sector's strongest result since Q2 2025.
Overall CX is the headline number: a weighted blend of how easily a customer reaches an agent, and how well that agent handles the conversation. Every assessed call is scored against a defined standard of best practice, so 100% describes a call where nothing was missed.
At 59.4%, energy retailers are still leaving roughly two of every five available points on the table — but they are moving in the right direction for the first time in a year.
The sector now ranks 2nd of the seven sectors we measure nationally, 4.5 points clear of the 54.9% all-industry average.
Up 4.0 points on Q1 2026, ending three quarters of decline — and the sector's best result in a year.
Almost all of that lift came from one retailer. Origin Energy rebounded 24.8 percentage points to 49.6%, the largest single-quarter gain any energy retailer has recorded since we began tracking the sector.
It is a real recovery, but it is a recovery. Origin fell to 24.8% in Q1 2026, the lowest score in the sector's history, and Q2 returns it to roughly where it sat a year earlier rather than breaking new ground. It still finishes last in the sector.
Set Origin aside and the remaining six retailers averaged a gain of just half a point. The sector has stopped falling. It has not yet started climbing.
Where energy retailers are unambiguously strong is access. Accessibility — how quickly and easily a customer reaches a real person — averaged 68.5%, up 4.8 points and the best result since Q4 2024.
Average wait time fell from 1:57 to 1:16, comfortably inside the 1:52 industry average, and 94.4% of calls were answered within ten minutes against 83.2% nationally.
Yet the sector still ranks only 4th of seven on Accessibility, because the gap between its best and its worst is enormous — 44 points separate the leader from the retailer at the bottom.
At the top of that gap sits Engie (94.7%), which posted the highest Accessibility score recorded by any company in any sector this quarter.
What that means in practice: a caller spends around 44 seconds in the phone menu, waits three seconds on hold, and is talking to a person 47 seconds after dialling — with every call answered. There is very little room left above it.
Agent Mastery measures the other half of the call — what happens once the customer is connected. It scores how well agents Engage, Discover the customer's needs, Educate them on the options, Close with confidence and leave a lasting Impact, the five competencies of the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards.
The sector improved for a second consecutive quarter to 55.5%, and the top of the table has never been tighter.
Alinta (62.5%) took the lead for only the second time in twelve quarters, finishing 0.3 points ahead of Engie (62.2%) and 0.7 ahead of Energy Australia (61.8%) — the narrowest contest the metric has produced. All three sit inside the national top ten.
Two problems sit underneath the headline, and both belong to the conversation rather than the queue. Close — controlling the end of the call, confirming next steps and thanking the customer — has now declined for four consecutive quarters to 55.3%, with Engie shedding 20.4 points and Red Energy 11.5.
Calls are also getting longer. Sector Talk Time rose to 7:48 against a 6:23 industry average, and Engie recorded the longest Talk Time (13:45) and Total Experience Time (14:33) ever measured for an energy retailer.
Taken together, the quarter describes a sector that has become very good at getting customers to a person, and is becoming slower and less decisive once they arrive.
For retailers competing on acquisition, that is where the value now sits: reaching the agent is no longer the hard part of the call.
Sector Leaders
🏆 Top Performers — Energy Retailers Q2 2026
Overall CX — Engie (71.9%)
Engie has now led the sector for six consecutive quarters, and in nine of the twelve quarters we have tracked Australian energy retailers. No competitor comes close to that consistency.
Its 71.9% ranks 4th nationally across every sector we assess, and puts it 7.7 points ahead of the next energy retailer.
The score is 1.1 points below its Q1 result of 73.0% — an easing rather than a turn, and one that reflects a weaker close to its calls rather than any loss of ground on access.
Accessibility — Engie (94.7%)
Accessibility scores the whole journey from dialling to speaking with a person — time spent in the phone menu, how clearly the options are presented, how long the customer holds, and whether the call is answered at all (full definitions here).
Engie scored 94.7%, up from 94.1%, and has led the sector for six consecutive quarters. It is also the highest Accessibility result recorded nationally this quarter by any company in any sector.
Behind that number is a caller who spends 44 seconds in the menu, three seconds on hold, and reaches a live agent 47 seconds after dialling — with no calls going unanswered. This is close to the ceiling of what the metric can measure.
Agent Mastery — Alinta (62.5%)
Agent Mastery assesses how effectively agents Engage (build rapport and take ownership), Discover (identify what the customer actually needs), Educate (explain plans and pricing clearly), Close (finish with confidence and a clear next step), and create lasting Impact through empathy and communication quality.
Alinta gained 2.3 points to 62.5% and took the lead for only the second time in twelve quarters, displacing Energy Australia after three quarters at the top.
The margin was the narrowest on record — 0.3 points over Engie (62.2%) and 0.7 over Energy Australia (61.8%), with all three inside the national top ten.
For Alinta the win is not an isolated quarter. It also posted its best-ever Overall CX and its best-ever Accessibility score, capping an eighteen-month climb.
⏱ Fastest Wait Time — Engie (0:03)
Three seconds is, for practical purposes, no hold at all — the customer finishes the menu and someone is there.
Engie matched its own sector record and extended its run of fastest-or-equal-fastest wait times to seven consecutive quarters. No company in any sector answered faster in Q2 2026.
Its Total Time to Reach a Live Person of 0:47 is the fastest ever measured for an energy retailer, and its seventh consecutive quarter leading that measure.
Against a sector average of 1:16 and an industry average of 1:52, Engie has effectively removed the queue from the experience.
What Improved
⭐ Key Wins — Energy Retailers Q2 2026
The slide has stopped — and access led the recovery
Overall CX rose 4.0 percentage points to 59.4%, ending the run of decline that began in Q3 2025 and delivering the sector's best result since Q2 2025.
The improvement was concentrated in access rather than conversation quality. Accessibility gained 4.8 points to 68.5%, average wait time fell 41 seconds to 1:16, and calls answered within ten minutes recovered 5.8 points to 94.4%.
Energy now ranks 2nd of seven sectors nationally on Overall CX and 3rd on Agent Mastery, behind only Car Insurance and Internet — a strong position for an industry with high enquiry volumes and low switching friction.
📞 Four retailers answered every single call
AGL, Energy Australia, Engie and Momentum all recorded 100% Calls Answered within ten minutes. For Momentum it is a first, and a sharp turnaround — 12.2 points up from the record low of 87.8% it set in Q1.
Engie has now cleared 100% for seven consecutive quarters and AGL for eleven, which is the kind of result that comes from resourcing decisions rather than luck.
At 94.4% the sector ranks equal 2nd of seven nationally alongside Internet, behind only Car Insurance (95.2%), and sits 11.2 points above the 83.2% industry average.
⬆ Alinta's long climb pays off on three fronts
Alinta posted its highest Overall CX since tracking began at 63.8%, a third consecutive quarterly improvement, alongside a best-ever Accessibility score of 66.8%.
That Accessibility result caps five consecutive increases — 39.1% → 41.7% → 46.4% → 60.2% → 63.4% → 66.8%, a gain of 27.7 points over eighteen months. This is what sustained, deliberate improvement looks like in the data, as distinct from a single good quarter.
Alinta also claimed the Agent Mastery lead at 62.5% and held the sector's shortest Total Experience Time at 7:30 for a fourth consecutive quarter — proof that a fast call and a good call are not mutually exclusive.
📈 Origin records the largest quarterly gain in sector history
Origin improved Overall CX by 24.8 percentage points to 49.6%, surpassing Alinta's 19.0 point rise in Q4 2024 as the biggest single-quarter movement we have recorded in the sector.
Accessibility rose 14.2 points to 59.2%, Agent Mastery 10.3 points to 45.5%, and average wait time more than halved from 6:45 to 2:59. The standout was Educate, up 17.9 points to 70.0% and 11th nationally — agents explaining plans and pricing far more clearly than they did in Q1.
The context matters: this is a recovery from an abnormal low rather than a new high-water mark, and Origin still finishes last in the sector. But the direction is unambiguous.
⚡ Momentum cuts the wait by 42% and fixes its weakest competency
Momentum reduced average wait time from 2:59 to 1:44 and total time to reach a live person from 3:54 to 2:32, lifting Accessibility 12.6 points to 67.1%.
It also recorded its best-ever Engage result at 34.7%, a second consecutive quarter of improvement in the competency energy retailers have historically found hardest.
Getting the opening of a call right is disproportionately valuable in a switching market: it is where the customer decides whether this is a conversation worth having.
🌟 Red Energy still explains things better than almost anyone
Red Energy led the Educate competency for a third consecutive quarter at 81.1%, ranking 2nd nationally across all sectors — consistent clarity in explaining products, pricing and process, which is exactly what a customer comparing plans needs.
Alinta led Impact at 80.6%, and Energy Australia retained its Engage leadership at 65.3%, a competency it has led in all twelve quarters since tracking began.
Where The Sector Is Losing Ground
⚠ Overall CX Challenges — Energy Retailers Q2 2026
📉 Energy retailers have forgotten how to finish a call
The Close competency covers the end of the call — a final check that everything is answered, a clear next step, and a genuine thank you. It has now declined for a fourth consecutive quarter to 55.3%, down from a peak of 67.2% in Q2 2025.
The falls are concentrated among the sector's best performers. Engie dropped 20.4 points to 44.4% and Red Energy 11.5 points to 43.3%, both now in the bottom third nationally. Momentum recorded its worst-ever result at 55.6%.
This matters more in energy than in most sectors, because the close is where an enquiry about a better deal either becomes a switch or does not. Retailers are winning the conversation and then letting it end without a decision.
⏳ Conversations are the longest we have ever measured
Sector Talk Time rose from 7:02 to 7:48 against a 6:23 industry average, and Total Experience Time reached 10:25 versus 9:30 nationally.
Engie recorded a Talk Time of 13:45 and a Total Experience Time of 14:33 — the longest ever measured for an energy retailer, the second-longest and fourth-longest of any company in any sector this quarter, and a sixth consecutive quarter with the sector's longest calls.
Red Energy also set worst-ever marks on both, at 10:17 and 12:57.
Read alongside the falling Close scores, the pattern is consistent: longer calls that finish less decisively. The sector's fastest access is increasingly attached to its slowest conversations.
🔻 Origin's record rebound still leaves it last
Origin's 24.8 point gain restored ground lost in Q1 rather than establishing new strength, and the underlying position remains difficult. It sits in the bottom quarter nationally on Overall CX and fifth-last on Agent Mastery.
It is still the slowest energy retailer on both average wait time (2:59) and total time to reach a live person (4:00) — positions it has held for five consecutive quarters.
Its Engage score fell a further 2.2 points to 26.1%, the lowest in the sector, which means the recovery has not yet reached the opening moments of the call.
🗣 Nobody is asking enough questions
Discover measures whether the agent establishes what the customer actually needs before recommending anything. The sector averaged 43.4% against an industry average of 49.9% — and that is after a 3.0 point quarterly gain.
Momentum (33.3%) recorded its worst-ever result and ranks second-last nationally; Energy Australia (40.7%) also posted a worst-ever score, down 3.7 points.
In a market where usage patterns, household size and solar all change which plan is right, an agent who does not ask cannot recommend well — and the customer is left to work it out alone.
📞 Alinta and Red Energy are going backwards on answering calls
While four retailers answered every call, Alinta (83.3%) recorded the sector's lowest Calls Answered Percentage. Its last two quarters are the two weakest on its record — 76.7% in Q1 2026 and 83.3% in Q2 — and before Q4 2025 it had never fallen below 88.9%.
Red Energy (88.9%) declined 5.5 points to its lowest result since Q3 2024. Roughly one call in six to Alinta, and one in nine to Red Energy, still goes unanswered within ten minutes.
Both retailers score well once the customer is connected, which makes the abandoned calls an expensive way to lose an enquiry that was already going their way.
📊 AGL's problem is the menu, not the queue
AGL recorded the sector's lowest Overall CX at 49.3% and its lowest Accessibility at 50.4%, both in the bottom quarter nationally.
The cause is specific. At 2:06, AGL has the sector's longest Total Time Spent in Menu and one of the slowest menu journeys of any company we assess, in any sector. Its average wait time also rose 41% to 0:45.
Notably, AGL answered 100% of calls for an eleventh consecutive quarter — customers do get through, but only after the longest IVR journey in the sector.
That is a fixable problem, and AGL is already moving: Overall CX improved for a second consecutive quarter, with Agent Mastery up 5.3 points and Close up 20.4.
Recognising Call Centre Excellence in the Energy Sector
Congratulations to the top-performing energy retailers delivering exceptional customer experiences in Q2 2026. These rankings are based on independent mystery shopping assessments, using real customer enquiries to evaluate how effectively providers support Australians looking to switch plans or connect new energy services.
Recognition in these rankings highlights retailers who excel at both customer access and conversation quality — turning first contact into confident conversions. In a competitive acquisition environment, every smooth interaction represents market share gained, while friction creates churn and wasted marketing investment.
71.9% 64.2% 63.8% 49.3%Quarterly Trend
Overall CX
Energy Retail Sector
The Overall CX Score is the headline metric in our benchmarking program — a single weighted score covering how easily a customer reaches a contact centre, and how well the conversation goes once they do.
Accessibility
Agent Mastery
The two are weighted deliberately. Getting through matters, but what happens next matters more — so the agent’s handling of the conversation carries the greater share of the score.
Penalties are applied where a call breaks down badly, so a serious failure can’t be averaged away by an otherwise reasonable interaction. The score reflects what the customer actually experienced.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that power these assessments.
Key Metrics Trend – Energy Retailers (12-Month View)
The chart below highlights a 12-month trend across three core CX performance metrics for Australian energy retailers:
- Overall CX – A weighted composite score reflecting the end-to-end customer experience, factoring in accessibility, agent quality, and call handling efficiency.
- Accessibility – The ease of reaching a human agent measured across over 40 metrics, including ease of menu navigation, wait times, recorded messaging lengths and more.
- Agent Mastery – The quality and effectiveness of agent conversations delivered through soft skills and behaviours, measured across five core competencies and over 18 individual metrics.
- Overall CX
- This is the headline metric – representing the total customer experience across every stage of the call journey. It's calculated using a weighted combination of the Accessibility and Agent Mastery scores, providing a holistic view of how well energy retailers are delivering end-to-end service during key sales interactions.
- Accessibility
- This measures how easily and quickly prospective customers can reach a real person. It includes navigating phone menus, clarity of options, queue times, and whether callers successfully speak with a representative. Higher scores reflect smoother, more customer-friendly access experiences.
- Agent Mastery
- This evaluates the quality and professionalism of frontline service. It includes how well retail energy call centre agents greet, listen, explain plan options, handle moving enquiries, and support switching decisions – along with empathy, clarity, and overall service delivery. It's a direct measure of agent capability during high-value conversations.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that power these assessments.
