🏆 Australian Call Centre Rankings · Q2 2026
Australian Councils Q2 2026 Call Centre Rankings
Nobody chooses their council. A resident with a question about a rates notice, a missed bin or a planning permit has exactly one number to ring — which makes that call the single clearest measure of how a council treats the people who fund it.
These rankings show how Australia's councils handle it, based on real mystery shopping calls making everyday general enquiries.
That changes what a good call is worth. There is no sale to win and no customer to lose, so the usual commercial argument does not apply.
What applies instead is cost. An enquiry that isn't resolved on the first call comes back — as a second call, a webform, a counter visit, a formal complaint, or a letter to a councillor.
Every one of those is more expensive to handle than the call that should have settled it.
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 resident sees.
One measure works differently for this sector. Because a council enquiry is rarely time-critical in the way a sales call is, our calls-answered figure allows fifteen minutes to reach a live person, rather than the ten minutes applied in sales-driven sectors.
Q2 2026 gives councils the best final impression and the fastest calls of any industry we measure — alongside the worst answer rate in the country and the lowest score in Australia on opening the conversation. 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: council leaderboards, monthly and quarterly trends, lifetime averages, and council-level results for a selection of organisations.
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 councils you nominate — is through our Council Benchmarking Services.
Australian Councils · Q2 2026
Executive Summary
Australian councils give callers the quickest, clearest and warmest conversation in the country. The problem is getting one. Impact — the final impression a call leaves — averaged 89.7%, first of the seven sectors we measure nationally and 19.0 points above the 70.7% all-industry average.
They are also the fastest. Sector Talk Time was 2:43 against a 6:23 industry average, and Total Experience Time 5:12 against 9:30 — the quickest of any sector in Australia on both measures.
Four of the five fastest end-to-end call experiences recorded nationally this quarter belong to councils.
Then there is the number that undoes it. Only 69.8% of calls were answered — last of all seven sectors, against an 83.2% industry average, and the lowest figure councils have recorded in three years of tracking.
That measure is more generous here than elsewhere. Because a council enquiry is rarely time-critical in the way a sales call is, we allow fifteen minutes to reach a person rather than the ten minutes applied in sales-driven sectors.
Roughly three callers in ten were still waiting when that quarter-hour ran out.
Last of the seven sectors measured nationally, and down from 95.2% two quarters ago. Every other sector is measured over ten minutes.
Overall CX fell 2.0 points to 55.8%, fourth of seven and marginally above the 54.9% all-industry average. Every assessed call is scored against a defined standard of best practice, so 100% describes a call where nothing was missed.
Accessibility held at 66.5%, fifth of seven and just above the 66.0% industry average. Agent Mastery slipped 1.5 points to 54.0%, fifth of seven and fractionally under the 54.1% national figure.
Underneath those averages sits the sector's defining weakness. Engage — the opening of the call — averaged 17.7% and ranks last of all seven sectors, 15.7 points below the 33.4% industry average and eight points behind the next-worst sector.
Councils hold the two lowest Engage scores of any organisation in Australia — City of Onkaparinga at 2.8% and Monash City at 5.6% — and three of the lowest five.
The behaviours behind it are stark. Agents gave the caller their name on 4.8% of calls, against a 31.6% national average. They asked what the caller was ultimately trying to achieve on 11.9%, against 21.4%.
And on not one assessed call, at any council, did an agent offer to personally own the enquiry — a sector score of 0.0% on a behaviour the rest of the country manages 8.1% of the time.
There is a reason, and it is not laziness. Nobody is buying anything on these calls, so nobody is selling — and the engagement behaviours that come free with a sales conversation simply never fire.
But the economics are different, not absent. A resident chasing a missed bin or a rates notice cannot take their business elsewhere.
A call handled without a name and without ownership does not cost a sale; it costs a second call, an escalation, a formal complaint, and eventually correspondence to a councillor.
ACXPA conducts this benchmarking by posing as residents and ratepayers making general service enquiries — rates, waste collection, planning and permits, animal registration and local services. These are not sales calls, and we score every one against the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards.
Sector Leaders
🏆 Top Performers — Australian Councils Q2 2026
Overall CX — City of Onkaparinga (65.0%)
Onkaparinga led the sector for a second consecutive quarter and in eight of the twelve quarters we have tracked Australian councils. It ranks 8th nationally across every sector we assess and finishes 2.8 points clear of City of Stirling in second.
The result rose 0.7 points, a second consecutive improvement, and sits 9.2 points above the 55.8% sector average.
💛 Impact — City of Onkaparinga (100.0%)
Impact covers how the call felt — the energy the agent brought, whether the caller was heard, whether the agent stayed in control, and whether the answer was expressed clearly enough to be acted on.
Onkaparinga scored a perfect 100.0%, the highest result recorded by any organisation in any sector this quarter, up 8.3 points and a best-ever mark. Every assessed call cleared every behaviour.
Accessibility — Monash City (87.0%)
Accessibility scores the whole journey from dialling to speaking with a person — time in the phone menu, clarity of the options, how long the caller holds, and whether the call is answered at all (full definitions here).
Monash gained 4.4 points to 87.0%, 9th nationally, and has led the sector in seven of twelve quarters. It is 20.5 points ahead of the sector average.
⚡ Fastest in the Country — Monash City
Monash recorded the fastest phone menu (0:14), the fastest time to reach a live person (0:39), the shortest call (2:02) and the fastest end-to-end experience (2:42) of any organisation in any sector this quarter — four national firsts.
It has had the country's fastest menu for eleven consecutive quarters, and callers reach a person in less than a quarter of the 3:05 national average.
Speed is not the whole picture: Monash's Agent Mastery of 47.2% is the lowest in the sector, and its Engage score of 5.6% is second-lowest in the country.
📞 Answered Every Call, Every Quarter — Brisbane City
Brisbane City answered 100% of assessed calls in all twelve quarters we have tracked — an unbroken record almost no organisation in the benchmark can match, in the sector with the country's worst answer rate.
It also leads the sector on Discover (59.3%, up 11.2 points and a third consecutive quarter in front) and on Educate (72.2%, 5th nationally), and puts callers straight through with no menu options to navigate.
📈 Most Improved — City of Stirling (62.2%)
Stirling lifted Accessibility 11.1 points to 75.5%, cutting average wait time from 2:06 to 0:36 and raising calls answered 11.1 points to 77.8%.
Overall CX rose 1.8 points to 62.2%, a second consecutive quarterly improvement, moving it to second in the sector.
What Improved
⭐ Key Wins — Australian Councils Q2 2026
💛 The best final impression in the country
Impact averaged 89.7% — first of all seven sectors nationally and 19.0 points above the 70.7% industry average. No other sector is within six points.
The underlying behaviours are exceptional: Clarity 96.8% against 66.1% nationally, Empathy 92.1% against 69.0%, and Vibrancy 98.4% against 86.0%. City of Onkaparinga scored a perfect 100.0%, City of Casey 94.4% and City of Launceston 91.7%.
⚡ Nobody resolves an enquiry faster
Talk Time averaged 2:43 against a 6:23 industry average, and Total Experience Time 5:12 against 9:30 — councils are first of seven sectors on both, by a wide margin.
City of Launceston (2:06) and City of Onkaparinga (2:35) both recorded their fastest calls on record, and Monash City equalled its own best at 2:02. Four of the five fastest end-to-end experiences nationally this quarter were council calls.
🔀 Menus that get out of the way
Councils averaged 1.0 phone menu layers against a 2.1 national average, and 0:50 in the menu against 1:12. Total time to reach a live person was 2:29, second of seven sectors and 22 seconds faster than last quarter.
Brisbane City, City of Onkaparinga and Monash City present no menu options to navigate at all — 0.0 layers, straight through to a person. Monash's 0:14 is the fastest menu of any organisation in the country, for the eleventh quarter running.
📚 Clear answers, and a habit of showing people where to look
Educate averaged 68.1%, second of seven sectors and 4.4 points above the national average. Agents proactively sought out the information the caller needed on 97.6% of calls, against 79.1% nationally.
Councils pointed callers to the right place on their website on 69.8% of calls against a 30.9% national average — more than double, and the sector's highest rate in three years. On enquiries that recur, that is the difference between one call and three.
🚀 Casey and Stirling both move sharply forward
City of Casey posted the sector's best Agent Mastery at 58.8%, up 6.7 points, with Discover up 16.6 to 48.1% and Impact up 13.8 to 94.4%. Overall CX rose 6.6 points, a second consecutive gain.
City of Stirling cut average wait time by 90 seconds to 0:36, lifted Accessibility 11.1 points and calls answered 11.1 points, and improved Overall CX for a second consecutive quarter.
✅ Access deductions at a three-year low
Only 17.5% of calls carried an access deduction — below the 20.1% national rate and the sector's lowest in all twelve quarters tracked.
Brisbane City, City of Onkaparinga, City of Stirling and Monash City each recorded 0.0%.
Where The Sector Is Losing Ground
⚠ Overall CX Challenges — Australian Councils Q2 2026
📵 Three callers in ten never reach a person
Calls answered fell 1.6 points to 69.8% — last of all seven sectors and 13.4 points below the 83.2% industry average. It is the sector's lowest figure in three years of tracking.
The comparison is harsher than it looks. Councils are measured over a fifteen-minute window rather than the ten minutes used in sales-driven sectors, and still finish last.
This is recent. Through 2025 the sector sat between 95.2% and 100%. It has fallen more than 25 points in two quarters. Five of the seven councils are now at 66.7% or below, and only Brisbane City answers everything.
🤝 The conversation never actually begins
Engage averaged 17.7% — last of all seven sectors, 15.7 points below the 33.4% national average, despite rising 3.0 points this quarter.
Councils hold the two lowest Engage scores of any organisation in Australia: City of Onkaparinga at 2.8% and Monash City at 5.6%. Brisbane City's 11.1% is fifth-lowest.
Agents gave their name on 4.8% of calls against 31.6% nationally — roughly one call in twenty. And on not one call at any council did an agent offer to personally own the enquiry, a sector score of 0.0%.
These are two-second behaviours. For a resident who has just waited on hold, they are also the whole difference between being handled and being helped.
🔍 The questions stopped being asked
Discover averaged 43.4%, fifth of seven and 6.5 points below the national average, even after a 2.4-point rise.
Confirming the caller's need back to them happened on 27.0% of calls against 38.3% nationally — down from 69.8% a year ago. Agents checked the caller had understood the answer on 0.0% of calls, against 8.6% nationally.
Monash City (33.3%) recorded a worst-ever result and a fifth consecutive quarterly decline. City of Stirling (40.7%) and City of Launceston (33.3%) also posted worst-ever scores.
👋 The close fell apart
Close dropped 8.2 points to 48.1%, fifth of seven and 4.3 points below the national average — the sector's largest single-competency fall this quarter.
Brisbane City fell 33.4 points to 33.3%, a worst-ever result and the steepest drop recorded by any council on any measure this quarter. City of Onkaparinga shed 11.1 points and Frankston City 18.6.
Agents thanked the caller for their time on 15.9% of calls against 29.6% nationally, and asked whether everything had been answered on 34.9% against 44.6%. On a general enquiry, that last question is what stops the caller ringing back tomorrow.
📉 City of Launceston records the worst council quarter we have measured
Launceston fell 19.9 points of Overall CX to 40.1%, a worst-ever result and the largest single-quarter decline by any council in three years.
Accessibility dropped 18.1 points to 40.6%, Agent Mastery 11.2 points to a worst-ever 49.4%, Educate 15.3 points and Discover to a worst-ever 33.3%.
Calls answered fell 22.3 points to 44.4% — fewer than half its calls reached a person inside fifteen minutes. It also carried the sector's highest quality-deduction rate at 16.7%.
⏳ City of Casey is still the hardest council in the country to reach
Casey's Accessibility of 26.3% ranks 46th of the organisations we assess nationally. Average wait time was 4:33 — the slowest in the sector for eleven consecutive quarters — and total time to reach a person 6:37, against a sector average of 2:29.
Its phone menu ran to a worst-ever 2:03 across 2.9 layers, in a sector where three councils have no menu at all.
The irony is sharp: once a caller gets through, Casey has the best agents in the sector this quarter, with Agent Mastery of 58.8%. Almost all of its lost ground is in front of the conversation, not in it.
🎧 Quality deductions moved the wrong way
4.0% of calls carried a quality deduction, against a 1.8% national average — the sector's highest rate in six quarters.
City of Launceston (16.7%) and Frankston City (11.1%) accounted for all of it; the other five councils recorded none.
Recognising Call Centre Excellence for Australian Councils
Congratulations to the Australian councils delivering standout customer experiences through their contact centres in Q2 2026 — a quarter in which this sector recorded the best final impression of any industry we measure nationally.
These rankings are based on independent mystery shopping assessments, using real general enquiries — rates, waste, permits and local services — to evaluate how well councils handle the residents and ratepayers who call them.
Recognition here reflects more than meeting expectations. A resident cannot take their enquiry to a competitor, which makes the quality of the call a matter of public trust rather than market share.
The councils at the top of this table are resolving in one call what others turn into a complaint.
65.0% 62.2% 61.3% 40.1%Quarterly Trend
Overall CX
Australian Councils
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.
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 – Australian Councils (12-Month View)
The chart below highlights a 12-month trend across three core CX performance metrics for Australian councils:
- Overall CX – A weighted composite score reflecting the full enquiry experience, combining how easily the resident reached an agent with how well that conversation was handled.
- Accessibility – How quickly and easily a resident can reach a real person to raise a general enquiry, measured across menu navigation, wait times, recorded messaging and whether the call is answered at all. For councils, a call counts as answered if it reaches a person within fifteen minutes.
- Agent Mastery – The skill, clarity and confidence with which agents establish what the caller needs, explain the process, and resolve or correctly route the enquiry, measured across five core competencies.
- 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 councils are delivering end-to-end experiences on everyday general enquiries such as rates, waste collection, permits and local services.
- Accessibility
- This measures how easily and quickly a resident can reach a real person. It includes navigating phone menus, clarity of options, queue times, and whether callers successfully reach an agent. Higher scores indicate faster access, lower friction and fewer residents abandoning the phone for a webform, a counter visit or a complaint. Because council enquiries are not time-critical purchases, a call is counted as answered if it reaches a person within fifteen minutes, rather than the ten-minute threshold applied in sales-driven sectors.
- Agent Mastery
- This evaluates the quality and professionalism of the conversation once contact is made. It measures how effectively agents establish what the caller actually needs, explain the relevant process, timeframes and obligations, and either resolve the enquiry or route it correctly – along with empathy, clarity and overall service delivery. On general enquiries it is the closest available proxy for first-contact resolution, and for whether the resident will need to call again.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that underpin these assessments.
Call Centre CX Quadrant – Australian Councils Q2 2026
This Call Centre CX Quadrant plots how Australian councils compare on Accessibility — how quickly and easily a resident reaches a live agent — against Agent Mastery, the quality, clarity and confidence of the conversation that follows.
The mystery shops are general service enquiries: rates, waste, permits and local services, not sales calls.
Q2 2026 spreads councils across all four quadrants — one of only two sectors we assess to do so this quarter. Four councils sit in the top-right box, above the midpoint on both measures, and the remaining three each occupy a different corner.
City of Onkaparinga is the strongest overall placement, with Monash City highest on access but the only council below the midpoint on conversation quality — the fastest council in the country, and one of the least engaging.
City of Casey is the mirror image, sitting alone on the hard-to-reach side with the sector's best Agent Mastery. Its problem is entirely in front of the conversation. City of Launceston is below the line on both after the steepest quarterly fall any council has recorded.
No council reaches the shaded best-practice box in the top-right corner, which requires strong scores on both axes at once. The sector's ceiling is Agent Mastery: the highest score this quarter is 58.8%, and no council cleared 60%. In late 2023, six of the seven did.
