🏆 Australian Call Centre Rankings · Q2 2026
Australian Aged Care Providers Q2 2026 Call Centre Rankings
Almost nobody rings an aged care provider casually. The call is usually made because something has changed — a fall, a diagnosis, a family finally admitting Mum can’t manage alone — and it is often the first one of its kind the caller has ever made.
These rankings show how Australia’s aged care providers handle it, based on real mystery shopping calls from families enquiring about new in-home care services.
It is also a commercial call, whether or not it feels like one. The family on the line is choosing a provider, and they will make that choice within days.
Which puts a lot of weight on one conversation. Handle it well and you have earned a relationship that may last years. Handle it badly and the family simply rings the next provider on the list, usually without telling you why.
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 family sees.
Q2 2026 makes aged care the only sector in Australia to improve on every measure we track — and still the industry least likely to tell a caller what the service costs. 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: Provider leaderboards, monthly and quarterly trends, lifetime averages, and provider-level results for a selection of aged care providers.
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 Aged Care Benchmarking Services.
Australian Aged Care Providers · Q2 2026
Executive Summary
Aged care had the best quarter of any industry in Australia. It is the only sector of the seven we measure to improve on every single metric — Overall CX, Accessibility, Agent Mastery and all five agent competencies moved forward together.
Overall CX rose 4.3 points to 55.3%. Every call is scored against a defined standard of best practice, where 100% is a call with nothing missed — so the mid-fifties still leaves a lot undone, even in a quarter where every measure moved forward.
It clears the 54.9% all-industry average, which matters less here than the direction. A sector improving on everything at once is doing something repeatable — so the useful question is what it is still not doing at all.
The sector is also one of the easiest in the country to reach. Accessibility averaged 75.4%, second of seven sectors and 9.4 points above the industry average, with callers finding the right number on 100% of attempts against 73.6% nationally.
And the calls feel good. Impact — the final impression a call leaves — averaged 83.0%, second of seven and 12.3 points above the national figure. Agents listened properly on every single assessed call in the sector.
Then there is what the calls never do.
Against an 8.1% all-industry average. Not one agent, at any provider, told the family what they were about to do and why before doing it.
These are new-business enquiries. A family ringing about in-home care for a parent is comparing providers, usually under time pressure and usually while worried. What they need is for someone to take charge of the enquiry and move it forward.
That is the one thing the sector does not do. Agents made a clear statement of ownership — the “absolutely, let me sort that out for you” that settles a worried caller — on 3.6% of calls against 21.4% nationally.
It is not a knowledge problem. Confidence runs at 98.8% and agents listened properly on 100% of calls. The information is there and the manner is right. Nobody is asking the family what they actually came for.
Agent Mastery — everything that happens once the family gets through — averaged 52.1%, up 2.0 points but sixth of seven and just under the 54.1% national figure.
Aged care is easy to reach and hard to get an answer out of. Educate — explaining the service properly — sits last of all seven sectors at 58.7%.
The opening and the ending are thin too. Engage averaged 25.8% and Close 42.9%, both sixth of seven. Agents made a clear statement of ownership on 3.6% of calls, and finished with a check that everything had been answered on 19.4%.
Set against that, Discover rose 6.1 points to 54.4%, third of seven and above the national average. The questions are increasingly being asked. What is asked is still not being turned into a next step.
The pattern is consistent and fixable: a sector that is easy to reach, calm, warm and genuinely good at listening — and that never quite takes hold of the enquiry it has just been trusted with.
ACXPA conducts this benchmarking by posing as prospective clients enquiring about new in-home care services. We assess new-business enquiries that represent direct revenue opportunities, not existing-client servicing or complaints, and score every call against the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards.
Sector Leaders
🏆 Top Performers — Australian Aged Care Providers Q2 2026
Overall CX — Uniting AgeWell (69.0%)
Uniting AgeWell gained 13.1 points to take the sector lead, its strongest result since we began tracking aged care and 6th nationally across every sector we assess. It finishes 5.3 points clear of Uniting NSW.ACT in second.
It swept the quarter: best Overall CX, best Agent Mastery, best Accessibility, best Close, and the fastest time to a live person in the sector.
Agent Mastery — Uniting AgeWell (58.3%)
Agent Mastery assesses how effectively agents Engage (build rapport and take ownership), Discover (establish what the family actually needs), Educate (explain the service, inclusions and cost clearly), Close (finish with confidence and a clear next step), and create lasting Impact.
Uniting AgeWell rose 17.8 points, the largest Agent Mastery gain in the sector, with Educate up 22.9, Impact up 22.9, Close up 16.7 and Discover up 16.7.
One caveat sits underneath it: like every other provider in the sector, Uniting AgeWell never once signposted what would happen next, a behaviour the rest of the country manages on 8.1% of calls.
Accessibility — Uniting AgeWell & Uniting NSW.ACT (94.0%)
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).
Both organisations recorded 94.0%, their strongest results to date and 2nd and 3rd nationally, answering every assessed call with average waits of 12 and 15 seconds.
💛 Impact — Blue Care (95.8%)
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 act on. On an emotional enquiry it carries more weight than usual.
Blue Care rose 20.1 points to 95.8%, second-highest of any organisation in any sector this quarter. HammondCare is just behind on 95.1%, third nationally and a third consecutive quarterly rise.
🔍 Discover — Silverchain (63.9%)
Discover measures whether the agent establishes what the family actually needs — who the care is for, what they can manage now, what has changed — before recommending anything.
Silverchain gained 21.3 points to 63.9%, the largest Discover gain in the sector, its strongest result to date and 7th nationally. It has now risen for three consecutive quarters.
📈 Most Improved — HammondCare (50.4%)
HammondCare gained 13.9 points of Overall CX, a second consecutive quarterly rise, and cut its average wait time from 5:19 to 3:12 — still slow, but its fastest on record.
Calls answered rose 16.7 points to a best-yet 75.0%, Educate 10.4 points and Impact 6.2 points to 95.1%. A quarter ago it was the weakest performer in the sector on almost every measure.
What Improved
⭐ Key Wins — Australian Aged Care Providers Q2 2026
🔼 The only sector in Australia to improve on everything
Every one of the eight headline measures moved forward: Overall CX +4.3, Accessibility +0.3, Agent Mastery +2.0, and all five agent competencies — Engage +3.7, Discover +6.1, Educate +4.1, Close +3.2, Impact +0.7.
No other sector we measure managed that this quarter. Six of the seven went backwards on at least one competency.
🚪 One of the easiest sectors in the country to reach
Accessibility averaged 75.4%, second of seven sectors and 9.4 points above the 66.0% industry average. Callers found the right number on 100% of attempts, against 73.6% nationally, and reached the right place first time on 99.6% of calls.
Menus barely exist: 1.1 layers against a 2.1 national average, and 0:41 in the menu against 1:12. Time to reach a live person was 2:32, third of seven sectors.
Uniting AgeWell (0:12), Benetas (0:15), Bolton Clarke (0:15) and Uniting NSW.ACT (0:15) all answered in fifteen seconds or less on average.
💛 The second-best final impression in Australia
Impact averaged 83.0%, second of seven sectors and 12.3 points above the industry average, after a third consecutive quarterly rise.
Agents listened properly on 100% of assessed calls, spoke with confidence on 98.8% and brought genuine energy on 95.2%. Clarity averaged 82.5% against 66.1% nationally, empathy 78.2% against 69.0%, and control of the call 76.2% against 61.7%.
Blue Care (95.8%) and HammondCare (95.1%) placed second and third nationally, both their strongest results to date.
🔍 The questions are finally being asked
Discover rose 6.1 points to 54.4%, third of seven sectors and 4.5 points above the national average — a second consecutive quarterly improvement.
Silverchain gained 21.3 points, Uniting AgeWell 16.7 and Benetas 8.4, each their strongest result to date. Agents confirmed the family's need back to them on 47.2% of calls against 38.3% nationally.
🏅 Uniting AgeWell sweeps the quarter
Uniting AgeWell finished first in the sector on Overall CX (69.0%), Agent Mastery (58.3%), Accessibility (94.0%) and Close (52.8%), and reached a live person faster than any other provider at 0:43 — second-fastest of any organisation in the country.
It gained 13.1 points of Overall CX and 17.8 of Agent Mastery, having sat mid-table a quarter earlier.
🎯 Benetas posts six personal bests in one quarter
Benetas recorded its strongest results to date on Agent Mastery (55.7%), Educate (69.4%), Discover (55.6%), Engage (19.4%), Close (40.7%) and Impact (86.1%) — six records in a single quarter, with Educate up 17.3 points to 12th nationally.
✅ Access deductions well below the national rate
Only 11.9% of calls carried an access deduction, against a 20.1% industry average, and down 7.1 points on the quarter.
Benetas, Bolton Clarke, Uniting AgeWell and Uniting NSW.ACT each recorded 0.0%.
Where The Sector Is Losing Ground
⚠ Overall CX Challenges — Australian Aged Care Providers Q2 2026
💬 The family is never asked whether that answered it
Educate is last of all seven sectors at 58.7%, and not because agents lack the information. They gave relevant, targeted information on 77.0% of calls, above the 71.0% national figure and up 13.5 points this quarter.
What is missing is the check. Agents paused after explaining to ask whether that had landed on 2.8% of calls against 8.6% nationally — and that figure went backwards this quarter, from 4.8%.
They sought commitment or a next step on 56.3% of calls against 79.1% nationally — the widest gap of any scored behaviour in this competency. The call informs, and then simply stops.
Two supplementary measures we track alongside the scored behaviours point the same way: pricing came up on 24.2% of calls and key features on 19.0%, against roughly 63% nationally for both. Neither feeds the score.
Providers also almost never pointed callers to their own website for the detail — 1.6% of calls against 30.9% nationally.
📚 The weakest explanation of any sector in the country
Educate averaged 58.7% — last of all seven sectors and 5.0 points below the industry average, even after a 4.1-point rise.
Agents proactively sought out the information the caller needed on 56.3% of calls against 79.1% nationally, and paused to check the information had landed on 2.8% against 8.6%.
Bolton Clarke's 45.1% is the second-lowest Educate score of any organisation in the country, down 13.2 points.
🤝 The call opens without ownership
Engage averaged 25.8%, sixth of seven sectors and 7.6 points below the national average.
Agents made a clear statement of ownership on 3.6% of calls against 21.4% nationally. And on not one assessed call at any provider did an agent say what would happen next before it happened — a sector score of 0.0%.
For a caller who is often ringing about a parent for the first time, and who will ring two or three other providers the same week, that is the difference between a contact and a relationship.
👋 The call ends without an ask
Close averaged 42.9%, sixth of seven and 9.5 points below the national average.
Agents finished with a check that everything had been answered on 19.4% of calls against 44.6% nationally — fewer than one in five. Bolton Clarke and Silverchain both finished on 36.1%.
A family that has just described a parent’s situation to a stranger, and been given no ownership, no check that it landed and no next step, has nothing to act on.
⏳ The sector average describes nobody
Average wait time was 1:51, but no provider is anywhere near it. Four answer within fifteen seconds. Three make callers wait more than three minutes.
Silverchain (4:43 wait, 5:34 to reach a person) and Blue Care (4:06, 4:47) sit among the slowest organisations in the country, and Blue Care's figures are both worst-ever after adding nearly two minutes this quarter.
HammondCare improved sharply, cutting its wait from 5:19 to 3:12, and is still slower than all but a handful of the organisations we assess.
📉 Benetas and Blue Care both go backwards on access
Benetas lost 16.6 points of Accessibility to a worst-ever 58.9%, with calls answered down 13.9 to a worst-ever 69.4% and time in the menu up from 0:22 to 0:52. Its conversation improved on six measures while getting to it became markedly harder.
Blue Care recorded worst-ever results on Overall CX (52.6%, a third consecutive decline), Accessibility (66.6%), calls answered (83.3%) and wait time (4:06).
🔇 Uniting NSW.ACT loses the warmth
Uniting NSW.ACT's Impact fell 25.0 points to a worst-ever 60.4%, the steepest single-competency drop in the sector, leaving it near the bottom of every contact centre we assess nationally.
Empathy fell to 41.7% against a sector average of 78.2%, and clarity to 58.3% against 82.5%. Agent Mastery fell 10.6 points and Educate 12.5, ending its run at the top of the sector.
Recognising Call Centre Excellence for Australian Aged Care Providers
Congratulations to the Australian aged care providers delivering standout customer experiences through their contact centres in Q2 2026 — a quarter in which this sector was the only one in the country to improve on every measure we track.
These rankings are based on independent mystery shopping assessments, using real enquiries from families researching new in-home care services to evaluate how well providers handle the call that starts the relationship.
Recognition here reflects more than meeting expectations. Families making these calls are usually worried, usually comparing two or three providers in the same week, and rarely calling back. The providers at the top of this table are converting first calls their competitors are losing.
69.0% 63.7% 59.2% 42.0%Quarterly Trend
Overall CX
Aged Care Providers
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 Aged Care Providers (12-Month View)
The chart below highlights a 12-month trend across three core CX performance metrics for Australian aged care providers:
- Overall CX – A weighted composite score reflecting the full enquiry experience, combining how easily the family reached an agent with how well that conversation was handled.
- Accessibility – How quickly and easily a prospective client can reach a real person to discuss in-home care options or request a quote, measured across menu navigation, wait times, recorded messaging and whether the call is answered at all.
- Agent Mastery – The skill, clarity and confidence with which agents establish what the family needs, explain the service, its inclusions and its cost, and progress toward an arrangement, 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 aged care providers are delivering end-to-end experiences during revenue-intent enquiries such as new in-home care services.
- Accessibility
- This measures how easily and quickly a prospective client 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 abandoned enquiries. A call counts as answered if it reaches a person within ten minutes.
- Agent Mastery
- This evaluates the quality and professionalism of the conversation once contact is made. It measures how effectively agents establish the family's circumstances, explain service levels, inclusions, funding and cost, handle concerns, and guide the caller toward an arrangement – along with empathy, clarity and overall service delivery. On an enquiry driven by a change in someone's health, it is also a direct measure of whether the caller felt looked after.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that underpin these assessments.
Call Centre CX Quadrant – Australian Aged Care Providers Q2 2026
This Call Centre CX Quadrant plots how Australian aged care providers compare on Accessibility — how quickly and easily a family reaches a live agent — against Agent Mastery, the quality, clarity and confidence of the conversation that follows. The mystery shops are revenue-intent enquiries: a family researching new in-home care services.
Q2 2026 puts every provider on the easy-to-reach side of the chart, with five of the seven also above the midpoint on conversation quality. No provider sits in either of the hard-to-reach boxes.
Uniting AgeWell and Uniting NSW.ACT sit highest on access, both at 94.0%, with Uniting AgeWell also furthest right on conversation quality after a 17.8-point gain.
Bolton Clarke and Silverchain are the two near misses — both comfortably reachable, both below the midpoint on the conversation itself.
Bolton Clarke is held back by the lowest Educate score in the sector; Silverchain by the sector’s slowest wait — 4:43 to reach a person, where four of the seven answer within 15 seconds — despite recording the sector’s best Discover result.
What the chart cannot show is the commercial gap underneath it. Agent Mastery here is carried by Impact and Discover, not by Educate, where aged care ranks last of all seven sectors. Being right of the line is not the same as telling a family what the service costs.
