2020/21 Australian Contact Centre Best Practice Report
The 2020/21 Contact Centre Best Practice Report is the edition that captured the industry mid-transformation. Produced by Smaart Recruitment, it doubled in size to 100 pages and, for the first time, included industry responses to COVID-19.
As the report put it: three-year plans for introducing work from home were pushed through in 24 to 48 hours. What the industry never thought was possible turned out to be entirely possible.
This edition also marked the first time external industry experts contributed — and it was the first year ACXPA contributed, with Justin Tippett authoring the Customer Experience and Offshoring summaries.
This article is our summary of the key findings. The full 100-page report is produced and owned by Smaart Recruitment and is available from them at contactcentrebestpractice.com.au.
The pandemic edition
The first report to capture how the industry actually responded to COVID-19 — and it surprised itself.
76% responded "very effectively"
An industry that rated itself poorly at change discovered it could move overnight.
ACXPA's first year
The first edition to feature external contributors — including ACXPA on CX and offshoring.
📌 Looking for the latest insights?
This is a historical edition. For current data, see the 2025 report — the most recent edition, with over 2,000 frontline agents surveyed and the ACXPA Call Centre Rankings included.
Contributing authors and companies
A big shout-out to James Witcombe from Smaart Recruitment for producing the report — and this edition was the first to bring in external industry experts to write the section summaries.
ACXPA has contributed to every edition of this report since 2020 — and this was the first. Our CEO Justin Tippett authored both the Customer Experience and Offshoring summaries.
Key Findings from the 2020/21 Report
This was the edition that caught the industry mid-leap. Everything that had been planned for years happened in days — and the data captured both the shock and the surprise.
The COVID Response
The headline finding of this edition was how badly the industry had underestimated itself.
The industry surprised itself
Pre-pandemic, only 30% of contact centres felt they were "very effective" at responding to change. Yet 76% felt they responded "very effectively" to the pandemic — and the remaining 24% still rated themselves "somewhat effectively".
Not a single contact centre said it failed. Three-year work-from-home plans were delivered in 24–48 hours.
As the report noted, the industry "set a new standard for ourselves in terms of our ability to change, adapt and respond under pressure." It's a finding worth remembering whenever transformation is described as impossible.
Modern Ways of Working
Beneath the successful pandemic response, the report exposed some uncomfortable structural truths about how contact centres are perceived within their own organisations.
- Only 30% of contact centres felt they were "very effective" at responding to change pre-pandemic, with 56% rating themselves only "somewhat effective".
- 75% of contact centres were clear on how their roles align to the organisation's purpose.
- But only 20% of contact centres felt their value was properly understood by the wider business.
- 46% of contact centres said they needed to significantly change how they operate.
Mental Health
This edition introduced a dedicated Mental Health chapter — a first for the series, and a direct response to the pressures of the pandemic and the sudden shift to isolated, remote work.
It marked the point where employee wellbeing moved from an HR footnote to a core operational concern for contact centre leaders — a theme that has appeared in every edition since, and which by 2025 had become a full Health & Wellness chapter.
Absenteeism & Attrition
Absenteeism has been the industry's stubborn problem for as long as this report has existed — and 2020 gave us the first proper benchmark.
- 10% was the average agent absenteeism across the industry.
- At periods of peak absenteeism, 1 in 5 agents were absent — and 20% of contact centres experienced absenteeism of 30% or more at some stage during the year.
- 21% of contact centres were really struggling, with average absenteeism at 15% or above. But 28% achieved best-practice absenteeism of 6% or less.
- Retention was measured at the 3, 6 and 12-month marks, resulting in an average retention of 73% of agents at 12 months.
The pandemic paradox
During the pandemic, 76% of contact centres reported that their absenteeism levels were lower than normal — an early clue that flexibility and remote work might be part of the solution, not the problem.
On attrition, there was also a striking blind spot: 56% of contact centres believed their attrition was better than average, and only 13% believed theirs was worse. Statistically, that cannot be true — a classic case of an industry grading itself generously.
Employee Engagement
The same optimistic self-assessment showed up in engagement scores.
- 46% of contact centres thought their engagement score was above average, while only 17% thought theirs was below average.
- The report featured case studies from ANZ and the Domain Group, examining how larger organisations were maintaining engagement through the disruption.
The pattern of contact centres over-rating themselves relative to the industry — on attrition, on engagement, on effectiveness — is one of the more valuable and enduring insights of this edition. It's precisely why independent, externally-measured benchmarks matter.
Customer Experience
This section of the report was authored by ACXPA CEO Justin Tippett.
Customer experience was becoming an increasingly important battleground for companies looking to grow market share and profitability — and the contact centre sat right at the heart of it.
- 39% of contact centres were using their own "Customer Service Vision".
- Capturing customer feedback wasn't owned by the contact centre in most businesses — only 17% of contact centres performed this function, while 42% of businesses had a dedicated individual (8%) or team (34%) accountable for measuring customer satisfaction.
- Immediate post-call surveys were used by 45% of contact centres, with CSAT and NPS the dominant measures.
- 50% of contact centres were using a knowledge management platform to ensure consistent answers.
- 34% now reported on the performance of more than five KPIs to senior management.
- On quality assurance, the most common number of calls assessed per agent each month was 3–4 (37% of centres). 5% assessed no calls at all, while over 14% assessed more than 10.
Technology
This was the last edition before AI took over the conversation entirely — and the numbers show just how early it was.
The calm before the AI storm
Only 12% of contact centres were using AI or machine learning, though a further 27% planned to implement it during 2020/2021. By 2025, 64% would report AI meeting or exceeding expectations.
Call recording, IP telephony infrastructure and workforce management systems were the technologies most likely to be upgraded or replaced in the near future. As the report noted, the heightened importance of the contact centre coming out of the pandemic put even greater weight on getting those technology decisions right.
Offshoring
This section of the report was authored by ACXPA CEO Justin Tippett.
The 2020/21 report dug deeper into the drivers behind offshoring — moving customer support functions overseas — at exactly the moment the pandemic was disrupting those destinations.
- Looking ahead, 40% expected no change to their offshoring, while 20% planned to offshore less work.
- 10% of contact centres sent between 81% and 100% of their calls overseas.
- Strikingly, 75% of companies with offshore centres were not using any form of customer segmentation to determine which calls were transitioned offshore — offshoring by default rather than by design.
Salaries & Bonuses
The salary picture in 2020/21 was already showing the pressure that would define the following years.
💰 Looking for the latest salary data?
These figures are from 2020/21 and are now historical. For current benchmarks across every contact centre role, see our Australian Call Centre Salaries page — always kept up to date.
- Salaries in some roles were driven up by around 20–25% over an 18-month period, as competition for talent intensified.
- 12% of contact centres paid their top performers $10,000 or more in annual bonuses or commissions.
- 35% paid their top performers $25,000 or more.
- 25% paid their top performers over $45,000 annually in bonuses and commissions.
For context, by the following edition the average customer service salary would reach $55,800 + super — and by 2025, $63,108.
Source: Smaart Recruitment 2020/21 Contact Centre 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 — and as this edition showed, the industry tends to rate itself generously. Since it 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.
Get the Full Report
This article is our summary of the key findings. The full 100-page 2020/21 report is produced and owned by Smaart Recruitment and is available from them at contactcentrebestpractice.com.au.
The data tells you what. These tell you what to do about it.
Benchmarks are only useful if they change something. These are the two places ACXPA members go to act on them.
🎯 The Call Centre Hub
Standards, benchmarking, workforce management, coaching, complaints and training — the complete operational toolkit for running a modern call centre, in one place.
🗣️ Call Centre Roundtables
Practitioner-led sessions where contact centre leaders work through the issues in this report — attrition, absenteeism, AI, rostering — with people facing exactly the same problems.
Find the partners behind high-performing contact centres
Looking for the technology, recruitment or advisory partners to lift your own performance? Browse Australian suppliers in the ACXPA Supplier Directory.
Browse the full ACXPA Supplier Directory →
