Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards
At ACXPA, we are proud to lead the industry with the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards, a proven framework designed to deliver exceptional customer experiences and measurable business outcomes.
These standards form the core of what every contact centre needs to achieve consistent, high-quality performance.
Built on decades of industry insight and expertise, these standards provide a universal foundation that blends both technical capabilities and soft skills—key to delivering service excellence.
We understand that each contact centre is unique—and it is.
Every business has its own specific goals, targets, and processes. However, the fundamentals of quality customer interactions remain the same, regardless of your industry or market.
Our five core competencies and 18 key soft skills and behaviours provide the universal foundation for high-performance contact centres, while also offering the flexibility to tailor your quality program to meet your organisation’s specific needs.
This ensures that your customer interactions are aligned with both your brand and business objectives.
These standards also serve as the backbone of our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service and the Australian Call Centre Rankings, used to assess and benchmark the quality of contact centres across Australia.
By following these standards, you position your organisation to not only improve internal performance but also perform strongly in national rankings.
Refined over decades and proven to drive improvements in NPS, CSAT, sales conversions, efficiency, and more, the adoption of these standards helps build consistency and quality across customer interactions, improving both satisfaction and business outcomes.
Whether you’re seeking to optimise customer interactions, improve your team’s skills, or benchmark your performance against industry leaders, these standards provide the foundation for success—empowering your contact centre to excel in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
The Cost of Poor Quality in a Call Centre
The impact of poor customer service in a contact centre cannot be overstated (view current stats).
For many businesses, the contact centre is the primary or only touchpoint customers have with the brand, making every interaction critical.
When quality standards are lacking, the consequences ripple across your business:
• Lost Revenue: A poor interaction can result in lost sales or drive existing customers to leave.
• Increased Costs: Inefficient handling of customer queries means longer call times and higher operating costs.
• Reduced Efficiency: Customers may need to call back due to unresolved issues, increasing call volumes and agent workloads.
• Brand Damage: Negative experiences lead to dissatisfied customers who are likely to share their frustration, impacting your reputation and reducing customer acquisition.
• Employee Burnout: A lack of clear quality standards can lead to frustration and disengagement among your frontline staff.
By ensuring your contact centre operates with well-defined quality standards, you can mitigate these risks.
Strong standards empower your employees, improve customer satisfaction, and support your business goals.
High-quality interactions don’t just benefit the customer—they improve efficiency, strengthen your brand, and drive sustainable business growth.
The Difference between Quality and Compliance
Before diving deeper into the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards, it’s important to clarify the distinction between quality and compliance—two concepts that are often confused but serve very different purposes in a contact centre.
Compliance standards are definitive measures with a clear “yes” or “no” outcome.
These standards ensure that specific actions are performed consistently, regardless of an agent’s experience or skill level.
They are often tied to legal or operational requirements and must be followed in every interaction.
Examples of compliance standards include:
• Verifying a customer’s identity.
• Providing a reference number.
• Pausing a recording during a credit card payment.
Compliance ensures consistency and minimises risk but doesn’t measure the quality of the customer interaction.
Quality standards focus on how interactions are handled, allowing for variability in performance while driving the desired customer experience.
These standards are more subjective and are typically assessed on a sliding scale of performance.
Examples of quality standards include:
• Demonstrating active listening throughout the conversation.
• Expressing confidence in the product or service.
• Showing empathy and acknowledging the customer’s concerns.
Unlike compliance, quality standards aim to improve customer engagement, foster trust, and deliver memorable experiences.
They form the foundation of what “good service” looks and sounds like for your business, driving outcomes like improved NPS, CSAT, and sales conversions.
Why Quality Standards Really Matter
Together, compliance and quality play essential roles, but it’s the quality standards that define the unique customer experience your business delivers.
These standards form the backbone of coaching, training, and performance improvement, ensuring that every interaction aligns with your brand’s goals.
The Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards are designed to assess and enhance these critical behaviours, and their effectiveness is reflected in the Agent Mastery metric featured in the Australian Call Centre Rankings and via our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking service.
By focusing on these standards, your business can achieve measurable improvements in customer satisfaction and operational outcomes.
What does good quality sound like for your business?
Defining and documenting what good quality sounds like is the cornerstone of any successful contact centre.
Without clear guidelines, agents are left guessing, which leads to inconsistent customer experiences.
Quality standards ensure everyone in your contact centre—from frontline employees to team leaders—is aligned on what great service looks and sounds like.
By establishing clear Contact Centre Quality Standards, you create a foundation for:
• Driving consistent customer experiences.
• Empowering frontline employees with clear expectations.
• Supporting team leaders in coaching and developing their teams.
• Aligning training programs to measurable quality outcomes.
Key Considerations When Defining Quality
When developing your contact centre quality standards, ask yourself:
• What does a good interaction look and sound like?
• How accurate or polished should an agent’s response be?
• What separates good performance from poor?
• What is unacceptable for your brand?
• Are there regulatory or compliance requirements that must be followed?
Without documented standards, it’s difficult to ensure every employee delivers the quality your brand promises.
Tailoring Quality to Your Brand
Every business has unique goals, but the fundamentals of quality remain the same.
For example, a luxury brand may emphasise formal, professional language, while a trendy, casual brand may prioritise a relaxed and conversational tone.
Similarly, some sectors, like banking, may require strict ID checks, while others don’t.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards provide the core principles proven to improve customer interactions across any industry.
From these fundamentals, you can layer on requirements specific to your brand, ensuring your team knows exactly what great service sounds like.
By adopting these standards, you can build a strong, customer-focused foundation that drives measurable improvements in satisfaction, efficiency, and brand loyalty.
Does your Contact Centre have a Quality Bible?
A well-documented Quality Bible is essential for any contact centre striving to deliver consistent, high-quality service.
It serves as the single source of truth, outlining the specific behaviours and standards required to meet your organisation’s quality goals.
This comprehensive guide ensures everyone in your team—frontline agents, team leaders, and quality assurance staff—knows exactly what is expected of them and how to achieve it.
By removing ambiguity, it empowers your employees to succeed and delivers measurable improvements in customer experience and operational outcomes.
What Does a Quality Bible Include?
A robust Quality Bible typically contains:
• Descriptions of Standards: Detailed explanations of the five core competencies and their associated behaviours.
• Practical Examples: Written scenarios or audio recordings to illustrate how each standard applies in real interactions.
• Scoring Criteria: Clear guidelines on how to evaluate performance, including:
- What’s required to achieve the top score.
- What constitutes a failure to meet the standard.
- How scores are applied consistently across all interactions.
For scoring, you can adopt a binary model of either “Yes, they did it” or “No, they didn’t.” This is simple and effective for assessing compliance.
Alternatively, you could implement a scaled model with ratings such as Partially, Met Standard, and Exceeded Standard.
However, a scaled approach requires clear definitions to differentiate between the levels and ensure consistent application across all evaluations.
Why Is It Important?
The Quality Bible helps align everyone in your contact centre with your organisation’s goals, providing clarity and structure to:
• Frontline Employees: Know exactly how to meet expectations.
• Team Leaders: Deliver targeted coaching based on defined standards.
• Quality Assurance Teams: Evaluate calls consistently and fairly.
By documenting your standards in a structured and accessible way, you give your team the tools to succeed and ensure your customers receive the best possible experience.
The key purpose of documenting a performance standard is to ensure your frontline employees know what is expected from them, your Team Leaders know how they should be coaching and your Quality Assurance team/person knows exactly how to consistently score.
This is an example using the ‘Intent’ behaviour, one of the four behaviours of the Engage competency:
Description
A strong, definitive statement of intent, purpose and/or ownership to trigger relief and confidence in the customer.
It should convey a clear sense in the mind of the customer that “you’ve got this” and that they’ve “got one of the good ones” in terms of the type of agent they hoped to deal with.
The statement should contain strong, proactive language such as ‘absolutely’, ‘definitely’ or ‘certainly’ or any other action-oriented and equally strong phrases.
Examples include “I can certainly have a look at that for you”, “Absolutely, let me see what I can do” or “Let me get some details so I can help you with that”.
Negative or colloquial auto-responses such as ‘not a problem’ or ‘no worries’ need to be avoided as they don’t promote a premium level of service.
How to Achieve it
- Must be a definitive phrase or statement (not single words) that conveys ownership and/or intent.
- Needs to include positive, proactive language.
- Be delivered with energy in a clear and natural manner and must include a pause after delivery to resonate.
Standard Not Met
- Single-word responses (e.g. “sure” or “ok”) rather than a cut-through statement of intent.
- Negative, casual or colloquial language or phrases.
- Rushed or unclear responses or no attempt at all.
About the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards
The Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards provide a structured, proven framework for delivering high-quality customer interactions, with a strong emphasis on soft skills that are crucial to driving exceptional customer service.
These standards serve as the foundation of any successful contact centre, aligning agent behaviours—particularly those related to communication, empathy, and problem-solving—with business goals to achieve outstanding customer experiences and measurable outcomes.
Developed and refined over 30 years, the standards consist of five core competencies and 18 specific soft skills and behaviours that are universally applicable across industries.
These competencies are designed not only to improve operational efficiency but also to strengthen soft skills such as active listening, emotional intelligence, and effective communication. These are key to enhancing customer satisfaction (CSAT), improving First Contact Resolution (FCR), and boosting sales conversions.
While the standards offer a strong foundation, they can be tailored to suit your organisation’s unique requirements, ensuring flexibility to incorporate specific goals, targets, and brand-specific behaviours that align with your values.
Whether you operate in banking, retail, government, or any other sector, these standards will elevate your contact centre’s performance by ensuring a balanced focus on both technical efficiency and the soft skills that make customer interactions truly meaningful.
Backed by Industry Leadership and Insights
The standards are the same framework used to evaluate contact centres in the Australian Call Centre Rankings, making them a benchmark for excellence in the industry.
With their proven effectiveness, adopting these standards will not only enhance your contact centre’s quality but also position your business as a leader in delivering outstanding customer service.
By leveraging these standards, your contact centre will benefit from:
• A clear roadmap for improving agent performance.
• Consistency in service delivery across your teams.
• Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Enhanced efficiency and business outcomes.
Whether you’re building a new quality framework or refining an existing one, the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards are your pathway to delivering world-class customer experiences.
The Five Core Quality Competencies
The Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards are built on five core competencies that serve as the foundation for exceptional customer interactions.
Each competency is designed to drive measurable improvements in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and business outcomes by blending technical proficiency with key soft skills.
These competencies are universally applicable and provide a roadmap for delivering consistent, high-quality service across all industries.
Focusing on these competencies ensures your team excels in both efficiency and customer satisfaction, creating a comprehensive approach to service excellence.
Here’s a breakdown of the five core competencies and how they impact customer interactions:
Measured Behaviours:
- Welcome – Deliver a vibrant, natural introduction that sets a positive tone.
- Intent – Use definitive statements to establish confidence and ownership.
- Name – Seek and use the customer’s name to personalise the interaction.
- Bridge – Clearly outline how you’ll assist, building customer confidence.
Measured Behaviours:
- Converse – Encourage customers to share their needs and objectives.
- Listen – Demonstrate active listening to show the customer they’re heard.
- Confirm – Identify and validate key needs to ensure alignment and clarity.
Measured Behaviours:
- Inform – Present relevant information tailored to customer needs.
- Checks -Regularly check for understanding and suitability.
- Seek – Confirm the customer’s readiness to proceed or achieve resolution.
- Confidence – Communicate product or service details clearly and confidently.
Measured Behaviours:
- Check – Proactively initiate the close of the call with a strong check for any final questions they may have.
- Gratitude – Show gratitude by expressing appreciation for their time, call, patience and/or consideration or your product or service.
- Farewell – A warm and simple farewell with thanks or thankyou that triggers the customer to hang-up.
Measured Behaviours:
- Vibrancy – A consistently vibrant and natural tone to show warmth, interest, & care to avoid monotone delivery.
- Empathy – Acknowledgement & validation of customer desires, needs, concerns or objections.
- Control – Proactive control of the call with efficient call management and transparency.
- Delivery – Use clear language and appropriate pacing to enhance understanding.
Fast-Track Your Contact Centre’s Quality Performance
Implementing the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards can drive significant improvements in your contact centre’s performance.
Whether you’re looking to enhance your customer experience, boost operational efficiency, or improve key metrics like NPS, CSAT, and sales conversions, these standards provide a proven framework to fast-track your results.
Here are six ways you can get started:
1. Test yourself against our Standards
Assess your contact centre’s performance using one of our expert benchmarking and assessment services:
• Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service
Conduct Mystery Shopping calls assessed against the five core competencies and 18 behaviours. Compare your results to any five competitors and gain actionable insights.
• Customer Service Benchmarking Service
Customise scenarios or submit recorded calls for assessment, enabling us to also check for your compliance requirements. Perfect for gaining in-depth insights tailored to your specific needs.
• Call Quality Assessment Service
Submit your own recorded calls for evaluation. This service uses the same proven framework to help you refine internal quality processes.
2. Train Your Frontline Employees
Equip your employees with the skills they need to consistently deliver high-quality interactions.
Our training courses focus on teaching the 18 call-handling behaviours measured by the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards.
Whether your team is in sales or customer service, these courses are designed to embed the core competencies that drive exceptional customer experiences and measurable outcomes.
For businesses participating in the Australian Call Centre Rankings, completing this training is proven to improve your Agent Mastery scores, helping your contact centre climb the rankings and deliver superior results.
Choose from our essentials (1 x 3-hour course), fundamentals (2 x 3-hour course) and PRO courses (3 x 3-hour course) tailored to both sales and customer service teams.
Learn more about our Customer Service courses or Inbound Sales courses >
3. Empower Your Team Leaders
Enhance the skills of your team leaders with our specialised coaching course, designed to equip them with the tools to guide frontline employees effectively on how to meet the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards.
This program helps contact centre team leaders provide targeted coaching and support to improve agent performance and deliver consistently high-quality interactions.
Please note: To ensure team leaders have a thorough understanding of the Quality Standards, we recommend they first complete a Frontline Employees training course.
This ensures they are familiar with the core competencies and behaviours, as the Team Leader course focuses more on coaching techniques rather than the details of each quality competency.
4. Purchase the Quality Standards Framework
Fast-track your contact centre’s success by purchasing our fully documented Quality Standards Framework.
This framework serves as the perfect foundation for your quality program, providing a proven structure to ensure consistent, high-quality interactions.
While the framework offers a comprehensive starting point, it’s designed to be flexible, allowing you to tweak and tailor the standards to align with your unique business goals, brand values, and customer expectations.
The package includes:
• The complete Quality Handbook detailing the five core competencies and 18 specific behaviours.
• Assessment and scoring templates for consistent evaluations.
• Optional training and coaching to support seamless implementation.
5. Learn How to Build Your Own Framework
Unlock the secret to improving quality, compliance, and customer satisfaction in your contact centre with our Quality Frameworks for Contact Centres training course.
This comprehensive program provides a proven, step-by-step approach to designing, implementing, and optimising a tailored Quality Assurance (QA) Program for your business.
It’s built on over 30 years of global best practices and focuses on creating a framework that defines what quality looks and sounds like for your brand.
The course covers everything from crafting a Service Vision to selecting and defining Quality Standards and designing effective monitoring forms.
You’ll also gain practical skills in calibration, coaching, and development practices to ensure your QA program drives lasting improvement.
Participants receive a detailed Participant Guide, featuring nearly 50 pages of sample definitions, monitoring forms, and design checklists to help you get started quickly.
Whether you’re building a new QA framework or refining an existing one, this course is your blueprint for success.
