Australian Banks Q3 2024 Call Centre Rankings
Introduction
ACXPA’s mystery shopping initiative evaluates the performance of Australian bank call centres using 80+ metrics from the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards.
Our analysis focuses on two critical areas:
• Accessibility: How easy it is for customers to connect to a live agent.
• Agent Excellence: The quality of interactions with the agent once connected.
Using real-life scenarios and trained Australian-based shoppers posing as customers, we uncover critical pain points in the customer journey.
These insights offer benchmarks for improvement and help banks identify opportunities for strategic investment.
In Q3 2024, the study focused on new customer enquiries, such as credit cards, home loans, and term deposits—key revenue opportunities for banks.
Key Banking Sector Trends
1. No Best Practice Performers:
No bank has ever achieved the industry standard benchmark of 80% or above for both Accessibility and Agent Excellence, indicating significant room for improvement across the sector.
2. Sector-Wide Challenges:
• Accessibility remains a significant pain point, with several major banks scoring below 30% for Access and difficulties in getting your call answered within 10 minutes.
• Agent Excellence scores (the quality of interaction between the agent and the customer) also remain below industry expectations and are declining, demonstrating the need for a sector-wide uplift in customer service standards.
3. The trends for some banks are concerning:
• Throughout 2024, some banks have experienced a concerning downward trend in Agent Excellence, falling even further from already low benchmark levels.
• Some banks face challenges in both accessibility—making it difficult for customers to get through—and the quality of customer service once they connect with a live agent. This combination results in a poor overall customer experience and missed opportunities for conversion.
A Resource for Improvement
The findings from this quarter reveal persistent challenges in both accessibility and agent performance across Australian banks.
Below, you’ll uncover detailed insights that highlight these issues, offering a foundation for benchmarking performance and identifying opportunities to elevate service standards in the Australian banking sector.
Table of Contents:
Click below to go straight to a key section.
Highest/Lowest Rankings (ACXPA Subscribers & Members Only)
Report Downloads (ACXPA Members Only)
Executive Summary
The Q3 2024 results reveal a mixed performance for Australian bank call centres, with some improvement in accessibility but ongoing challenges in delivering quality customer service.
While the banking sector continues to lag behind others in Overall CX rankings, incremental gains in access metrics offer a glimmer of progress.
However, the decline in Agent Excellence underscores the need for a renewed focus on customer-centric practices.
Overall Customer Experience
Banks ranked lowest among the six assessed industry sectors for the fourth consecutive quarter, with a modest improvement from 36.0% (Q2 2024) to 38.6% (Q3 2024).
Access to Live Agents
• Banks achieved a sector-wide Accessibility score of 44.6% in Q3 2024, up 8.0% from Q2.
• Average wait times for new business calls improved by 57 seconds, down to 3 minutes and 37 seconds.
• 31.9% of new business calls were not answered within a 10-minute threshold.
ING performed the worst (59.9% unanswered), while Bank Australia led with 5.6%.
Agent Excellence Declining
• Declined to 47.6% in Q3 2024, the lowest-ever recorded score for the banking sector.
• Four of the five Agent Excellence Metrics showed a decline from Q2, with “Engage” behaviours (e.g., personalisation and rapport-building) continuing to rank the lowest, while “Education” emerged as the highest-performing metric.
• Empathy, one of the four ‘Energy’ competency behaviours, saw a significant drop, falling from 84.3% in Q2 to 63.9% in Q3, reflecting a notable challenge in maintaining customer-centric interactions.
Overall CX Rankings for Australian Banks (Q3 2024)
Q3 2024
Q2 2024
Trend
The Customer Experience Rankings reflect how easy it is to connect and communicate with a live customer service agent at an Australian bank via their contact centre.
The rankings are determined by the ACCESS rankings (how easy it was to connect) and CUSTOMER SERVICE rankings (the interaction with the live agent) with weightings applied to the key drivers of customer satisfaction.
Overall CX Banking Sector Trends
1. Mixed Recovery Across the Sector: While the sector saw an overall improvement in Q3 2024, with the average Overall CX score rising to 38.6% (up from 36.0% in Q2), the performance remains the lowest among all six assessed industries.
2. Widening Performance Disparities: The difference between the highest (Bank Australia at 59.0%) and lowest (ING at 17.4%) performing banks continues to grow, highlighting inconsistencies in customer experience delivery across the sector.
3. Steady Declines Among Key Players: CBA and ING both experienced significant quarterly declines, with ING now recording three consecutive quarters of deterioration and CBA hitting its lowest-ever recorded score for Overall CX of 13.3% in September, primarily driven by its lowest-ever score for Agent Excellence (29.2%).
4. Emerging Leadership from New Entrants: Newcomers like Bank Australia and Great Southern have debuted strongly, setting a benchmark for service quality and outperforming several long-established players.
Key Bank Highlights
1. Bank Australia Leads the Sector: With a Q3 score of 59.0%, Bank Australia emerged as the top performer, placing 2nd in July and leading the sector in August and September.
2. Record Low for CBA: CBA hit its lowest-ever score of 13.3% in September, reflecting ongoing challenges in accessibility and customer service delivery.
3. ING Shows Incremental Gains in Q3: Despite finishing with the lowest score of all banks in Q3 (17.4%), ING demonstrated month-on-month improvements, rising from 8.4% in July to 24.7% in September.
Accessibility Rankings for Australian Banks (Q3 2024)
Q3 2024
Q2 2024
Trend
The Call Centre Access Rankings reflect how easy it was for customers to speak with a live person about their banking requirements.
59 individual elements are assessed, capturing the entire experience before interacting with a live agent, including call centre queue wait times, how easy it was to find the phone number, the number of menu options (e.g., press 1 for this, 2 for that), messaging times, hold music, audio quality, and lots more.
Mystery Shopping calls to Banks are terminated if wait times exceed 10:00 minutes.
Accessibility Rankings for the Banking Sector Q3 2024
1. Overall Decline in Access: The banking sector’s access scores showed a general decline in Q3 2024, with many banks underperforming compared to their lifetime averages. This reflects persistent challenges in enabling customers to connect with live agents effectively.
2. Emerging Strength Among Tier 2 Banks: New entrants like Bank Australia and Great Southern showcased robust access scores, with Bank Australia achieving 75.5% in Q3 2024, significantly outpacing all the Tier 1 banks.
3. Increasing Disparity: The gap between the highest-performing bank (Bank Australia at 75.5%) and the lowest (ING at 12.3%) highlights significant inconsistencies in the ease of accessing live agents across the sector.
Key Bank Highlights
1. Bank Australia Dominates Access Rankings: Bank Australia achieved the highest access score of 75.5% in Q3 2024, demonstrating exceptional performance for a new entrant to our rankings, significantly above the sector average.
2. Westpac Struggles with Accessibility: Westpac recorded its lowest-ever quarterly access score in Q3 2024 at 13.1%, marking the third consecutive quarterly decline. This result highlights ongoing and worsening challenges in customer accessibility, reinforcing its trend of underperformance in this critical area.
3. ING’s Drastic Decline: ING’s access score plummeted to 12.3% in Q3 2024, representing a sharp fall from its best-ever quarterly score of 51.8% in Q4 2023.
This result marks a new record for the lowest quarterly access score ever recorded in this benchmarking initiative. It highlights critical issues with customers’ ability to reach a live agent to address their banking needs, significantly impacting new business revenue opportunities and causing potential harm to the bank’s brand reputation.
Agent Excellence Rankings for Australian Banks (Q3 2024)
Q3 2024
Q2 2024
Trend
Agent Excellence is the quality measure of the interaction between the agent and the customer, assessed across five core competencies (Engage, Discover, Educate, Close and Energy) and 18 individual call-handling behaviours directly correlating to better customer and business outcomes.
Recent CX Statistics continue to highlight the importance of interacting live with a customer service employee and the preference to speak to a live agent rather than an automated chatbot/AI, etc.
Agent Excellence Rankings for the Banking Sector Q3 2024
In Q3 2024, the Agent Excellence scores reflected varied performance across the sector, highlighting opportunities for improvement in all five key competencies: Engage, Discover, Educate, Close, and Energy.
These results provide essential insights for benchmarking and identifying strategic opportunities to enhance customer interactions.
Sector-Level Observations:
• Declining Standards: The sector-wide average Agent Excellence score declined compared to previous quarters, with several banks experiencing lower results across multiple competencies, particularly in empathy and personalisation.
• Competency Variances: Educate was the top performing competency, reflecting agents are providing customers with the right information; however, Engage behaviours, such as personalisation and rapport-building, continued to rank lowest across most banks.
• Consistency Gaps: Despite some banks achieving strong scores in specific behaviours, sector-wide consistency in delivering high-quality customer service remains a challenge, with significant fluctuations in scores over time.
Key Highlights:
1. ANZ – Leading but Lagging:
• ANZ’s 62.5% quarterly score led the sector, but this reflects the industry’s broader struggle, as even the top performer’s results fall short of industry benchmarks.
• ANZ’s performance saw a significant rebound in September, achieving 90.0%—its highest score for the year—following declines in July (52.2%) and August (45.4%). While this highlights an ability to recover, the inconsistency between months suggests challenges in sustaining service quality across all employees.
2. ING – A Consistent Decline:
• ING recorded its lowest-ever Agent Excellence monthly score of 29.2% in July, part of a broader trend of three consecutive quarters of decline. Its Q3 average (40.1%) underscores ongoing challenges in customer service delivery and a potential need for operational or cultural change.
3. CBA – A Downward Trajectory:
• CBA’s performance has declined each quarter in 2024, dropping from 55.8% in Q1 to 47.3% in Q2 and 43.0% in Q3. This also highlights systemic issues in delivering consistent customer service quality at scale.
Concluding Insights
The Q3 2024 Agent Excellence results underscore the importance of investing in agent training and quality assurance programs, particularly in areas like personalisation and empathy.
While some banks demonstrated pockets of excellence, inconsistencies across months and competencies remain a challenge for the sector as a whole.
Explore the Breadth of Results in the Banking Sector!
HIGHEST/LOWEST RANKINGS FOR Q3 2024 (Australian Banks)
The High/Low Rankings below provide a snapshot of the range of performance across the banking sector for eight selected metrics—just a small preview of the 80+ metrics available in the full Contact Centre CX Benchmarking reports.
These rankings highlight the highest and lowest scores within the banking sector, showcasing the breadth of performance across Australian banks.
They provide an essential view of the gaps in service delivery, helping you understand how your bank compares to the best and worst performers.
Additional Averages Included Below:
To provide a broader context, we’ve included:
• The Australian Banking Sector Average, offering an overview of the sector’s overall performance.
• The National Industry Average, enabling you to compare how the banking sector stacks up against other Australian contact centre industries.
Report Downloads & Lifetime Averages
Benchmarking Data for Other Industry Sectors
In addition to the Banking Sector information we publish, you can also view Australian Call Centre Industry Benchmarking data for additional industry sectors – click the links below to learn more and view data.
