Australian Banks Q3 2024 Call Centre Rankings
Introduction
ACXPA’s benchmarking initiative provides valuable insights into the performance of a selection of Australian Banks call centres, offering a detailed analysis of customer experience and accessibility.
As a trusted industry association, we conduct this research with a rigorous methodology grounded in over 80 metrics from the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards. Our approach ensures a robust and impartial assessment of performance.
The analysis focuses on new business and sales inquiries, simulating real-life scenarios of potential customers seeking credit cards, home loans, and term deposits—key revenue opportunities for banks. These high-stakes interactions are pivotal in the fiercely consumer banking market and reveal critical opportunities for growth and improvement.
By applying realistic scenarios, our trained Australian-based mystery shoppers uncover key challenges and opportunities in these interactions, helping banks identify gaps, refine processes, and enhance their ability to convert opportunities into loyal customers.
Importantly, ACXPA’s benchmarking initiative not only equips banks with the tools to improve their individual performance, but also serves as a vital mechanism to raise standards across the banking sector, ultimately benefiting businesses and customers alike.
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 Mastery underscores the need for a renewed focus on customer-centric practices.
Key Observations:
1. No Best Practice Performers:
No bank has ever achieved the industry standard benchmark of 80% or above for both Accessibility and Agent Mastery, 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 Mastery rankings (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 Mastery, 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.
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 ranking 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 Mastery Declining
• Declined to 47.6% in Q3 2024, the lowest-ever recorded ranking for the banking sector.
• Four of the five Agent Mastery metrics showed a decline from Q2, with “Engage” competency (e.g. personalisation and rapport-building behaviours) continuing to rank the lowest, while “Education” emerged as the highest-performing competency.
• 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.
Want to know your exact ranking?
Discover how your business compares in Accessibility and Agent Mastery with detailed insights from our Banks CX Benchmarking Framework. Access over 80 metrics to pinpoint strengths and opportunities for improvement.
Overall CX Rankings for Australian Banks (Q3 2024)
Q2 2024
Q3 2024
Trend
The Overall CX 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 Accesibility rankings (how easy it was to connect) and Agent Mastery 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 ranking 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 ranking for Overall CX of 13.3% in September, primarily driven by its lowest-ever ranking for Agent Mastery (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 ranking 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 ranking 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 ranking 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)
Q2 2024
Q3 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. An Improvement in Accessibility: Whilst still last of all industry sectors we measure, the banking sector achieved their highest accessibility ranking of 44.6% in Q3 2024, primarily due to a reduced wait time of 57 seconds across the sector.
2. Emerging Strength Among Tier 2 Banks: New entrants like Bank Australia and Great Southern showcased robust accessibility rankings, 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 accessibility ranking 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 accessibility ranking 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 accessibility ranking plummeted to 12.3% in Q3 2024, representing a sharp fall from its best-ever quarterly ranking of 51.8% in Q4 2023.
This result marks a new record for the lowest quarterly accessibility ranking 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 Mastery Rankings for Australian Banks (Q3 2024)
Q3 2024
Q2 2024
Trend
Agent Mastery 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 Mastery Rankings for the Banking Sector Q3 2024
In Q3 2024, the Agent Mastery ranking 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 Mastery ranking declined to a new low of 47.6%, the lowest on record for the banking sector, 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 ranking 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 ranking 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 Mastery monthly ranking of 29.2% in July 2024, 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 Mastery 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.
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 randomly selected metrics—just a small preview of the 80+ metrics available in the full Banking CX Benchmarking reports.
These leaderboards highlight the highest and lowest results 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.
Select an Industry Sector to View the Latest Contact Centre Benchmarking Data
