Australian Call Centre Industry Q4 2024 Call Centre Rankings

Executive Summary – Q4 2024 Australian Call Centre Rankings

The Q4 2024 National Call Centre Rankings report delivers an overview of customer experience (CX) performance across six key industry sectors:

• Banks

• Car Insurance Providers

• Councils

• Education Providers

• Energy Retailers

• Internet Retailers

This report offers a national-level view of industry-wide trends, highlighting key shifts, standout performers, and ongoing challenges. It also provides sector-by-sector comparisons, offering insights into how each industry segment contributes to the broader CX landscape.

Each sector covered in this report also has its own dedicated Q4 2024 report, which dives deeper into sector-specific performance, trends, and opportunities.

While this national report offers a high-level perspective, sector reports provide granular insights tailored to the unique dynamics of each industry.

Despite notable progress across the industry in Q4 2024, soft skills, accessibility, and operational consistency remain critical areas for improvement across all sectors. Keep reading to explore key industry takeaways, emerging trends, and opportunities for businesses to enhance CX performance.

📊 Key Industry Trends

✅ CX on the Rise: The Overall CX Score improved to 55.5% (+2.6% from Q3), ending a streak of quarterly declines. This growth was largely driven by record-breaking accessibility scores and a slight uplift in Agent Mastery.

⚠️ Performance Gaps Persist: While some sectors excelled, others struggled. TPG Internet (70.9%) led the industry for Overall CX, yet this was the lowest “best” score ever recorded for a quarter—well below Q2’s 83.3% (also TPG Internet!).

🏆 Best-Performing Sector: Education Providers (60.5%) retained the top spot, despite a slight decline from Q3 (64.5%). Energy Retailers (60.1%) followed closely behind in Q4 2024 in second position.

❌ Biggest Drop: Car Insurance providers fell to last place (46.4%) after consistently ranking higher in 2023.

💡 Sector Shake-Up: Banks—historically the lowest-ranked sector—achieved their best-ever CX score (51.5%), pushing Car Insurance to the bottom of the rankings.

📌 Key Takeaways

🚀 Industry-Wide Wins

✅ Overall CX is improving, with record highs in Accessibility and Calls Answered metrics.

✅ Banks recorded their best-ever results, moving up in the rankings (albeit largely driven by the smaller banks).

✅ Energy Retailers improved in both Accessibility and Agent Mastery, marking their strongest quarter to date.

⚠️ Ongoing Challenges

❌ Empathy and engagement scores are plummeting, pointing to a critical soft skills gap.

❌ The Car Insurance sector fell to last place, struggling across multiple CX metrics.

❌ Performance inconsistencies remain, with significant gaps between top and bottom performers.

💡 Opportunities for Improvement

🔹 Invest in Agent Training: Soft skills must be a priority to close the growing empathy gap. (Explore our live training courses >)

🔹 Optimise IVRs & Queue Management: Enhancing first-contact experiences can prevent frustration and lost business. (Explore our WFM  training courses >)

🔹 Leverage CX Benchmarking: Tracking sector-specific data can pinpoint weaknesses and unlock growth opportunities. (Explore our Benchmarking services >)

📝 In Summary

The Q4 2024 Australian Call Centre Rankings reveal a mix of progress and persistent challenges across key industry sectors.

While Overall CX scores are improving, thanks to better accessibility and call handling, soft skills and service consistency remain weak points.

Some sectors, like Education Providers and Energy Retailers, continue to lead the industry (albeit well below best-practice), while Car Insurance providers saw a significant drop, and Banks achieved their best-ever results.

The insights ahead dive deeper into sector-specific performance, key trends, and actionable takeaways—keep scrolling to uncover the full story!

Key Metrics – Australian Call Centre Industry Q4 2024 Sectors

The chart below provides a 12-month trend analysis of three key contact centre performance metrics:

• Overall CX – A measure of customer experience across industries.

• Accessibility – The ease of reaching a live agent.

• Agent Mastery – The quality and effectiveness of agent interactions.

While Accessibility has shown consistent improvement, Agent Mastery remains a challenge, reflecting ongoing issues with agent engagement and soft skills. Overall CX scores are recovering, but disparities between sectors highlight the need for further improvements.

Scroll down for deeper insights into these trends and their impact on industry performance. 🚀

Overall CX Scores

The industry-wide CX Score increase signals a shift towards improvement, with better accessibility playing a key role.

🔹 Sector Highlights

• Banks (51.5%) achieved their highest-ever result, moving up from last place.

• Car Insurance (46.4%) now ranks lowest, despite minor improvements in Agent Mastery.

• Education Providers (60.5%) remained the top sector, though their score dipped slightly from Q3.

🔹 Biggest Disparities

• Best Individual Performance: TPG Internet (70.9%) led the industry but had the lowest sector-leading score ever recorded.

• Lowest Individual Performance: ING Bank (20.4%), ranking last for the third straight quarter.

Despite this overall improvement, customer expectations continue to outpace actual CX advancements, making it crucial for businesses to focus on both technical efficiencies and human interactions.

Accessibility Rankings: A Major Win

The industry-wide Accessibility Score hit a record high of 71.2%, reflecting four consecutive quarters of improvement.

🔹 Key Trends

✅ Faster Connections: Call wait times continued to drop, making it easier for customers to reach a live agent.

❌ Complex IVRs Remain a Problem: Multi-layered menus and long forced messages still frustrate customers prior to even reaching a live agent.

🔹 Sector Highlights

🏆 Best Performer: Education Providers (90.4%)—highest sector result ever recorded.

❌ Worst Performer: Car Insurance (50.9%), now ranking lowest for accessibility.

While many businesses are making significant strides in improving access to live agents, there remains a persistent trend of complex IVR menus, long forced messaging, and, in some cases, excessive wait times. These factors continue to contribute to customer frustrations.

Given that many of the scenarios tested involve new business opportunities, this trend points to a potential loss of customers and damage to brand reputation due to a poor first impression.

Thanks to our sponsors, we’re able to carry out independent, vendor-agnostic research within Australia, providing you with insights that stand apart from the marketing-driven research of consultancies.

Agent Mastery: A Growing  Concern

After reaching a historic low in Q3 (51.1%), Agent Mastery saw a marginal increase to 51.5%, indicating slight but insufficient progress in live customer interactions.

🔹 Key Trends

• Agent empathy declined for the 5th straight quarter (-10.0%), marking a critical industry-wide soft skills gap.

• Youi (66.5%) led the industry, but this was the lowest “best” score ever recorded for Agent Mastery.

🔹 Sector Highlights

• Energy Retailers (54.3%) took the top spot for Agent Mastery, overtaking the previous quarter’s leader, Councils, relagated to second place(52.8%).

• Education Providers (47.6%) recorded their lowest-ever score, falling to last place.

With an industry average of just 51.5%, the data highlights the ongoing challenges faced by organisations in equipping frontline employees with the soft skills necessary to provide high-quality interactions.

One key observation is the decline in Empathy, which has plummeted to an all-time low of 58.9% across the industry (-10.0% from Q3 2024). This range spans from 0% (Allianz Insurance) to 100% (Brisbane City Council), further emphasising the skill disparities across the industry.

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Calls Answered: A New Record High

Industry Trends

📞 94.2% of calls were answered within the industry-defined thresholds (10 minutes for sales, 15 minutes for service)—the best-ever result recorded.

🔹 Key Observations

✅ 73% of businesses achieved a perfect 100% for calls answered, the best-ever result.

❌ 4.8% of calls were still abandoned, translating to thousands of lost sales and missed service opportunities.

❌ Wide disparities between the bottom and top perfomers. ING Bank has scored the lowest result for three consecutive quarters.

💡 Only 14% of contact centres have achieved 100% in every quarter since the benchmarking began in August 2023

🔹 Sector Highlights

🏆 Best Performers: Councils, Energy Retailers, and Education Providers (100%).

❌ Worst Performer: Banks (84.0%), ranking last for the fifth consecutive quarter.

Despite record improvements, given the significant efforts and investments made by marketing teams to generate new inquiries, it’s concerning that some businesses continue to fail to answer calls within a reasonable timeframe, which results in missed opportunities for new customer acquisition.

Average Wait Times: Consistent Progress

⏳ Industry-wide wait times fell to 1:25 minutes, a significant improvement from Q1’s 2:41 minutes.

🔹 Key Trends

🏆 Fastest Response Time: Dodo Internet (2 seconds)—leading the industry for five consecutive quarters with TAFE WA equal first place (2 seconds).

❌ Slowest Response Time: ING Bank (6:30 minutes), despite slight improvements. This is their third consecutive quarter with the longest wait times in the industry (of the 50+ call centres we assess each month).

🔹 Sector Highlights

• Energy Retailers (50 seconds) had the fastest sector-wide response times.

• Banks (2:21 minutes) remained the slowest, though this was their best-ever result.

While often criticised for long wait times, the data shows consistent improvements across the industry. For the scenarios we test, which focus on new business opportunities, this improvement is exactly what you’d expect to see.

The first experience with a brand is critical, and by providing short wait times along with experienced agents possessing both product knowledge and strong soft skills, organisations can ensure the best outcomes for converting inquiries into new business.

However, it’s important to note that existing customers—dealing with account inquiries, claims, etc.—may often experience a different reality. These queues are typically treated with lower priority, which leads to much longer wait times and frustration for customers.

As an industry, there is still much work to be done to help contact centre practitioners better forecast demand and influence business stakeholders. Ensuring they are equipped with the necessary resources to meet this demand, and articulating the positive ROI to the business, remains a crucial area for improvement.

Explore In-Depth Industry Sector Insights

Beyond the published industry and sector averages, you can access detailed benchmarking data for each industry sector we assess. Click the links below to explore more insights.