Australian Call Centre Industry Rankings Q1 2024
Table of Contents:
Scroll through the entire report below or use the links below to jump directly to a specific section.
Quarterly Trend Report Download (ACXPA Members Only)
Introduction
In August 2023, we commissioned the Australian Call Centre Ranking Reports to improve the transparency of industry performance, recognise call centres doing exceptional work, provide our members with regular, unbiased benchmarking data, and help identify areas where the industry needs additional support and resources to improve customers’ experiences.
Each month, we conduct a series of mystery shopping calls at random times and days, posing as a real customer, and then assess the customer experience using over 80 different metrics that provide us with three key metrics:
- The Overall Ranking, which is the ultimate metric, provides insights into the call centres that make it easy for customers to connect to a live agent and deliver great customer service once a connection with a real person has been made.
- The ACCESS Score assesses how easy it was to connect to a live contact centre agent, including wait times, complexity of IVR Menus, hold experience, etc.
- The QUALITY Score measures the customer service received during the interaction with the live contact centre agent using the five core competencies from the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards: Engage, Discover, Educate, Close and Energy.
It’s important to celebrate and recognise the fantastic work our industry delivers daily for millions of Australians—from the small local call centres with a handful of employees to the large call centres with thousands of employees.
But we don’t always get it right, and we need to be mature enough as an industry to admit when performance is not at the level it should be.
We trust that by providing genuine, unbiased insights into the industry’s performance and the support, resources, and tools contact centre managers need to succeed, we can deliver improved outcomes for employees working in the industry, the businesses we serve, and the customers who rely on our expertise to deliver great customer experiences.
To maintain the integrity of mystery shopping, we are unable to test scenarios that require us to provide account details, serial numbers of products, etc. As such, our enquiries are general in nature, typically enquiring about products and services the businesses own.
This means our findings may not always align with the experience for existing customers calling with enquiries, complaints etc, as these are often handled by different teams, treated with different priorities by the contact centre manager etc.
Executive Summary – Australian Call Centre Industry Rankings Q1 2024 Report
We get it—you’re busy! We’ve listed some of the key stand-outs from the data in Q1 2024:
OVERALL Rankings
- The industry’s Overall Rankings decreased by 1.3% from 56.0% in Q4 2023 down to 54.7% in Q1 2024 and is still rated as ‘Below Standards’.
- The most improved sector from the previous quarter was the Internet Retailers (+4.4%) with all other sectors declining from their Q4 2023 results, with Energy Retailers the biggest decline (-4.1%).
- Internet Retailers were ranked as the best overall sector (61.9%), leading for both February and March in Q1 2024 (Councils were the top sector in January 2024) and they are the only sector rated as ‘Met Standard’.
- Banks were the lowest-ranked industry sector for Q1 2024 (43.0%), having been the lowest-performing sector in 6 out of the 8 months since we commenced and they ranked last in every month for Q1 2024.
ACCESS Rankings, Wait Times & Call Answered Percentage
- Overall, it was more difficult to access a live agent in Q1 2024 than in Q4 2023, with the ACCESS Rankings across the industry decreasing from 65.0% to 63.5% (-1.5%).
- Internet Retailers were the easiest to connect to a live agent (81.8%) with Banks the most difficult (44.2%).
- The Banking sector has been last in the ACCESS Rankings every month since records commenced in August 2023; however, the rankings improved by 1.9% from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024.
- Compared to Q4 2023, accessibility to Energy Retailers decreased the most (-8.7%), with Internet Retailers’ accessibility improving the most (up 8.7% to 81.8%) in Q1 2024.
- In Q1 2024, the Council Sector had the longest wait times (04:23) with wait times across the industry ranging from an average of 00:03 minutes (Dodo Internet) to in excess of 15:00 minutes (City of Casey, Victoria).
- Wait times increased the most for car insurance providers (+84 seconds) in Q1 2024 compared to Q4 2023, with the biggest decrease for Internet Retailers (-56 seconds).
- Across the industry, 15.4% of calls were not answered within our wait time thresholds (a decrease of 1.4% from Q4 2023), with Banks the worst offenders, failing to answer 35.2% of calls.
- Not one sector answered 100% of calls in Q1 2024, and only two sectors have achieved 100% in any given month – TAFEs in February 2024 and Internet Retailers in March 2024.
- 10.5% of all call centres assessed had no IVR (press one for this, two for that) with RACV having the highest number of menu layers (6.0) of any call centre in Australia.
- Councils had the least number of menu layers (0.6) with Banks the highest (3.5).
QUALITY Rankings
- Across the industry, quality marginally improved (+0.2%) from 57.4% in Q4 2023 to 57.6% in Q1 2024, rated as ‘Below Standard’ in the Australian Call Centre Quality Standards.
- The Councils delivered the best customer service (Quality) in Q1 2024 (64.2%), with TAFE/Education providers providing the poorest customer service (53.1%).
- The Banking sector had the best improvement for Quality (up 4.7% to 57.5%) with TAFE/Education Providers experiencing the biggest decline (down 6.4% to 53.1%)
- Overall Quality Scores for individual call centres ranged from 41.7% to 79.8%.
- Of the five quality competencies we assess, ENGAGE continues to rank the lowest with a score of 36.0% (and a decrease of -5.0% from Q4 2023).
- Obtaining and using a customer’s name in a conversation, one of the four ENGAGE behaviours, was ranked at just 26.0% for Q1 2024 (down 0.2% from Q4 2023). The ENGAGE scores ranged from 7.4% (Councils) to 38.9% (Energy Retailers). The highest score in Australia was 77.8% (Holmesglen TAFE, Vic). 23% of all centres we assessed scored 0% for Q1 2024.
If you’d like to view the performance of your call centre, learn more about our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking >
Overall Rankings by Industry Sector Q1 2024
The Overall Ranking is the ultimate metric, providing insight into the call centres that make it easy for customers to connect to a live agent and deliver great customer service once a connection with a real person has been made.
The Overall Ranking score is determined by combining the ACCESS and QUALITY, weighted slightly higher for the quality of customer service, and minus any deductions/penalties that impacted the customer experience such as poor audio quality, technical malfunctions or failing to answer the call within our defined wait time thresholds.
Call Centre Rankings Key:
POOR
BELOW STANDARD
MEETS STANDARDS
EXCEEDS STANDARD
OUTSTANDING
Overall Rankings by Industry Sector Q1 2024
Below are the Overall Ranking Leaderboards for each of the industry sectors we currently assess that display the top three call centres, the call centre with the lowest score and the sector and industry averages so you are able to determine the range of performance experienced by customers throughout the quarter.
Most Accessible by Industry Sector (Q4 2023)
The Accessibility Score measures how easily a customer can connect to a live agent. Our assessment includes over 40 individual elements, including average wait times, ease of menu navigation, time forced to listen to recorded messages and, of course, how long they had to wait on hold before they could speak to a live person plus lots more!
The Overall ACCESS score is determined by the performance against each of the metrics, with deductions applied for poor audio quality that makes it difficult to communicate, technical glitches and if wait times exceed our pre-determined thresholds of 10 minutes (customer service scenarios) or 15 minutes (new business sales scenarios).
ACCESS Score Rankings by Industry Sector
Below are Access Leaderboards by Industry Sector that display the top three call centres, the call centre with the lowest score, and the sector and industry averages so you are able to see the range in performance experienced by customers throughout the quarter when they try to connect to a live agent.
Want to see how your call centre compares? Purchase the Contact Centre CX Benchmarking report, and you’ll see over 80 metrics for your contact centre, plus benchmarking data for any five nominated businesses for one low fee per month. Learn more >
Best QUALITY by Industry Sector (Q1 2024)
The Quality Score measures the level of customer service when interacting with a contact centre agent.
We assess quality across five core competencies and 18 call-handling behaviours defined in the Australian Call Centre Quality Standards.
Regardless of how easy it was to connect to a live agent, the interaction between the customer and the call centre agent significantly impacts customer satisfaction.
Our research has shown that our quality scores directly correlate to better outcomes for the customer and the business and apply to any customer interaction, regardless of the products, service, industry sector, size of the call centre, etc so if a call centre is rated ‘Exceeds Standards’ or ‘Outstanding’ it will correlate with high KPI performance on whatever metric is used (i.e. NPS, Customer Effort Score etc).
The metrics provide contact centre managers with visibility on the attributes their team is delivering well and the ability to hone in on particular areas that require additional training and coaching to improve the customer experience and, in turn, their business outcomes.
Overall Quality Rankings by Industry Sector
The Australian Call Centre Quality Standards recognise five core quality competencies: Engage, Discover, Educate, Close and Energy with an overall score for Quality.
Below are the Overall Quality Score Rankings for each industry sector, which display the top three call centres, the call centre with the lowest score, the sector average, and the industry average to enable you to see the range in performance throughout the quarter.
What to see how your call centre performs? Purchase the Contact Centre CX Benchmarking report, and you’ll see over 80 metrics for your contact centre, plus benchmarking data for any five nominated businesses for one low fee per month. Learn more >
Best Wait Times by Industry Sector (Q4 2023)
The Average Wait Time is calculated from the moment the customer completes any menu navigation and is placed into the queue until the moment the call is answered by a live agent, and it’s often the metric that has the highest correlation to customer frustration.
To measure the wait time, we wait on hold just like a normal customer would.
However, as wait times are often exceedingly long, it’s not feasible to continue waiting on hold until the call is answered so we terminate the call if wait times exceed the following:
- 10:00 minutes (new business/sales-related scenarios)
- 15:00 minutes (customer service/general enquiry-related scenarios).
If we have to terminate the call, we use the maximum wait time to calculate the averages, meaning when wait times exceed the threshold, the actual wait times would be higher than the reported average.
Refer to the section below this one to see the percentage of calls we needed to terminate due to long wait times.
AVERAGE WAIT TIME – Shortest and Longest by Industry Sector
Below you’ll see the shortest and longest wait times in each industry sector to highlight the disparity in the customer experience depending on the call centre you are trying to connect with.
Download the Quarterly Trends Report
Gain Powerful Voice of Customer (VoC) Insights for your Business
Each month and quarter, we publish summary information for each industry sector that is available to the general public and even more for ACXPA Subscribers and Members.
If you’d like to gain Voice of Customer (Voc) insights for your specific contact centre and industry sector, purchase our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking and you’ll receive:
- Visibility of over 80 metrics for your call centre.
- Benchmarking data for any five competitors you nominate.
- Call recordings, assessor notes and trend data for your business.
- Tips and insights into how you can improve your performance.
All for a fixed monthly price! Learn more >
To view additional sector data for the general public, ACXPA Subscribers and Members, click the applicable sector link below.
How many contact centres do you assess in each sector?
We assess a minimum of six different businesses in each sector.
How do you assess the contact centres?
We conduct Mystery Shopping calls posing as a real customer and then assess the call against over 80 different performance metrics. All assessments are completed by specially trained assessors based in Australia (no AI is used!) and there are three separate people involved in scoring each call.
Learn more about how we assess performance >
Can I get the data for each contact centre that was assessed in each sector?
Yes, businesses that purchase the Contact Centre CX Benchmarking receive data on all the contact centres assessed in the same sector as you (we guarantee a minimum of five other competitors you can benchmark against).
How many mystery shopping calls do you conduct for each business?
A real customer makes their assessment off the single call they make – they don’t care about averages and minimum sample sizes – their entire judgement will be made from that one call. Harsh, but true!
And that’s what we want to capture in our Call Centre Rankings, what real customers are experiencing.
However, at a minimum, for all our public quarterly reports we will conduct at least nine different calls at different times and days to each business.
Learn more about how we assess performance >
Is there a way to ensure my contact centre is included in the published results?
Yes, if you purchase our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking, your business will be automatically included in the rankings each month.
Is there a way to exclude my contact centre from the published results?
Yes, if you purchase our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking, you have the choice of whether to include the results for your call centre in the rankings published each month.
Regardless, you will always receive insights into your call centre’s results to help you identify the areas you need to work on to improve the results.
I didn’t see my business sector – is there a way to get benchmarking data for my business sector?
Yes! As long as just one business purchases our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking, we will publish results for that sector that will include at least six contact centres for each industry sector.
Do ACXPA Members receive more data?
Yes! ACXPA Subscribers (free) get access to some additional data and ACXPA Members can see a range of additional reports.
Upcoming ACXPA Member Bites Sessions
Short, sharp interviews and presentations on specific topics to fast-track your knowledge!
The ACXPA Member Bites are only available to ACXPA Members!
ACXPA Members can watch all the ACXPA Member Bites at any time in their Video Library. Discover which membership is right for you >
IVR Best Practice
Over 90% of contact centres are using an IVR (Press 1 for this, press 2 for that), and we've encountered many contact centres with over four layers of options for customers to select from. In this session, Nadine will be sharing some best practice tips on IVR design for 2024.
Presented by Nadine Power, Client Success Manager, VERSA Connects (and ACXPA National Advisory Board Member)
More sessions announced soon!
(If you're interested in speaking at one of our events, click here to learn more >)
