Australian Call Centre Industry · Q2 2026
Q2 2026 National Call Centre Rankings
Independent mystery shopping across seven industries, scored against the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards. Nobody is told when we are calling.
Q2 2026 was the quarter Australia got easier to phone. Every sector we measure improved how quickly a customer reached a person. What happened after that improved far less.
These results reveal how well Australian call centres are handling new customer enquiries — based on real mystery shopping calls conducted by trained assessors to the 60+ Australian contact centres we benchmark every month.
We analyse every call against 48+ CX metrics from the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards — providing an independent, consistent and detailed view of service delivery across the sector.
This quarterly snapshot highlights standout performers, identifies friction points, and helps set expectations for what great CX should look like — supported by our Benchmarking Services that assist contact centre managers in delivering award-winning contact centres.
Australian Call Centre Industry · Q2 2026
Executive Summary
Australia got easier to phone this quarter. It did not get better at the conversation that followed.
Every one of the seven sectors we measure improved its Accessibility score. Six of the seven improved Overall CX. But Impact — the energy, empathy, control and clarity of the conversation itself — went backwards in five of them.
Overall CX across the industry averaged 54.9%. Every call is scored against a defined standard of best practice, where 100% is a call with nothing missed, so the mid-fifties describes an industry doing about half of what good looks like.
The direction is genuinely better than last quarter. What has not changed is the size of the gap between the organisations at the top and the ones sharing their industry.
Not one sector went backwards on how easily a customer reached a person. Calls answered rose across the industry from 77.0% to 83.2%.
The gap inside a sector is bigger than the gap between sectors
This is the most important thing in the data, and it is easy to miss. The distance from the best-performing sector to the worst is 19.1 points — Internet on 62.9%, Banks on 43.8%.
The distance from the best bank to the worst bank is 61.7 points. Hume Bank scored 74.0%; the weakest result in the same sector was 12.3%.
Which means the sector a contact centre operates in explains far less about its performance than the choices it makes. Nobody is trapped by their industry, and nobody is carried by it either.
Banking moved further than anyone — and is still last
Banks gained 11.5 points of Overall CX, from 32.3% to 43.8%. That is the second-largest quarterly movement any sector has recorded since we began tracking, behind banking's own 12.9-point jump in late 2024.
Almost all of it came from answering the phone. Calls answered rose 18.5 points to 75.3%, and Accessibility rose 11.1 points. The conversation barely changed: Agent Mastery moved 1.5 points.
Even after the best quarter of movement in the country, banking finishes 11.4 points behind the sector above it. It is also the only sector still sitting below the midpoint on how easily a customer reaches a person.
Councils were the only sector to go backwards
Councils fell 2.0 points to 55.8%, the only decline of the quarter. It is an unusual failure, because councils are simultaneously the best in the country at the part of the call most organisations find hardest.
They hold the highest Impact score of any sector at 89.7%, the fastest conversations at 2:43, and the shortest total experience at 5:12. They also answered the smallest share of calls of any sector, at 69.8%.
The council story is not a service-quality story. It is an availability story, and it is examined in full in the councils report.
What the whole country is still not doing
Two scored behaviours stand out because almost nobody performs them, in any sector.
Agents told the caller what they were about to do next, and why, before doing it on 8.1% of calls nationally — and on none at all in councils or aged care.
Agents paused after giving key information to check it had landed on 8.6%.
Engage — the opening of the call — is the weakest competency in the country at 33.4%. It is the one part of the conversation that costs nothing to fix and is worth the most when it works.
ACXPA assesses every call independently against 48+ CX metrics aligned to the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards. Nobody is told when we are calling.
Recognition
🏆 Australia's Leading Contact Centres — Q2 2026
These three results are the highest recorded by any organisation we assess this quarter, and they come from three different industries.
Recognition here means something specific. None of them is simply sitting in a good industry — each is well clear of the sector average around it, and two lead sectors that finished in the bottom half nationally, including the sector ranked last.
1st — Hume Bank (74.0%)
The best Overall CX result in the country, and the best Agent Mastery at 68.4%. Hume Bank sits 30.2 points above its own sector average — the widest margin any organisation holds over its industry.
It also answered every call placed to it, in a sector that answered three in four.
2nd — Holmesglen Institute (72.6%)
Holmesglen scored 68.3% Agent Mastery against a sector average of 50.5% — a 17.8-point margin, the widest any organisation holds over its own industry on conversation quality.
Education finished sixth of the seven sectors. One institution is carrying almost all of its reputation.
3rd — TPG Internet (72.3%)
The strongest result in the country's strongest sector, built on 87.7% Accessibility and 65.8% Agent Mastery. TPG answered every call and reached a person faster than the industry average.
Sector winners
Each of these organisations finished first in its own industry this quarter. Full results, trends and commentary for each sit in the sector reports linked at the foot of this page.
Uniting AgeWell 69.0% Hume Bank 74.0% Youi 70.3% City of Onkaparinga 65.0% Holmesglen Institute 72.6% Engie 71.9% TPG Internet 72.3% 🎧 Where the call is won and lost
Agent Mastery is scored across five competencies and 18 behaviours from the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards. Four of them happen in order, from the moment the call connects to the moment it ends. The fifth, Impact, runs through all four.
On each scale, the shaded band spans the weakest sector to the strongest, and the diamond marks the national average.
- 1 Engage National average33.4%
The opening. A warm welcome, a clear statement that the agent owns the enquiry, the caller’s name, and signposting what happens next.
Weakest · Councils 17.7%Best · Internet 47.0%
- 2 Discover National average49.9%
Understanding the enquiry. Holding a genuine two-way conversation, listening properly, and confirming what was heard.
Weakest · Car Insurance 42.3%Best · Internet 65.4%
- 3 Educate National average63.7%
Answering it. Giving the information, checking the caller understood it, inviting further questions, and sounding confident throughout.
Weakest · Aged Care 58.7%Best · Energy 68.6%
- 4 Close National average52.4%
Finishing the call. Checking whether the caller had any other questions, and thanking them for their time.
Weakest · Education 42.3%Best · Banks 61.4%
- ∞ Impact National average70.7%
Not a stage. The energy, empathy, control and clarity woven through all four — how the call felt, rather than what it covered.
Weakest · Internet 50.5%Best · Councils 89.7%
Australian agents are strongest in the middle of the call and weakest at either end. Engage is the lowest-scoring competency in six of the seven sectors — energy is the only exception, and only by 0.8 of a point.
Four different sectors lead the five competencies, and the two extremes make the point. Internet leads the opening and the questioning, then finishes last in the country on Impact.
Councils are the warmest sector in Australia and the weakest at opening a call. Being liked and being effective are not the same thing.
What improved
⭐ Key Wins — Australian Call Centre Industry Q2 2026
⏱️ Waiting got shorter, in every sector
Average wait time fell to 1:52 and total time to reach a live person to 3:05. Accessibility improved in all seven sectors — the first quarter in which that has happened.
Phone menus shortened too, to a national average of 2.1 layers. Councils, aged care and education all sit at roughly one.
🏦 Banking's recovery is real, if narrow
Banks lifted calls answered 18.5 points to 75.3% and Accessibility 11.1 points. Having been the story of the last two quarters for the wrong reasons, banking is now the fastest-improving sector in the country.
🔍 Customers are being asked better questions
Education gained 12.3 points of Discover, the largest single-competency movement by any sector this quarter, and aged care added 6.1. Nationally Discover rose to 49.9%.
The behaviour underneath it moved too: agents held a genuine two-way conversation on 14.7% of calls, and listened properly on 96.7% — the strongest scored behaviour in the country.
💛 Aged care improved on everything
Aged care is the only sector in Australia to move forward on every measure we track this quarter — Overall CX, Accessibility, Agent Mastery and all five competencies together. No other sector managed it.
🚪 Menus got out of the way
Councils, aged care and education all averaged around one phone menu layer, against a national 2.1. Councils reached a live person in 2:29 end to end, and kept the entire experience to 5:12.
Where the industry is losing ground
⚠ Overall CX Challenges — Australian Call Centre Industry Q2 2026
📵 Close to one call in six still goes unanswered
Calls answered rose from 77.0% to 83.2% nationally, which is real progress. It also means 16.8% of calls were never answered inside the threshold — ten minutes for sales enquiries, fifteen for councils.
These are new-business and service calls the organisation has already paid to generate. Councils answered 69.8% and education 70.4%; banking reached 75.3%, and only after an 18.5-point jump.
🔇 The conversation lost its energy
Impact fell in five of the seven sectors, taking the national figure down to 70.7%. Internet, which leads the country on Overall CX, holds the weakest Impact score of any sector at 50.5%.
Education lost 6.8 points and banking 5.1. The industry spent this quarter getting customers through the door, and lost ground on what happened once they were in the room.
🤝 Nobody says what happens next
Signposting the call — telling the customer what you are going to do next, why it helps them, and getting their agreement — happened on 8.1% of calls nationally. In councils and aged care the figure is 0.0%.
It is the lowest-scoring behaviour in the standard. It costs one sentence, and it is what turns a series of questions into a call the customer can follow.
❓ Nobody stops to check it landed
Agents paused after giving key information to ask whether it had landed — a “does that make sense?” or “any questions about that?” — on 8.6% of calls. Councils recorded 0.0% and internet 3.7%.
Agents give information well — the national Inform score is 71.0% — and then almost never check that any of it landed.
👋 The opening remains the weakest part of the call
Engage averages 33.4% nationally, the lowest of the five competencies by more than fifteen points. Councils sit at 17.7% and aged care at 25.8%.
Agents gave their name on 31.6% of calls. They made a clear statement of ownership — the “absolutely, let me sort that out for you” that tells a caller they are in good hands — on 21.4%.
⏳ Long calls are not better calls
Car insurance records the longest conversations in the country at 10:15 of talk time and 13:40 end to end, and the most menu layers at 3.3. It also holds the best Agent Mastery, at 55.9%.
Councils sit at the opposite extreme — 2:43 of talk time and the best Impact in Australia. Length and quality are not the same thing, and this quarter they barely correlate at all.
The pattern for Q2 2026 is consistent across every sector. Getting through improved almost everywhere. What happens after the caller says hello did not.
Quarterly trend Overall CX Australian contact centres, all sectors
The Overall CX Score is the most important metric in our benchmarking program – a single, weighted score that reflects how easy it is for customers to reach a contact centre and the quality of the experience once connected.
As the defining measure of customer experience, the Overall CX Score blends Accessibility (30%) and Agent Mastery (70%) to reflect both access and impact – with a greater emphasis on the agent's role in shaping outcomes.
Penalties are applied for major breakdowns to ensure a true picture of performance from the customer's perspective.
Key Metrics Trend – Australian Call Centre Industry
The chart below tracks the national picture over the last twelve months. Three things define Q2 2026:
- Accessibility rose in all seven sectors — the first quarter in which that has happened. Calls answered went from 77.0% to 83.2% nationally.
- Agent Mastery gained 1.0 point, from 53.1% to 54.1% — a fraction of the movement on access. Getting through improved; the conversation barely did.
- Overall CX rose 4.2 points to 54.9%, improving in six of the seven sectors. Councils were the only sector to go backwards.
Wait times fell to a national average of 1:52, and total time to reach a live person to 3:05. Phone menus still average 2.1 layers, with car insurance at 3.3 and councils at 1.0.
- Overall CX
- The headline metric — the whole experience, from dialling to hanging up. It combines Accessibility and Agent Mastery into one weighted score, so a sector only ranks well if customers can both reach a person and be handled well once they do.
- Accessibility
- How easily and quickly a caller reaches a real person: phone menu layers, clarity of options, queue time, and whether the call is answered at all. Councils are measured against a 15-minute threshold for general enquiries, the six sales-focused sectors against 10 minutes.
- Agent Mastery
- The quality of the conversation once contact is made, scored across five competencies and 18 behaviours — how the agent opens the call, establishes the enquiry, explains the answer and closes, plus the energy, empathy, control and clarity running through all of it.
Learn more about the Australian Contact Centre CX Standards that underpin these assessments.
Call Centre CX Quadrant – Australian Call Centre Industry Sectors Q2 2026
This Call Centre CX Quadrant plots the seven sectors we measure on Accessibility — how quickly and easily a customer reaches a live agent — against Agent Mastery, the quality, clarity and confidence of the conversation that follows.
Q2 2026 puts six of the seven sectors in the top-right box, above the midpoint on both measures. That matches the best spread we have recorded, and it is almost entirely the result of this quarter's access improvements.
Internet sits furthest into the corner, on 83.4% access and 55.7% Agent Mastery. Aged care and education are the next-easiest to reach, but both sit near the midpoint on conversation quality — education at 50.5% is the lowest of any sector.
Banking is alone on the hard-to-reach side, at 42.3% access. Its Agent Mastery of 54.6% is mid-table and better than three sectors above it, which is the whole banking story in one data point: the conversation is competent, and too few customers get to have it.
The chart also shows how little separates the sectors on quality. Six of the seven sit within 3.8 points of each other on Agent Mastery, from car insurance at 55.9% down to aged care at 52.1%. Access is what pulls them apart.
