View the Call Centre Rankings for Australian Banks Q3 2024 with call centre wait times, customer experience rankings, access rankings and more.
Each month, we conduct mystery shopping calls across a selection of Australian Banks to capture Voice of the Customer (VoC) insights into the real experience customers face when reaching out to a customer service employee.
Our analysis covers critical metrics such as call centre wait times, the skill of the call centre agents, hold times, and more—all assessed against the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards, which encompass over 80 individual performance elements.
Publicly Reported Key Metrics:
Accessibility Ranking: Evaluates how quickly and easily customers can connect with a live representative, highlighting the simplicity and efficiency of the contact options.
Agent Mastery Ranking: Assesses the professionalism and effectiveness of live agents, focusing on their ability to deliver outstanding customer service across key competencies.
Overall CX Ranking: The ultimate measure of customer experience excellence, reflecting performance across all touchpoints, including accessibility and agent mastery.
Average Wait Times: Tracks the average time customers spend waiting to connect with a live agent, demonstrating the organisation’s responsiveness.
This combination offers powerful, independent insights into the call centre performance of Australian banks and it enables us to deliver targeted industry resources, skills, and strategies that drive meaningful improvements—enhancing customer experiences and streamlining business operations.
How We Conduct Mystery Shopping Calls to Australian Banks
Our Australian-based mystery shoppers are highly trained to replicate genuine customer enquiries.
Calls are made on random days and times, using diverse scenarios tailored to common banking needs such as home loans, credit cards, and other general enquiries.
While factors like sample size, FTE-to-customer ratios, customer demographics, or unusually busy periods can influence results, these nuances are irrelevant to the customer experience.
Customers judge their bank based solely on their individual interaction, and our Mystery Shopping results are designed to capture and reflect this critical perspective.
To ensure anonymity, our assessments focus exclusively on new banking enquiries. Unfortunately, we are unable to evaluate experiences for existing customers with account-related matters, such as transaction disputes, as this would require active customer accounts.
Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards
The Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards—refined over 30 years and 50,000 calls—provide a proven framework for assessing customer service performance.
Why These Standards Matter
- Actionable Guidance: Practical criteria for delivering exceptional customer experiences, tailored for any contact centre.
- Proven Results: Higher satisfaction, increased sales, improved NPS, enhanced CES, and reduced AHT.
- Comprehensive Insights: Over 80 performance metrics to identify strengths and improvement opportunities.
This robust framework helps Australian Banks deliver outstanding customer experiences and achieve measurable business success.
The Latest Quarterly Australian Banks Call Centre Rankings
Each quarter, we publish updated performance data across four key metrics, along with a free quarterly sector report (below the charts) containing an executive summary with some additional insights.
This is just a fraction of the comprehensive insights available monthly to our subscribers and members.
With the support of our sponsors, we are proud to make this independent industry data accessible to you for free.
Want to know how your bank compares?
Discover how your bank compares with your competitors across over 80 metrics, enabling you to pinpoint strengths and opportunities for improvement.
Click a Quarterly Banking Sector Report Below to View
Australian Banks Q2 2024
View the Call Centre Rankings for Australian Banks Q2 2024 with call centre wait times, customer experience rankings, access rankings and more.
Australian Banks Q1 2024
View the Call Centre Rankings for Australian Banks Q1 2024 with call centre wait times, customer experience rankings, access rankings and more.
Ready to Drive Growth and Outperform Your Competitors?
The data on this page and our free quarterly reports provides a small snapshot of the banking sector data available on our website.
Subscribers enjoy access to even more valuable banking sector insights, with members unlocking the most comprehensive data and exclusive reports.
But for organisations seeking a competetive advantage, the Banking CX Benchmarking Service is a must-have solution.
What You’ll Receive:
- Detailed Performance Metrics: Access over 80 key metrics, including accessibility, agent mastery, and more.
- Competitive Benchmarking: Compare your bank against five nominated competitors each month.
- Trend Analysis: Track quarterly and annual trends to identify areas for improvement and celebrate success.
Exclusive Member Benefits
All ACXPA Members receive a 10% discount on the Banking CX Benchmarking Service.
ACXPA Business Members enjoy even more value with a $200 discount on our introductory benchmarking report—a trial version designed to provide powerful insights with smaller call samples (2 calls per competitor instead of 6).
This is the perfect way to experience the benefits of benchmarking before committing to the full service.
Take the first step toward transforming your customer experience today.
Select an Industry Sector to View the Latest Contact Centre Benchmarking Data
What type of scenarios do we use to conduct the Mystery Shopping calls?
We use enquiries that are general in nature and don't require us to disclose personal information, such as new customers looking for home loans, term deposits, credit cards, etc.
How does the scoring work?
Over the past 30 years, we've developed standards based on consumer preferences and the metrics that matter - the ones that can influence the customer experience.
You can learn more about the framework we use here >
How many calls are assessed?
Real customers are not interested in sample sizes or the thousands of other calls handled by the call centre each day; they only care about their call and will make all their judgements and decisions based on that one single experience.
And that's what our Call Centre Rankings reports capture - what a random, real customer can and does experience.
That said, we make a minimum of six calls to each bank to ensure
How can we improve our score?
Our Mystery Shopping program has been designed to provide Banks with the insights they need to improve performance!
You'll receive detailed information on your performance so you know exactly where to focus, and we also include a quarterly report that provides you with personalised key recommendations on areas to focus on.
We also offer a range of training courses that can help teach your frontline employees the skills they need to deliver great customer service (Customer Service Phone 'Essentials' & 'Professional'), as well as training courses for your Team Leaders/Managers so they know how to coach effectively using the Quality Framework to improve your performance (and scores!).
How do I get my Bank included?
If your bank is not listed in our reports, you can purchase our Banking CX Benchmarking service, and your bank will then be automatically included in the monthly ranking reports. Learn more >
How do I access the data for Banks?
ACXPA Business Members get full access to the summary monthly data and quarterly trends for three randomly selected Banks (and other sectors) along with a host of other membership benefits.
An ACXPA Business Membership starts from just $497 per year and includes five individual memberships you can allocate to key employees who could benefit from gaining access to leading industry insights for contact centres, customer experience (CX), digital service, and in-person customer service.
If you purchase the Banking Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service, you will gain access to ALL data for YOUR call centre and any five Banks you nominate.
Is there someone I can speak to to learn more?
Absolutely! If you'd like to speak to someone further about the Benchmarking Service, please get in touch with our General Manager of Quality Insights, Simon Blair - 0407 002 113 or simon@acxpa.com.au or contact us on 03 9492 2871.
What type of scenarios do we use to conduct the Mystery Shopping calls?
Questions about credit cards, home loans, savings accounts, term deposits etc - most of our scenarios are about new business opportunities for the Banks that don't require us to disclose personal information.
Why do you hang up at either 10 or 15 minutes?
All our Mystery Shopping calls are conducted live by our accredited Mystery Shoppers, who are all based in Australia. We cut off the calls at either 10 minutes (sales scenarios) or 15 minutes (service scenarios) for three key reasons:
- Research has shown that these wait times are towards the end of the typical times customers will wait before they hang up.
- It keeps it real! Real customers don't care about sample sizes, whether it was a busy day for the call centre or that they had high sick leave etc - they only care about their experience when they called, and that's what our Mystery Shopping is designed to reflect - real customer experiences.
- It's expensive. As we use real human beings to conduct the Mystery Shopping call, it's simply not practical to pay them often for hours (hello Centrelink!) whilst waiting for the call to be answered. So unless we get a very generous sponsor that enables us to wait the full time, we thought this was a reasonable decision.
Why don't your results align with my experience?
Despite the perception, call centres are complex operations involving lots of people, processes, technology and the random nature of call arrival as we don't know when people are going to call!
Even with the best planning, this can result in a varying level of performance depending on a wide range of factors, including the time of day, whether everyone who was rostered attended work, whether the number of calls forecasted is accurate, and much more.
In addition, calls for service can be treated very differently than sales, and many call centres have the technology to alter the priority of calls answered depending on their nature, previous history, status within the organisation, and so on.
All of these factors can result in a much different experience every single time you call a contact centre.
As we've mentioned though, most customers don't really care about any of that and will make their decision based on their phone call only - and our mystery shopping is designed to capture that - a snapshot of what customers are experiencing.
Finally, we are also unable to test the experience for existing customers. To maintain the anonymity of mystery shopping, we cannot provide account details, etc., which many call centres now require before being placed into the queue.
And frustratingly, its often the existing customers who receive the worst experience 😱
Do the Banks really care about the service they provide?
We'd really like to say yes, as it's a highly competitive marketplace, and research consistently shows that when customers aren't happy, it's bad for business.
But sometimes, whether it's through a lack of resources or skills, the customer experience that is delivered is well below expectations.
When banks focus on delivering a better customer experience, not only is it good for you, but it also helps make them more profitable so everyone wins.
Why are the reported wait times lower than what I normally experience?
As we conduct Mystery Shopping calls, we need to remain anonymous, so we can only test scenarios that involve replicating a new customer.
Banks often require existing customers with enquiries to enter their account details, meaning we cannot test the experience for existing customers.
It's not uncommon for Banks to treat new customers differently than existing customers, with the calls given different priorities and handled by different teams.
How do I get my Bank included?
We encourage you to contact your Bank and ask them to ensure they are included. Just send them a link to this page!
Why does ACXPA publish results each month?
Our mission is to improve the level of customer experience in Australia, so by publishing the results monthly, we'll continue to ensure that consumers are able to make informed decisions based on the quality of customer experiences each bank provides.
What type of services does ACXPA offer?
In addition to the Mystery Shopping CX Benchmarking, we offer a range of services and resources for people working in contact centres, customer experience (CX), digital service and in-person customer service/retail. You can learn more about us here >