Australian Call Centre Rankings August 2023 Industry Results

Executive Summary

Launched in August 2023, ACXPA commenced publishing insights into the performance of the Australian Contact Centre industry each month.

Not based on company-submitted results, but on independent Mystery Shopping calls designed to reveal insights into the customer experience that customers receive when contacting organisations via their contact centre.

The calls are assessed against the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards, with over 48 individual metrics providing clear insights into the experience customers receive in trying to connect to a live agent, as well as the experience interacting with the agent.

In our first Australian Call Centre Industry Performance August 2023 report, we turned our attention to five industry sectors:

• Banking (New customer enquiry to invest some money)
• Councils (General Enquiries)
• TAFEs (New course purchase enquiry)
• Energy Providers (New customer sales opportunity)
• Internet Providers (New customer sales opportunity)

For each sector, we’ve randomly selected a minimum of five different businesses with the key observations including:

• 44% of calls to banks (for sales-related calls) were not answered either due to delays in excess of 10 minutes or due to technical glitches with the answering service/IVR.
• Banks were rated as the poorest performers of all industry sectors in both accessibility and the quality of the interactions.
• Internet Providers (60.4%) were rated as providing the best customer service, however, still well short of providing a premium level of customer service.
• The average time stuck in an IVR (press 1 for this, 2 for that) was 0.43 minutes, which customers are forced to go through before being able to connect to a live agent. Councils (0:20 minutes) offered the fastest navigation with Banks the longest (1:10 minutes) with up to 5 layers of options.
• The average wait time across the industry was 03:13 minutes with the best sector Internet Providers (0:51 seconds) with banks the longest (4:42 minutes)
• Energy Providers delivered the best quality over the phone (63.9%) with Banks the poorest (44.7%,) just marginally behind TAFEs (45.9%).
• Across the five quality metrics we assess, ‘Engage’ was the poorest across the industry, resulting in customer interactions that start poorly, and they don’t tend to improve from there.

The report and data below provide summary insights across the core competencies we use to assess performance. Each month, we’ll continue to add additional sectors and businesses.

If you’d specifically like your business or industry sector to be included, please refer to our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service.

The ACXPA Contact Centre Insights Score (ACCIS) provides an overall performance score for contact centre performance in Australia based on live Mystery Shopping calls that consists of two primary components:

• Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) – measuring the experience of connecting to a live contact centre agent.
• Quality Insights Score (QIS) – the experience measuring the interactions with a contact centre agent.

We add both scores together and apply a weighting of 70% to the QIS score and 30% to the CCAS score to determine the final ACCIS score, along with some additional percentage deductions based on the overall call answered percentage.

This places a higher weighting on the quality (and skill) of the interaction with the expectation that getting through to an organisation with ease should be the minimum expectation.

The ACCIS score is used to determine the industry sector rankings we produce each month (below) as well as the overall rankings (best to worst) call centres by industry sector.

Accessibility Summary August 2023

• 44% of calls to banks (for sales-related calls) were not answered either due to delays in excess of 10 minutes or due to technical glitches with the answering service/IVR.
• The average time stuck in an IVR (press 1 for this, 2 for that) was 0.43 minutes, which customers are forced to go through before being able to connect to a live agent. Councils (0:20 minutes) offered the fastest navigation with Banks the longest (1:10 minutes) with up to 5 layers of options.
• The average wait time across the industry was 03:13 minutes with the best sector Internet Providers (0:51 seconds) with banks the longest (4:42 minutes)

Quality Summary August 2023

• Overall, the industry was rated as ‘Below Standard’ with a Quality Score of 53.2%
• Energy Providers delivered the best quality over the phone (63.9%) with Banks the poorest (44.7%,) just marginally behind TAFEs (45.9%).

View Additional Quality Information By Sector: Banks  | Councils  |  Energy Providers  | Internet Providers  | TAFES 

Queue Wait Times by Industry Sector

The Average Call Centre Wait Times in Australia measures the time to connect to a live call centre employee in Australia, after navigating the IVR systems (press 1 for this, press 2 for that).

For most people, they would refer to this as waiting in a call centre queue,  and it’s often the measure that has the highest correlation to customer frustration.

View Additional Average Wait Time Information By Sector:  Banks  | Councils  |  Energy Providers  | Internet Providers  | TAFES 

View Additional Information By Sector:  Banks  | Councils  |  Energy Providers  | Internet Providers  | TAFES