ACXPA Contact Centre CX Benchmarking
Powerful insights to improve performance, without the high cost.
Do you have a contact centre and would like to have an independent, external assessment of the experience from a customer’s perspective?
Would you like to know how your contact centre performs compared to others in your industry?
Or would you like to know how your contact centre performs against industry best-practice?
The Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association (ACXPA) provides a cost-effective, fixed-price Contact Centre CX Benchmarking service that enables you to gain an independent, external assessment of your contact centre against best practices in the industry, along with comparative insights into five other businesses in the same industry sector to you.
As outlined below, our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking service has been designed to provide powerful insights with a simple, transparent and cost-effective pricing model.
The scoring is directly aligned to ratings proven to shift the dial on measurable business outcomes – whether it’s Sales Conversions, Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score (CES), Retention, CLV etc.
But more than just providing you with a score, each report you receive will also include our top five priority recommendations and actionable insights that will aid the coaching of individual agents and empower you with the data you need to improve the service and/or sales quality provided to your customers.
How we Measure Quality in the Contact Centre
Whilst NPS, CSAT etc. measures how customers FEEL about the experience after they’ve had it, the Quality Insights Score (QIS) measures WHAT the experience is WHEN it happens.
The Quality Insights Scoring model and assessment standards is based on the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards that we have developed, tested and continuously refined over multiple decades across diverse companies and industries, to produce the most rigorous and accurate representation of the sales/service experience available in the Australian marketplace.
The scores and insights reveal how the behaviours of your staff are either positively or negatively influencing your customer experience as well as crucially, how this impacts your ability to achieve your desired business or organisational outcomes in your sales and/or customer service operations.
FIVE QUALITY COMPETENCIES
There are five competencies in the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards and each of these five competencies contains either 3 or 4 specific call-handling behaviours which differ depending on whether it’s a sales or customer service related call.
This provides a total of 18 specific call handling behaviours across the five call competencies of Engage; Discover; Educate; Close; Energy that every call is assessed against.
In addition, each of these competencies is weighted according to its relative importance in influencing both a positive experience for the customer and the achievement of key business drivers (i.e. positive customer experiences, first contact resolution & sales conversion).
These five core competencies are applicable to ANY BUSINESS SECTOR and have a direct correlation to improving business results, either in a service or sales contact centre.
How we Measure Contact Centre Accessibility
The purpose of Mystery Shopping is to replicate the experience real customers are having when engaging with a business.
Whilst this traditionally incorporates what happens during a call, decades of experience has taught us that many of the challenges customers face also include getting through to a live contact centre agent.
The Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) measures the experience a customer encounters leading up to the interaction with a live contact centre agent.
The CCAS score is determined by five core comptencies and over 30 individual measures with a brief overview below:
Reporting that matters
After running contact centres and providing benchmarking services for decades, we’ve learnt a thing or two about reporting.
The truth is that whilst we can provide online portals, data modelling and a range of other tools, the reality is about 95% of people never use them and they add an enormous cost to the benchmarking service.
So, rather than paying for functionality you’ll never use, our reporting is focused on providing you with the information that matters, in conjunction with actionable insights that can be used to improve the quality outcomes of your centre.
Each quarterly report includes:
- Your overall ACXPA Contact Centre Insights Score (ACCIS) including how your contact centre has trended over time and how you compare to your competitors.
- Your Quality Insights Score (QIS) and how you scored on each of the five core competencies and 18 call handling behaviours.
- Your Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) and how you scored on each of the five core categories and 30+ individual elements.
- Your Top Five Priority Recommendations to improve your quality with insights, tips and examples on how to close the gap on your worst-performing metrics.
- Access to all your call recordings and scoresheets (includes notes on each individual call)
The reporting insights are designed to represent an individual, team or organisation’s performance in delivering premium sales and service experiences. The scores, insights and recommendations (i.e. the outputs of our program) are all geared to function and serve as the main input into your coaching & continuous improvement initiatives.
It’s this combination of representative insights followed by targeted training, feedback & coaching (either conducted yourself or supported by us) that is the key to your transformation and achievement of desired organisational and business objectives.
ACXPA Contact Centre Performance Matrix & Reports
The ACXPA Contact Centre Performance Matrix is designed to provide you with the insights you need to easily identify strengths and weaknesses, and track your performance over time.
It consists of two key components:
- Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) – measuring the experience of connecting to a live contact centre agent across five core components including IVR navigation times, queue wait times, IVR performance etc.
- Quality Insights Score (QIS) – the experience measuring the interactions with a contact centre agent using five core competencies and 18 call-handling behaviours.
Displaying the CCAS and QIS scores on the ACXPA Contact Centre Performance Matrix (refer to picture) enables you to quickly see the areas your contact centre excels in against your competitors, as well as areas you need to focus on.
The ACXPA Contact Centre Performance Matrix can also be used to track your performance over time, enabling you a visual representation of your performance trends to ensure any investments you make in improving the accessibility or experience for your customers, is delivering a return on investment.
The reporting you receive also enables you to ‘drill-down’ into both the Quality and Accessibility scores to gain further insights into each of their respective five core competencies so you know exactly which areas you need to focus on to improve your overall scores.
Optional Quality Insights Workshop
In addition to the standard reporting provided for all our service options, you have the option of choosing to receive a quarterly live Quality Insights Workshop.
These are facilitated by the General Manager of our Quality Insights Programs, Simon Blair.
These workshops are designed to provide you with insights into your results and industry trends as well as demystify the requirements for achieving the standards for specific call competencies and behaviours.
Additionally, senior stakeholders can use these workshops to assist in the process of developing the ideal strategy and tactics for both short and long-term continuous improvement in building internal capability and performance within the Contact Centre.
If you select the optional Quality Insights Workshop when you book your Customer Service Benchmarking service, it will include:
- A one-hour facilitated session over Zoom (or your own preferred meeting app) to key stakeholders of any number or position within your organisation.
- Key Insights from analysis of performance results and trends.
- Focus on recommended priority areas for action and improvement.
- Selected recordings (or parts thereof) played for stakeholders to hear first-hand what’s working and what still needs focus and improvement (optional, and you have final approval of which calls get played).
- Live demonstration and examples of selected experiences that highlight what’s working and what needs further focus and improvement.
- Training, coaching and quality tips, guidance and recommendations.
- Where possible (and by client approval only), a live mystery shop call into your contact centre with real-time assessment and review.
Experience you can trust
The ACXPA Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service is led by Simon Blair, Australia’s #1 expert in Contact Centre Quality Assessment & Mystery Shopping for Sales & Customer Service.
Across his 30+ years career within the Contact Centre Industry, Simon has personally assessed in excess of 50,000 sales, service & retention calls, so more than anyone in this space, he knows definitively what works and also what doesn’t.
From starting at the coalface with Telstra back in the 90s, Simon worked as a Team Leader, & Management Coach and then with ANZ in the early 2000s as the Quality Manager & Trainer for their Consumer Credit Card business.
In 2005, Simon joined Global Reviews as the Head of Contact Centre Benchmarking and developed Australia’s premier model and program for mystery shopping and benchmarking of the inbound sales customer experience.
He facilitated Performance Insights Workshops in the boardrooms and Senior Management forums for many of Australia’s leading service companies such as Telstra, ING Direct, NAB, HSBC, Medibank & AGL.
In 2009, he established his own consultancy business, Five Degrees, with a focus on quality assessment, mystery shopping, training & coaching for clients such as Toyota, VicRoads, Sony, RACT, Unisys and Willoughby Council, helping to both measure and improve their sales and service experiences.
For the past few years, Simon has been leading the delivery of a range of his own training courses on CX Skills, averaging a customer review rating of 4.9/5.0 over the past three years.
With decades of continuously developing, testing and refining his call quality metrics and methodology, he’s excited to help our clients objectively and accurately measure the quality of their customer interactions, and to share these powerful and actionable insights to drive improvement.
Training courses to improve quality
Having data is one thing, but it means nothing if you aren’t using it to improve your performance!
Our vision is to help all contact centres improve their performance so we’ve got courses for your frontline employees, Team Leaders and managers designed to move the dial on your quality performance as they directly teach your employees how to master the five quality competencies and 18 call handling behaviours that we assess to produce your Quality Insights Score (QIS).
This enables you to invest in training that will result in a measurable improvement to your benchmarking scores, and across any metric you use to assess performance (i.e. NPS, CSAT, Sales Conversions etc).
The courses are facilitated by CX Skills who have an average customer review score of 4.9/5.0 over the past four years, and they’ve provided training to over 170 Australian companies across sectors including Public Service, Finance & Insurance, Transport & Travel, Healthcare & Community, Education, Retail, Business Services, Manufacturing & Utilities and lots more.
Learn more about the available courses on the buttons below.
Frontline Employees
Whether it’s for sales or service, we have purpose-built training courses that teach your employees the skills they need to improve your customer service benchmarking scores and, more importantly, improve the results for your business.
Recommend courses to improve customer service:
Recommend courses to improve inbound sales:
Team Leaders
One of the primary roles of the Team Leader is to improve the performance of their direct employees.
We have a specific course that will teach your Team Leaders HOW to improve the performance of their employees including:
- Ensuring they understand the quality assessment framework.
- How to coach and provide feedback.
- Specific techniques to improve performance against each of the core competencies and the 18 different behaviours.
Please note that we recommend Team Leaders complete the Frontline Employees training listed above for sales or service. This way, they will first learn the Quality Framework they will be coaching in detail.
Other recommended courses for Team Leaders:
Contact Centre Managers
With over 75% of contact centre managers starting their career on the phones, it’s common that the majority of their skills were learnt on the job, and they have inherited pre-existing KPIs, processes and procedures that were already in place.
But regardless of your industry sector or the size of your contact centre, there are industry best-practice that every contact centre manager should know that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of any contact centre.
We highly recommend the following courses:
Powerful Benchmarking
By joining the Contact Centre CX Benchmarking service, your contact centre will be included in the monthly Australian Contact Centre Mystery Shopping Insights report (view the latest National monthly report here) which will enable you to benchmark your performance against at least five of your nominated competitors, and the averages for your industry sector each month.
We’ve already got benchmarks for a range of industry sectors with more being added all the time.
Can’t see your industry sector?
No problems! Once you sign up for the Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service, we’ll start reporting on your sector immediately!
Finally, Contact Centre CX Benchmarking packed with value.
Gaining powerful, independent insights into the performance of your contact centre doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive or require you to sign up for extended periods of time.
We’ve used our decades of experience to develop a robust contact centre benchmarking program that requires minimal effort on your behalf, but still delivers the insights and data you need to provide not only measure and benchmark your own performance and your nominated competitors but also gain insights into how to improve your results.
There are no set-up fees, and you can sign up for as little as three months.
The ACXPA Fixed-Price Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service includes:
All of the above from as low as $1,297 per month ex GST!
How much does it cost?
To access information for your business and up to five competitors each month, prices start from just $1,297 ex GST per month and ACXPA Business Members also receive a further 10% discount along with a host of other benefits. View pricing information on our order form >
How long do I have to sign up for?
We have a minimum period of three months.
Why is it so cheap?
Benchmarking has traditionally been very expensive as companies that provide the services have high overheads with CBD locations, and as it’s their core business, they look to maximise profits and encourage you to mystery shop large volumes to increase their profit margin.
As an industry association, the mystery shopping data provides us with an enormous amount of insights to help us develop strategies and resources that can help improve our industry, so we don’t see it as a profit-making venture.
As such, we’ve developed a cost-effective model using a flexible workforce (who work from home) and without all the high overheads, we’re able to pass on those savings to you, which makes it easier for companies to be involved, and in turn, provides us with more data.
How many calls do you assess each month?
We will conduct a minimum of 6 Mystery Shopping calls to your business and each of your nominated competitors.
Is 6 calls enough to assess performance?
Yes. In the decades we’ve been conducting Mystery Shopping, there is minimal impact on results whether we conduct 6 or 60 calls per month. The main reason companies push you into more calls is purely revenue generation.
How many competitors do you benchmark against?
You can nominate five competitors in the same sector as your business.
And if more of your competitors sign up to the service, you will be provided with additional insights! For example, if you’re an energy company, and 20 other energy companies also signed up for the service, we would include the results of all 20 energy companies in the aggregate data.
How do I order/get involved?
We have an online order form that walks you through the information we need to place an order. Order your benchmarking here >
I didn’t see my business sector – is there a way to get benchmarking data for my business sector?
Yes! If you join our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service, you’ll receive insights for your contact centre, plus five other competitors you nominate.
This will provide you with both industry sector information and some great insights into how to improve your own contact centre’s performance and how you compare against others in the industry. Learn more >
Whether you are a medical or veterinary clinic, niche retailer, specific type of manafucturer etc, if you have at least five other competitors/businesses who provide the same products or services, we will start producing reports for your sector!
What type of scenarios do you use in Mystery Shopping?
We have decades of experience in conducting Mystery Shopping calls and we will develop scenarios that are relevant to your industry and that enable us to conduct Mystery Shopping in a non-identifiable way.
Should you wish to have specific scenarios tested or require scenarios that involve placing orders, accounts etc please refer to our Customer Service Benchmarking Service.
What data do you share?
For the six Mystery Shopping calls into your business, you will receive the full call recordings and the detailed scoring of the call. You will only see aggregate data of your competitors.
Do you also benchmark against live chat and emails?
Yes! Please refer to our Customer Service Benchmarking Service.
