ACXPA Contact Centre CX StandardsGlobal best practice for every contact centre
Know exactly what great looks like in your contact centre
The Standards are ACXPA’s definition of global best practice for contact centres: how easy it should be to find you and reach a person, and how that person should handle the conversation.
Use them to set your own standard, coach your team against named behaviours, and measure how close you are, whatever your industry or market.
What the Standards cover
Best practice that applies to every contact centre, including yours
Your customers don’t just contact you. The best experience they’ve had anywhere becomes what they expect from you, so the Standards are set at global best practice, not your industry’s average.
They cover what every customer experiences, whatever you sell or support: how easy it is to reach a person, and how well that person handles the conversation.
They don’t cover product knowledge, compliance or your internal processes, which stay yours to define.
What the Standards cover
- How easy is your contact centre number to find?
- How quickly can a caller get through your phone menu?
- How long does it take to reach a real person?
- How well does your agent open, explore, explain and close the call?
- Does the customer leave feeling heard, clear and confident?
What they leave to you
- Are your product and policy answers correct?
- Are you meeting your regulatory and compliance obligations?
- Are your own scripts, processes and systems followed?
- Are you hitting your sales and conversion targets?
Want those checked alongside the Standards? Private benchmarking adds your own criteria and compliance checks.
Inside the framework
What does best practice look like, from finding your number to ending the call?
Agent Mastery is five competencies and 18 behaviours: how well the conversation is handled. Accessibility is five categories: how easy it is to reach a person in the first place.
Pick a competency or category to see what’s expected.
Behind the framework
Knowing the behaviours is the easy part. Can your team score them?
This page shows the framework. Behind every behaviour, the full Standards set out how it’s achieved, what counts as not met, and how to score it consistently, every time.
That’s what most quality programmes are missing. They tend to check compliance, or reward habits like using the customer’s name three times, which does little for how the call feels.
Get the full Standards with Certified Contact Centre ›A typical QA checklist
- Built around compliance and process steps
- Counts whether something was said
- Scores depend on who’s listening
- Feedback like “be more engaging”
The full Standards
- Built around what the customer experiences
- Judges whether it worked for the customer
- Clear achieved and not-met indicators for every behaviour
- Named behaviours an agent can practise next call
How they apply to you
What would the Standards change in your centre?
That depends on your role. Pick the one closest to yours.
Hold every team, site and partner to the same standard, so “great service” means the same thing everywhere.
Seventy per cent of the score is the conversation. Put your effort where customers feel it most.
Measure against the Standards over time, internally or independently, and show the board what changed.
Replace “be more engaging” with something specific an agent can practise on the next call.
New starters get a written picture of a great call from day one, instead of picking it up over months.
Follow progress behaviour by behaviour, so you can see coaching working.
Build quality reviews around the same competencies and behaviours your customers notice.
Accredited assessors score calls the same way, so results can be compared across people and teams.
Add your compliance and process checks alongside the Standards, not instead of them.
Use the five Accessibility categories to review how customers find you, navigate your menu and reach a person.
See whether it’s the menu, the messages or the queue that slows customers down.
Make sure a customer who asks for a person can reach one, without being sent online.
Your centre Example scorecard
Meets StandardsClick any score to drill down. Figures are an example, not a real centre.
How the score works
See how every behaviour adds up to one score
The Overall CX Score is Agent Mastery (70%) plus Accessibility (30%), minus deductions for significant issues.
- 1Two halves
Click Agent Mastery or Accessibility to see the competencies and categories inside each.
- 2Every behaviour
Click a competency such as Engage to see the behaviours underneath it.
- 3Deductions
Significant issues, like being disconnected or pushed online after asking for a person, come off the score.
Why is the conversation worth 70%?
A customer will forgive a slow menu if the person who answers is excellent. A fast route to a poor conversation is still a poor experience.
Two-minute self-check
How close is your centre to the Standards?
Eight things your customers notice every time they contact you. Answer honestly to see where your centre stands.
Put the Standards to work
Three ways to put the Standards to work in your centre
Make them your own standard, train your team in them, and measure how close you are.
Certified Contact Centre
Get the full Standards and run them as your own internal standard: a setup workshop, accreditation for the people who score your calls, training for leaders and agents, a licence and the badge.
See what’s included
Training for your team
Live training across customer service, call centre, workforce management and leadership, built on the same competencies set out in the Standards.
Browse the coursesIndependent benchmarking
An independent measure of your centre against the Standards, on real customer calls or recordings you already have, so you know exactly where you stand.
See the optionsCommon questions
Got a question about the Standards?
Do we need to be assessed to use the Standards?
No. The Standards are ACXPA’s definition of best practice, and any contact centre can use them to set its own standard and coach its team, whether or not it’s ever assessed.
Independent assessment is there when you want proof of how close you are, through benchmarking or the Certified Contact Centre programme.
How do we measure our centre against the Standards?
Internally, the Certified Contact Centre programme accredits your own people to score calls against the Standards.
Independently, ACXPA’s benchmarking services assess real customer calls against the Standards, either by calling your centre the way a customer would or by scoring recordings you already have.
Our centre does service, not sales. Do the Standards still apply?
Yes. The behaviours in Agent Mastery apply whether a customer is buying, asking or complaining, and the Accessibility metrics apply to any line a customer calls.
Sales, service and support teams can all be measured the same way, so a strong team is visible wherever it sits and its practice can be copied.
Can we run the Standards inside our own centre?
Yes, and that’s what the Certified Contact Centre programme is for. This page shows the framework: the competencies, the behaviours and what Accessibility looks at.
The programme gives you the full Standards: how each behaviour is achieved, what counts as not met, and how to score every call consistently. CX Skills courses then train your team in them.
What if our contact centre is offshore or hybrid?
It makes no difference. The Standards describe the experience the customer receives, wherever the call is answered, and an assessment calls the number the customer would call.
Many centres use the Standards precisely because they hold an onshore and an offshore site to one definition of good.
Do the Standards apply outside Australia?
Yes. They make no assumption about geography: the competencies, behaviours and accessibility categories are the same in any market.
Independent assessments are currently run by our assessor network in Australia. If your centre is elsewhere, talk to us about what’s possible.
Your next step
Want to know how close your centre is to the Standards?
A self-check tells you what should happen. An independent assessment tells you what your customers actually hear.
Talk it through with Justin Tippett, ACXPA’s founder and co-creator of the Standards, in a free 30-minute call.
