Energy Retailers Q1 2024 Call Centre Rankings

What type of scenarios do we use to conduct the Mystery Shopping calls?

As most Energy Retailers require customers to provide account information for service, billing, fault calls etc., the scenarios we use are typically based on new sales opportunities where someone is looking to either connect a new premise or switch from their current provider.

How does the scoring work?

You can learn more about the framework we use here >

How many calls are assessed?

For the public monthly report, we include at least three calls per Energy Retailer per month and for companies that purchase the Contact Centre CX Benchmarking, we conduct a minimum of six calls per month for every Energy Retailer included in the report.

If you’d rather have a larger sample size, please refer to our customised Benchmarking service >

Why aren’t all the Energy Retailers included?

We’d love to have all the Energy Retailers included; however, conducting independent Mystery Shopping is expensive!

We randomly chose six Energy Retailers, and as other Energy Retailers purchase our CX Contact Centre Benchmarking program, we’ll be able to publish a larger sample size each month.

How can we improve our score?

Our Mystery Shopping program has been designed to provide Energy Retailers with the insights they need to improve performance!

You’ll receive detailed information on your performance against over 48 individual elements, 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 or improve sales:

• Customer Service Phone ‘Essentials‘ & ‘Professional‘
• Inbound Phone Sales ‘Essentials‘ and ‘Professional‘),
• 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 Energy Business included?

We have a fixed-price service starting from $1,297 per month that will provide you with information on your contact centre, as well as benchmarking data against any five Energy Retailers that you can nominate. Learn more >

How do I order the service?

We have an online ordering form that makes it easy to order the service, nominate the Australian Energy Providers you’d like to benchmark against, who you’d like the reports to be sent to etc. View the online order form >

How do I access the full data for the Australian Energy Providers?

ACXPA Business Members get full access to the summary monthly data for Energy Providers (and other sectors) along with a host of other 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.

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 call us on 03 9492 2871.

What type of scenarios do we use to conduct the Mystery Shopping calls?

Most of our mystery shopping scenarios involve new sales opportunities such as new connections or switching from another Energy Retailer where we don’t need to disclose account numbers or personal information.

Why do you hang up at either 10 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 10 minutes for two key reasons:

1. Research has shown that these are at the end of typical times customers will wait before they hang up, especially a sales queue when there are alternatives in the marketplace.
2. 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 Australian Energy Retailers really care about the service they provide?

As a competitive marketplace, it means there are a range of different approaches. As a commoditised product (it’s the same electricity when you switch on the lights no matter who you purchase it from!), price is, of course, an important consideration.

But smart Energy Retailers are also realising that providing a good customer experience can be a competitive advantage.  But sometimes, whether it’s through a lack of resources or skills, or a strategic choice, the Contact Centre experience that is delivered is well below industry standards.

If, for example, Australian Energy Retailers choose to under-resource the contact centre, or use offshore call centres, and can pass those savings onto you in the form of cheaper electricity, that may be acceptable to some consumers who are happy to forgo some service to receive cheaper prices.

We don’t get involved in the strategy of each business, we simply report on the data against industry standards.

We do, however, believe that delivering a better customer experience is not only is it good for you as a consumer, but it’s also good for the business as all of the latest CX statistics will confirm.

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 Energy Retailers are accountable for the level of customer service they are providing and to enable consumers to make an informed choice.

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 >