Australian Energy Retailers Q3 2024 Call Centre Rankings
Introduction
ACXPA’s benchmarking initiative provides valuable insights into the performance of a selection of Australian energy retailer call centres, offering a detailed analysis of customer experience and accessibility.
Our comprehensive evaluation is based on over 80 metrics derived from the Australian Contact Centre Quality Standards, delivering a holistic view of the sector’s performance.
The analysis focuses on new connection inquiries, simulating real-life scenarios of potential customers seeking to switch energy providers. These high-stakes interactions are pivotal in the fiercely competitive energy market and reveal critical opportunities for growth and improvement.
By applying realistic scenarios, our trained Australian-based mystery shoppers uncover key challenges and opportunities in these interactions, helping retailers identify gaps, refine processes, and enhance their ability to convert leads into loyal customers.
Importantly, ACXPA’s benchmarking initiative not only equips retailers with the tools to improve their individual performance, but also serves as a vital mechanism to raise standards across the energy retail industry, ultimately benefiting businesses and customers alike.
Table of Contents:
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Highest/Lowest Rankings (ACXPA Subscribers & Members Only)
Report Downloads (ACXPA Members Only)
Executive Summary
The Q3 2024 results for Australian energy retailer call centres present a mixed picture, with modest progress in some areas and persistent challenges in others.
The Overall CX ranking for Q3 2024 is 54.7%, a slight decline from 55.2% in Q2 2024, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly drop.
This trend reflects a combination of inconsistent customer service quality delivered by agents, and reduced ease of connecting to live agents, highlighting the need for targeted improvements.
Accessibility in particular experienced a decline, with the sector-wide ranking dropping from 67.7% in Q2 to 64.1% in Q3, driven by an increase in average wait times, which rose from 62 seconds in Q2 to 93 seconds in Q3.
These results underscore the need for better queue management and resource allocation to reduce delays and enhance access to support, especially given the opportunity for new business and the impact on brand.
The Agent Mastery rankings improved slightly, rising from 52.3% in Q2 to 53.0% in Q3.
While modest, this improvement reflects progress in addressing critical service behaviours such as personalisation and empathy, which remain essential for a superior customer experience.
Challenges and Opportunities
The decline in the Accessibility ranking (from 67.7% in Q2 to 64.1% in Q3) and increased average wait times (from 62 seconds to 93 seconds) reflect growing operational strain on call centres.
These pressures are compounded by rising demand, as cost-of-living challenges drive more consumers to shop around for better energy deals.
To meet these demands, energy retailers must prioritise enhancing queue management and optimising workforce planning to minimise hold times and effectively convert new customer opportunities.
Customer Service Gaps: Persistent difficulties in maintaining high service standards across critical behaviours such as empathy and rapport-building highlight opportunities for improvement.
Inconsistent performance across the sector underscores the need for more robust, customer-focused strategies.
Path to Excellence
To reverse declining trends, energy retailers must focus on:
1. Operational Efficiency: Streamlining processes and better aligning resources to reduce delays and improve service access.
2. Customer-Centric Behaviours: Investing in training and strategies to enhance personalisation and empathy in customer interactions.
By addressing these areas, the sector can strengthen customer relationships, improve satisfaction, and unlock significant growth opportunities.
A renewed focus on quality will also enable the industry to set higher standards for customer care, aligning with the broader mission of improving energy retail services across Australia.
With the support of our sponsors, we are proud to make this independent industry data accessible to you for free.
Overall CX Rankings for Energy Retailers (Q3 2024)
Q2 2024
Q3 2024
Trend
The Overall CX Rankings reflect how easy it is to connect and communicate with a live customer service agent at an Australian Retail Energy Provider via their contact centre.
The rankings are determined by the Accesibility rankings (how easy it was to connect) and Agent Mastery rankings (the interaction with the live agent) with weightings applied to the key drivers of customer satisfaction.
Overall CX Energy Sector Trends
The Overall CX ranking remains a critical measure of how well energy retailers meet the evolving expectations of their customers in a competitive market.
In Q3 2024, energy retailers achieved a sector-wide Overall CX Ranking of 54.7%, reflecting ongoing challenges in balancing accessibility and customer service quality.
This represents the fourth consecutive quarterly decline, down slightly from 55.2% in Q2 2024.
This quarter’s results reveal considerable variability across energy retailers, with notable differences between the strongest and weakest performers.
While some retailers showed progress in certain areas, the sector overall remains below best-practice standards.
1. Below Best Practice Standards:
The sector-wide Overall CX ranking of 54.7% is well below industry best practices, reflecting ongoing challenges in both accessibility and customer service quality.
This continued decline indicates the need for retailers to address structural gaps in their service delivery model.
2. Inconsistent Agent Mastery:
The gap between the highest-performing retailer (ENGIE at 66.3%) and the lowest (Alinta Energy at 42.5%) underscores inconsistencies in delivering high-quality customer experiences.
This variability presents opportunities for underperforming retailers to learn from sector leaders.
3. Opportunities for Leadership:
Even the highest-performing retailers, like ENGIE, have significant room for improvement.
Enhancing customer engagement and strengthening service consistency will be key for all retailers to elevate their results and drive customer loyalty.
Key Energy Sector Highlights
1. ENGIE Leads the Sector:
With a ranknig of 66.3%, ENGIE emerged as the top performer for Q3 2024. However, their ranking still falls short of best-practice benchmarks, highlighting opportunities for refinement in both accessibility and service delivery.
2. AGL Energy’s Decline:
Recording their lowest Overall CX ranking of 47.3% to date, AGL Energy faces a challenge in reversing recent declines. While rankings improved in the first half of 2024, the sharp drop in Q3 (down from 52.7% in Q2) underscores the need for targeted improvements to address both service quality and accessibility.
3. Alinta Energy’s Systemic Issues:
With an Overall CX ranking of 42.5%, Alinta Energy ranked last in the sector for the fourth consecutive quarter, underscoring persistent challenges in both accessibility and customer service quality. Focused improvements are critical to reverse this ongoing trend.
4. Customer Experience and Accessibility Trade-offs:
Retailers focusing on improving accessibility metrics—such as reducing wait times—may inadvertently sacrifice customer service quality.
This was evident in Q3 results, where increased wait times and declining Agent Mastery rankings contributed to the sector’s overall challenges.
Accessibility Rankings for Energy Retailers (Q3 2024)
Q2 2024
Q3 2024
Trend
The Call Centre Access Rankings reflect how easy it was for customers to speak with a live person about a new energy connection.
59 individual elements are assessed, capturing the entire experience before interacting with a live agent, including call centre queue wait times, how easy it was to find the phone number, the number of menu options (e.g., press 1 for this, 2 for that), messaging times, hold music, audio quality, and lots more.
Mystery Shopping calls to Energy Retailers are terminated if wait times exceed 10:00 minutes.
Accessibility Rankings for the Energy Sector Q3 2024
Accessibility remains a vital metric for energy retailers, reflecting how effectively they connect customers with live agents amidst growing demand, driven by cost-of-living pressures and competitive market conditions.
In Q3 2024, the sector’s Accessibility ranking stood at 64.1%, a decline from Q2’s 67.7%, largely influenced by increased average wait times.
While some retailers achieved strong results, others continue to face challenges, highlighting significant opportunities for improvement.
Key Observations:
1. Increased Demand Strains Accessibility:
The sector’s average wait time rose from 62 seconds in Q2 2024 to 93 seconds in Q3 2024, indicating challenges in meeting rising customer demand.
This increase aligns with heightened activity as customers explore options amidst competitive pricing and energy-saving inquiries.
2. Variability in Accessibility Performance:
Red Energy emerged as the leader with an Accessibility ranking of 82.3%, with low IVR menu options, low recorded message times and relatively short wait times.
In contrast, Alinta Energy, with a ranking of 31.4%—their worst to date and the lowest result ever recorded in any quarter—continues to face systemic issues with resource management, as evidenced by their last-place ranking in every quarter of 2024.
Despite achieving the fastest answering time of all energy retailers in Q3 2024 at 12 seconds, their Accessibility ranking was significantly impacted by deductions for a poor IVR experience and an incident where a call was terminated by an agent.
This ongoing challenge highlights the need for Alinta Energy to address critical gaps in service delivery and operational consistency.
3. Sector Benchmarks:
Despite the variability, the overall Accessibility ranking of 64.1% remains significantly below best practice benchmarks for customer-facing industries (as compared to Education Providers with 90.4% in the same quarter), emphasising the need for sustained improvement.
With the support of our sponsors, we are proud to make this independent industry data accessible to you for free.
Agent Mastery Rankings for Energy Retailers (Q3 2024)
Q2 2024
Q3 2024
Trend
Agent Mastery is a measure of the agent’s skill, assessed across five core competencies (Engage, Discover, Educate, Close and Energy) and 18 individual call-handling behaviours directly correlating to better customer and business outcomes.
Recent CX Statistics continue to highlight the importance of interacting live with a customer service employee and the preference to speak to a live agent rather than an automated chatbot/AI, etc.
Agent Mastery Rankings for the Energy Sector Q3 2024
Agent Mastery continues to be a crucial metric for evaluating the energy retail sector’s employee’s (i.e. agents) ability to meet and exceed customer expectations across five key competencies: Engage, Discover, Educate, Close, and Energy.
In Q3 2024, the energy sector recorded an Agent Mastery ranking of 53.0%, reflecting a slight improvement from 52.3% in Q2 2024, but still trailing behind Q1 2024’s record performance of 60.0%.
While there are pockets of excellence, the results highlight ongoing challenges in delivering consistent, high-quality customer service across the sector, with significant opportunities for those who invest in addressing key gaps.
Sector-Level Observations:
1. Agent Mastery Rankings Remain Low
The Q3 2024 Agent Mastery ranking of 53.0% represents a marginal improvement from Q2 (+0.7%), but the sector remains well below best practice benchmarks.
This gap underscores the untapped revenue and retention opportunities for companies that prioritise training their agents with premium skills.
2. Top Performer—Energy Australia
Energy Australia maintained its position as the top performer, achieving an Agent Mastery ranking of 68.2%.
This marks their fourth consecutive quarter as the sector leader, showcasing their ability to deliver consistently strong performance across key service metrics.
3. Challenges for AGL
AGL Energy recorded an Agent Mastery ranking of 37.9%, the lowest in the sector and their poorest performance to date.
This marks their fourth consecutive quarterly decline, suggesting systemic issues and highlighting an urgent need for targeted service quality improvements.
4. Origin Energy’s Modest Improvement
Having ranked last in the first two quarters of 2024, Origin Energy moved off the bottom in Q3.
However, their ranking of 39.5% only narrowly surpassed AGL Energy, indicating persistent challenges in achieving meaningful improvements in service quality delivery.
4. Use of Name Hits New Records
The effective use of customer names reached a sector-best result 46.3%, the highest-ever for the energy sector (and second of all industry sectors).
Notably, ENGIE became the first energy retailer to achieve 100% in a single quarter, a great result.
In stark contrast, Alinta Energy scored 0% in this competency in Q3, revealing significant variability across the sector.
Concluding Highlights
The Q3 2024 Agent Mastery rankings demonstrate that while some providers, like Energy Australia, continue to lead the way, others face persistent challenges in core service areas.
Opportunities abound for companies that invest in elevating their customer service quality. Enhancing behaviours in such as use of name, empathy, and engagement not only boosts customer satisfaction but also drives loyalty and revenue growth.
Providers that adopt a strategic focus on service quality improvement, leveraging training, technology, and personalised customer interactions, stand to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly demanding energy retail landscape.
With the support of our sponsors, we are proud to make this independent industry data accessible to you for free.
HIGHEST/LOWEST RANKINGS FOR Q3 2024 (Energy Retailers)
The High/Low Rankings below provide a snapshot of the range of performance across the energy sector for eight selected metrics—just a small preview of the 80+ metrics available in the Energy Retailers CX Benchmarking reports.
Additional Averages Included:
To provide a broader context, we’ve also included:
• The Australian Energy Sector Average, offering an overview of the sector’s overall performance.
• The Australian Call Centre Industry Average, enabling you to compare how the energy sector stacks up against other Australian contact centre industry sectors.
Report Downloads & Lifetime Averages
Benchmarking Data for Other Industry Sectors
In addition to the Energy Sector information we publish, you can also view Australian Call Centre Industry Benchmarking data for additional industry sectors – click the links below to learn more and view data.
Select an Industry Sector to View the Latest Contact Centre Benchmarking Data
