Internet Retailers Q1 2024 Call Centre Rankings

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

The scenarios we use are typically based on new sales opportunities (i.e. customers looking to purchase a new internet connection or considering a move from another 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 Internet Retailer per month – our paid service includes a minimum of six calls per retailer per month.

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

It’s worth stating that real customers are not interested in sample sizes or the thousands of other calls handled by the call centre each day,  they only care about their call and will make all their judgements and decisions based on that one single experience.

And that’s what our Call Centre Rankings reports capture – what a random, real customer can and does experience.

Why aren’t all the Internet Retailers included?

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

We randomly chose six Internet Retailers to commence our program and provide our ACXPA Members with even more value as the summary data is available to all ACXPA Members.

Any Internet Retailers who purchase our CX Contact Centre Benchmarking will be automatically included in the reports.

How can we improve our score?

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

When you purchase our CX Contact Centre Benchmarking, 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 contact centre 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 a benchmark of your performance against a minimum of five other Internet Providers that you can nominate. Learn more >

When you purchase the service, your contact centre will then be included in the public monthly reports.

How do I order the service?

We have an online ordering form that makes it easy to order the service, nominate the Internet 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 Internet Retailers?

ACXPA Business Members receive access to the summary monthly data for three random Internet Retailers each month (and other sectors) along with a host of other membership 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.

You need to purchase the CX Contact Centre Benchmarking to receive the benchmarking data for ALL Internet Retailers.

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?

As the majority of Internet Retailers require your account information for technical support and billing enquiries, most of our mystery shopping scenarios involve new customer enquiries so a potential sales opportunity for the Internet Retailer.

Why do you hang up at either 10 or 15 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 either 10 minutes (sales scenarios) or 15 minutes (service scenarios) for three key reasons:

1. Research has shown that these wait times are towards the end of the typical times customers will wait before they hang up.
2. It keeps it real! Real customers don’t care about sample sizes, whether it was a busy day for the call centre or that they had high sick leave etc – they only care about their experience when they called, and that’s what our Mystery Shopping is designed to reflect – real customer experiences.
3. 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 Internet Retailers really care about the service they provide?

As a competitive marketplace, it means there are various commercial approaches. As a commoditised product (it’s typically the same internet when you switch on the computer no matter which Internet Retailer you purchase it from!), price is, of course, an important consideration.

But smart Internet Provider 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, an Australian Internet Retailer chooses to under-resource the contact centre or use offshore call centres and can pass those savings onto you in the form of cheaper Internet plans, 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 Internet 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 >