TAFE Call Centre Rankings
Each month, we conduct mystery shopping calls into a cross-section of Australian TAFEs (Technical And Further Education) to provide a real insight into the experience customers are receiving from their contact centres.
Every single TAFE mystery shopping call is meticulously assessed against premium customer service standards containing over 48 different individual performance elements to generate three key metrics:
- The Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) – How easy was it to connect to a live contact centre agent.
- The Quality Insights Score (QIS) – The experience received during the interaction with the live contact centre agent.
- An overall performance score, the ACXPA Contact Centre Insights Score (ACCIS).
This combination provides powerful, independent insights into the performance and enables us to produce the Australian TAFE Call Centre Rankings. Not only does this enable consumers to make informed decisions when choosing a TAFE Provider, it enables us to ensure we provide the resources, skills and insights to help Australian TAFEs improve their call centre experiences for both the customer and their business.
Summary results for the current month are available below and ACXPA members have access to the full dataset and trend data, plus the opportunity to gain insights into how to improve their scores through the sharing of best practices, resources, training and support.
Latest Monthly Results
(August 2023)
Overall Rankings
How we calculate the TAFE Call Centre Rankings
More than just publishing the Australian TAFE Call Centre Rankings, our Mystery Shopping program assesses every call across ten core competencies and 48 different individual performance elements to produce three core metrics:
- The Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) captures how easy was it to connect to a live contact centre agent with competencies including Search, Design, Ease, Audio and Timing (along with deductions for calls not being answered within thresholds, technical glitches, etc)
- The Quality Insights Score (QIS) measures the experience received during the interaction with the live contact centre agent with competencies including Engage, Discover, Educate, Close and Energy.
- The ACXPA Contact Centre Insights Score (ACCIS) is an overall performance score that combines the two scores above with proprietary weightings on the competencies that influence the customer experience the most, and is the score used to establish the overall ranking results.
The measurement framework has been developed and refined by Justin Tippett and Simon Blair, who both have experience in the Education Sector in Australia optimising contact centre performance, implementing and managing contact centre quality assessment programs and designing and facilitating training courses for TAFE contact centres in Australia.
The Mystery Shopping calls are designed to replicate a real customer experience and are made at random days and times with differing scenarios tailor-made for TAFEs, typically presenting as a course enquiry that maybe either sales or service related.
Just like real customers, we don’t care about sample sizes, busy periods than usual etc. Customers only care about their call and will make all their judgements and decisions based on that one single experience and that is what our Mystery Shopping Insights are designed to capture.
If any TAFEs would like to nominate minimum sample sizes, specific scenarios or benchmark across different channels (i.e. emails, live chat etc., please refer to our Customised Customer Service Benchmarking Service.
Australian TAFEs – Current Month Performance Summary
Executive Summary August 2023
- TAFEs ranked the highest across the industry for accessibility (79.8%) making it easier for customers to connect, however the quality of the customer interactions once connected was rated ‘Poor’ at 45.9%.
- TasTAFE was ranked the highest overall (60.7%) with TAFE QLD ranked the lowest (46%).
- TAFE QLD was rated the highest for quality (55.6%), however, their accessibility score was ranked the lowest (57%). TAFE WA ranked the lowest quality (34.0%).
- The range of scores from low to high was minimal compared to other sectors with the lowest score 50.1% (TAFE WA) to 60.7% the highest (TAFE QLD).
- TasTAFE was the only TAFE to have no IVR enabling customers to connect directly to a live agent without any button pushing. The highest number of IVR layers was TAFE QLD with three layers of options for customers to navigate.
- Average wait times across the TAFEs was 2:53 minutes with TAFE WA (0:04 minutes) leading the way through to TAFE QLD the longest wait times in excess of 10 minutes on average.
- The ‘Engage’ competency was marked the lowest across the five quality competencies at just 26%, with Holmesglen TAFE the top scorer at 42%, with TAFE WA rated at 8%.
- ‘Energy’ was the highest-rated competency with an average of 69%, the lowest was TAFE WA (50%) through to TAFE QLD (92%).
- Only one call across the entire sector was not answered within the 10-minute threshold (to TAFE QLD).
Overall Ranking
Average Score
Australian TAFEs
#1 Ranked Call Centre
TasTAFE
Lowest Ranked Call Centre
TAFE QLD
Quality Score
Average Score
Australian TAFEs
Highest Score
TAFE QLD
Lowest Score
TAFE WA
Quality Summary August 2023
The quality of the customer interactions across all TAFEs assessed was rated as ‘Below Expectations’ with a score of 45.9%, only marginally ahead of the banks with 44.7%.
- The lead performer for quality was TAFE QLD (55.6%) with TAFE WA (34/0%) rated the lowest.
- Key Results across all quality metrics:
- Engage (26.4%) – The lead performer was Holmesglen (41.7%), and the lowest rated was TAFE WA (8.3%).
- Discover (44.9%) – The lead performer was Holmesglen (55.6%), and the lowest rated was TAFE WA (33.3%)
- Educate (46.5%) – The lead performer was TAFE QLD (66.7%), and the lowest rated was Holmesglen (Vic) (33.3%)
- Close (37.6%) – The lead performer was TasTAFE (55.6%), and the lowest rated was TAFE WA (11.1%)
- Energy (69.4%) – The lead performer was TAFE QLD (91.7%), and the lowest rated was Dodo (50.0%)
Accessibility Score
Average Score
Australian TAFEs
Highest Score
TasTAFE
Lowest Score
TAFE QLD
Accessibility Summary for August 2023
- Compared to other industry sectors, the TAFEs were the easiest to access with an accessibility score of 79.8% (Exceeds Expectations) with TasTAFE the top score (94.0%) and TAFE QLD the lowest (57.0%).
- Wait times averaged 2:53 minutes across the sector with TAFE WA having the lowest wait times (0:04 minute) through to TAFE QLD (10:00 minutes), the maximum we wait before disconnecting the call.
- TasTAFE was the only TAFE to have no IVR enabling customers to connect directly to a customer service agent. TAFE QLD had the most IVR layers with three levels of options.
- The time required to navigate an IVR was, on average, 0:32 minutes with TAFE WA the quickest (0:15 minutes) through to TAFE NSW (01:09 minutes) the longest.
- With the exception of one call to TAFE QLD, all calls were answered within 10 minutes.
Average Wait Time
Average Wait Time
Australian TAFEs
Shortest Wait Time
TAFE WA
Longest Wait Time*
TAFE QLD
*We disconnect calls that go beyond a 10-minute wait time, so the actual wait times may be longer. ACXPA Members can see the percentage of calls not answered/exceeding the threshold in the members-only exclusive data. Please also note that contact centres often have different queues for different services or functions (i.e. Sales or Service/New or Existing customers) and the experience can be different for each queue.
Exclusive Members-only Insights
How to get your TAFE included
If you’d like to provide full transparency for your customers and gain insights to help you improve your contact centre, and benchmark your contact centre performance against a minimum of five other TAFEs (either same state or Nationally), we’ve got a cost-effective, fixed-price benchmarking service that is ready to order now!
Starting from just $1,297 per month, by signing up for our Contact Centre CX Benchmarking Service, you’ll receive the following:
- At least six Mystery Shopping calls into your call centre each month at random times and days.
- At least six Mystery Shopping calls each into five other nominated TAFEs you’d like to benchmark your performance against.
- All Mystery Shopping calls are comprehensively assessed including:
- A Quality Insights Score (QIS) – the experience measuring the experience of interactions with a contact centre agent using five core competencies and 18 call-handling behaviours.
- A Contact Centre Accessibility Score (CCAS) – measuring the experience of connecting to a live contact centre agent across five competencies and 30 elements including IVR navigation times, wait times, IVR performance etc.
- The overall performance score – ACXPA Contact Centre Insights score (ACCIS).
- For your own six calls, you’ll receive additional insights, including the employee’s name (where provided), the quality assessor’s notes about each call and the call recording.
- Monthly data to track your progress and the call recordings and scores for each call made to your business
- A quarterly report containing insights and trends that are easy to understand, along with actionable recommendations to help improve your performance.
- An optional Quarterly Insights workshop (conducted live via Zoom) that can provide additional insights and guidance.
What type of scenarios do we use to conduct the Mystery Shopping calls?
The scenarios we use are typically based on new sales opportunities, however, we may also just have general enquiries about courses, campuses, timetables etc.
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 TAFE – as more TAFEs sign up for the service, more calls will be included.
When you sign up for the CX Contact Centre Benchmarking service, you will receive at least six calls for your TAFE along with every other TAFE 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 TAFEs included?
We’d love to have all the TAFEs included; however, conducting independent Mystery Shopping is expensive! We randomly chose TAFEs to commence our program with and as (or if) other TAFEs sign up to 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 TAFEs with the insights they need to improve performance! When you sign up to our CX Contact Centre Benchmarking service, 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 TAFEs 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 TAFEs 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 TAFEs?
ACXPA Business Members get full access to the summary monthly data for TAFEs (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@acxpadev.com.au
What type of scenarios do we use to conduct the Mystery Shopping calls?
Most of our mystery shopping scenarios involve new course enquiries, timetable questions, etc, where we don’t need to disclose account numbers or personal information.
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 two key reasons:
- Research has shown that these are at the end of typical times customers will wait before they hang up.
- 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.
Do TAFEs really care about the service they provide?
Whilst TAFEs are government-owned, it doesn’t mean they don’t care about the customer experience!
But sometimes, whether it’s through a lack of resources or skills, the customer experience is well below expectations.
When TAFEs focus on delivering a better customer experience, not only is it good for you, it actually makes them more efficient meaning they need less resources in the contact centre, which can then be better directed to improve services in other areas.
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 TAFEs 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 >
