Australian customer service still leans on phone calls

Australian customer service still relies mainly on phone calls, according to new research from ContactBabel, supported by NiCE. The findings also show many organisations are replacing or upgrading early chatbot systems.

The study found phone calls account for 64.3% of inbound customer interactions in Australia, compared with 53% in New Zealand. It was based on responses from Managers and Directors at 112 ANZ contact centre operations, along with surveys of 1,000 Australian and 500 New Zealand consumers.

The figures suggest a gap between what businesses think matters most in customer service and what customers say they want. Many organisations rank fast service and first-time resolution as the main priorities, but consumers place more emphasis on the human side of the interaction.

Among Australian businesses surveyed, 86% said first-time resolution was among their customers' top three priorities, while 71% said the same of short wait times. Customers also rated resolution and speed highly, but 44% said polite and friendly staff were a top-three factor. Another 41% cited Australia-based employees, and 41% wanted a choice of channels, including self-service.

The biggest divide was over local staffing. While 41% of Australian customers said Australia-based employees were among their top three customer experience factors, only 17% of businesses thought customers cared about that issue.

Phone pressure

Heavy use of live calls appears to be contributing to longer queue times in Australia. The average speed to answer was 97 seconds, with a median of 55 seconds, compared with an average of 55 seconds and a median of 28 seconds in New Zealand.

New Zealand consumers have shifted more urgent enquiries to web self-service. For urgent issues, New Zealanders preferred web self-service at 35%, ahead of the phone at 32%, while Australians still preferred to call.

That matters because routine voice contact remains one of the more expensive service channels. An inbound phone call costs Australian operations an average of $15.29, compared with $7.75 for a web chat, yet phone self-service accounts for only 2.4% of all inbound contact.

Bot rethink

The report suggests several customer service technologies are being reassessed. Around 40% of Australian organisations using chatbots said they planned to replace or upgrade them, along with 38% of SMS users and 37% of speech analytics users.

At the same time, chatbots topped investment plans for the next 12 months, with 36% of respondents naming them as a focus area. That combination suggests companies are not abandoning digital service tools, but revisiting early deployments that have fallen short.

The research also found internal constraints are holding back change. Two-thirds of Australian operations, or 66%, said a lack of investment in systems and processes was limiting customer service performance.

Concerns about weak strategic vision have also grown. The share of Australian operations citing a lack of strategic vision as a problem rose from 38% to 45% since 2023, against the global trend identified in the study.

Even so, self-service remains central to current plans. Increased self-service was rated the most important strategic priority, with 62% of respondents calling it very important.

Workforce shift

The data also points to operational changes in the customer service workforce. Hybrid working now covers 57% of Australian agents, while average attrition stands at 19% and rises to 44% among outsourcers.

Short-term absence across the sector was reported at 8.1%. Those figures add to the pressure on businesses trying to reduce wait times while still handling a large share of customer demand through live voice channels.

Nigel Lindsay-Smith, Managing Director ANZ at NiCE, said the findings showed businesses had focused too narrowly on efficiency measures. "Australian businesses have spent years optimising for speed, but customers are telling them they also want people - polite, capable, local people - especially when an issue is complex or emotional," he said.

He said the challenge was to use automation in a way that reduced routine work without pushing customers away from human support. "That's not an argument against AI. It's the case for getting the balance right. When AI absorbs the routine work, queues clear for the conversations that genuinely need a human, and keeping service local becomes more affordable. The businesses already replacing or upgrading their first-generation bots understand this. Round two will be won by those who use AI to make their people better, not to keep customers away from them."