Contact centres are becoming the frontline of brand experience and key to delivering value to the organisation and their customers. Here’s how forward-thinking organisations are getting it right in transforming contact centres into strategic assets.
In today’s times, Australian businesses are well and truly alive to the advantages a high functioning contact centre can confer. For many, it’s their chief interface with customers, suppliers and partners, and the quality and responsiveness of the service that’s delivered can have a major impact on perceptions and purchasing decisions.
Providing a superlative customer experience is impossible without an experienced committed team but, historically, building and retaining one has been challenging for businesses. Employee absenteeism and burnout are common across the sector and high turnover of agents the norm.
Revolving door recruitment
The numbers tell the story: In Australia, the average contact centre employee attrition rate in FY2024 was 27 per cent, according to the 2024 Australian Contact Centre Industry Best Practice Report. The churn tends to increase as operations expand. In contact centres with 500 to 1000 seats, 43.4 per cent of agents moved on during that period, on average.
Meanwhile, the absenteeism rate across the sector was 12.9 per cent, more than double the national workplace average of six per cent. Remote and hybrid working can compound the challenge of keeping top talent engaged and on the job. Although the flexibility these practices confer is welcomed by many workers, isolation and a sense of disconnection can be the flipside of the coin.
Practical strategies to address the challenges
For businesses that want to elevate their employee experience – and, ipso facto, provide a superior experience for their customers too – investing in initiatives and activities to help contact centre agents do their best work is vital.
There’s plenty organisations can do to move the needle. Regular, structured one-on-one meetings can provide employees with a forum to raise their concerns and share feedback. Augment these catch-ups with frequent employee voice surveys, genuinely listen to the issues and requests you receive – and action them promptly when appropriate – and, over time, you’ll build positive sentiment and trust.
Also helpful: allocating funding and resources to mental and self-care initiatives – think employee assistance programs and mental health ‘first aiders’ who can support their colleagues in the moment and encourage them to seek further, specialised support where appropriate.
Making remote working work better
While remote and hybrid working provide benefits for employers and agents alike, they require careful monitoring and management if they’re to remain sustainable long term. Implementing structured schedules with specified ‘anchor days’ for in-office work enables a healthy balance between flexibility and routine.
Regular staff meetings can help maintain connection and morale within far flung teams, particularly if there’s some space for personal interactions alongside the work-related discussion. Indeed, remote workers typically require three times the amount of communications compared to an onsite worker.
While communications and methods help remote workers, where the work environment is set up specifically for your workers and work types there’s no performance difference between remote and onsite workers.
Offering professional development and recognition
While frontline contact centre work makes a massive difference for services, the work can be stressful, thankless slog at times. By reminding workers of their value and providing training and professional development opportunities it reminds them of their importance.
Side-by-side coaching sessions pairing high performers with colleagues whose skills could use some polish can be beneficial for all parties, as can opportunities to attend tailored education and training programs. New AI quality management technologies can optimise coaching, motivate staff and support their goals.
The deployment of employee recognition platforms is a great way to embed acknowledgment and appreciation of employee accomplishments into your workplace culture.The team that plays together stays together. Take the time to organise regular team building activities – team lunches, birthday celebrations and interactive huddles, for example – along with fun initiatives on the daily and you’ll start to see engagement rise and absenteeism fall.
Also, think about implementing gamification solutions that link to development and recognition and that also deliver significant improvement in retention and motivation.
Seeking assistance from the experts
Improving employee and customer experience can be a challenge for management and HR teams. Seeking professional advice at the outset will help you develop and implement appropriate, cost-effective strategies that make a genuine difference to employee satisfaction, performance and retention.
Choose a partner that has a proven track record for helping businesses deliver the employee experiences that turn disengaged workforces into capable, cohesive teams and you’ll stand the best chance of transforming your could-do-better contact centre into a thriving hub.
Future Models and Technology
Workforce capability or capacity gaps are a killer for employee engagement, so finding an elastic work pool to draw or rent the talent will ensure your team isn’t overworked or put in a position they will unsuccessful.
In addition, a simple service journey with technology enablement easily understood will identify issues, that can rapidly be resolved and unlock staff performance and satisfaction levels.
In addition, AI today has become a strong contributor to employee engagement. For agents, the core activities they enjoy like solving problems for customers are more prevalent than administrative work. Additionally, they are far more empowered with the ability to use AI for them personally to optimise their rosters, quality, training and performance.
Finally, Six Sigma and DMAIC models can also unlock further benefits for the staff and organisation.
Setting your business up for a stronger future
In today’s digitally driven commercial landscape, a high functioning contact centre isn’t a nice-to-have: it’s a critical asset for every Australian enterprise that engages directly with its customers. Improving your employee experience will help you build a better team of agents – one that’s committed to delivering the sort of service that turns one-time buyers into repeat customers and enthusiastic ambassadors for your brand. If that’s a priority for your business in FY2026, now is the time to start doing things differently and better.