Perth Voice Interactive

CUSTOMER call waiting times at Stirling council has been rated the slowest out of six councils surveyed by a customer service industry association, with average wait times clocked at 11 minutes, 22 seconds.

The Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association released their October report on call waiting times after having “mystery shoppers” make repeated phone calls during August to councils, banks, internet providers, electricity companies, and TAFEs around the nation.

Councils were the slowest to answer calls, with the six audited councils making callers wait an average 5 minutes, 22 seconds on hold across three trial calls.

Brisbane council had the shortest average wait at 22 seconds, while callers to Stirling put up with a lengthy 11 minutes 22 seconds of hold music. 

The test callers were given a maximum waiting threshold of 15 minutes before hanging up, and one of the three calls to Stirling wasn’t answered within that time limit.

There was a silver lining for Stirling in ACXPA’s report. While the wait times were long, Stirling was rated the highest of any organisation for actually providing good information once the calls actually got through, with a 87.5 per cent satisfaction rating for providing the customer “with targeted, relevant information”. 

Stirling’s phone operators also led the pack when it came to their “energy” rating. 

We learned of the survey from former Stirling councillor Paul Collins, who’s kept an eye on happenings at his old council via his social media and blog. He posted about Stirling’s lengthy call waiting and mused that it was time to “vote for some new blood on the council” come the October 21 election.

ACXPA has been around for 12 years, describing themselves as an industry association to “help Australian businesses elevate their customer experience”. They’re not entirely disinterested researchers: ACXPA sells training courses to call centre operators on how to improve their customer service.

We asked Stirling council about the survey, and their emailed response states: “The City of Stirling acknowledges that the findings released by [ACXPA] do not align with our community or organisational expectations” and they’re looking at ways to speed it up, including increasing customer service staff during peak periods.

Their response noted August was a busy time given rates notices recently went out, and “this combined with staff shortages may have added to the delay experienced by the mystery shoppers.

“It is important to note that during August 2023 the City’s Contact Centre received approximately 16,800 calls with an average wait time of 7.39 minutes whereas during a standard month approximately 12,000 calls are received with an average wait time of 2.24 minutes.”

ACXPA CEO Justin Tippett tells us their surveys are intended to mimic real-life scenarios where people typically do not make a large number of calls: while averages may vary, for the unlucky caller who does get the prolonged wait time that might make up their sole impression of an organisation. 

by DAVID BELL