Reviewing and Improving CX: Five Practical Starting Points from a Contact Centre Perspective

For most mid‑market and enterprise organisations, the contact centre remains the frontline of customer experience. It is where strategy meets reality – and where CX ambitions are either delivered or undone. Yet, despite heavy investment in platforms, people and process, many organisations struggle to translate intent into measurable improvement.

The COPC CX Benchmarking Report 2024/2025 and Contact Centre Operations Benchmark highlight a consistent theme: improving CX is a top priority globally, but it is also one of the hardest things for organisations to execute effectively and sustainably on their own.

So where should leaders start?

Based on COPC’s latest global benchmarking insights, here are five proven starting points to focus on when reviewing and improving CX from a contact centre point of view – with practical implications for ANZ‑based mid‑market and enterprise organisations.

1. Anchor CX to Clear, End‑to‑End Service Journeys

COPC benchmarking shows that organisations with clearly defined and managed service journeys consistently outperform peers on customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Yet many contact centres still optimise individual metrics – such as handle time or service level – without understanding how customers experience the full journey across channels. COPC finds that scheduling must be designed with appropriate intervals: ≤30 minutes for real‑time interactions (calls, instant messaging; 73% use 30‑minute intervals for chat), and larger intervals for deferred work – aligning operations to the actual service journey cadence.

A strong CX review starts by identifying your highest‑value and highest‑volume service journeys, mapping where customers experience friction and aligning performance measures to outcomes that matter to customers and the business.

For ANZ enterprises operating across voice, digital and self‑service channels, this often reveals inconsistencies between automated and human‑assisted interactions – a gap COPC frequently identifies in global assessments.

2. Use Benchmarking, Not Gut Feel, to Set Priorities

According to COPC, many CX initiatives stall because organisations lack independent benchmarks to understand what “good” actually looks like in their industry and operating model. Without this context, leaders risk over‑investing in low‑impact areas while under‑addressing the real drivers of customer dissatisfaction. COPC finds that 98% of organisations measure service level and Average Handling Time (AHT), but adoption is lower for forecast accuracy: 75% measure staffing forecast accuracy and 77% measure scheduling forecast accuracy — revealing benchmarking gaps that affect prioritisation.

The 2024/2025 benchmarking data shows that creating a frictionless customer experience is both the most important and most difficult priority for contact centre leaders globally. This difficulty is amplified when teams rely solely on internal data, which rarely tells the full story.

Benchmark‑led CX reviews allow organisations to:

  • Compare performance against relevant peers
  • Identify structural gaps, not just symptoms
  • Build evidence‑based business cases for change

3. Break Down Data and Operational Silos

COPC research consistently highlights siloed data as a major barrier to CX improvement, particularly in larger and more complex environments. Customer insights often sit across CCaaS platforms, CRMs, workforce systems, QA tools and VoC programmes – with no single, trusted view.

As a result, middle managers are left managing to partial metrics, while executives struggle to link CX performance to cost, risk and growth.

A CX review should assess not just what data you have, but:

  • How consistently it is defined and governed
  • Whether it is used to drive action, not just reporting
  • How effectively insights flow between frontline teams and leadership

Organisations that succeed treat the contact centre as a listening post for the enterprise, not an isolated cost centre.

4. Rebalance People, Process and Technology

While technology continues to dominate CX investment, COPC benchmarking shows that performance gaps are more often caused by misalignment between people, process and tools – not the absence of technology itself.

The 2024/2025 data highlights increasing pressure to adopt self‑service and AI, while many organisations still struggle with workforce capability, change management and quality governance.

A practical CX review examines:

  • Whether agent capability and coaching align to customer expectations
  • How QA frameworks link to actual CX outcomes
  • Whether automation enhances journeys or simply deflects volume

For ANZ organisations facing tight labour markets, getting this balance right is critical to sustaining both CX and employee experience.

5. Accept That CX Improvement Is Hard to Do Alone

One of the clearest messages from COPC’s global benchmarking is that organisations often underestimate the complexity and cross‑functional effort required to improve CX at scale. Internal teams are close to the operation – which is valuable – but that proximity can make it difficult to challenge legacy assumptions or see structural issues.

High‑performing organisations use external expertise to:

  • Bring independent benchmarking and perspective
  • Accelerate diagnosis and prioritisation
  • Translate CX strategy into operational reality

This is not about outsourcing accountability – it is about enabling internal teams to focus on execution with clarity and confidence.

Turning Insight into Action

Improving CX from a contact centre perspective does not start with technology or transformation programmes. It starts with focus, evidence and alignment.

If you are considering a CX review and want a clear, benchmark‑led view of where to start – and where to invest – talk to Digital Island about a CX health check. We help organisations cut through complexity, align people and platforms, and turn CX ambition into measurable outcomes.

Sources:
COPC Inc. Global Benchmarking Series and COPC CX Standards
2024–2025 Customer Contact & CX Benchmarking Insights [copc.com]