Is reducing overheads and outgoings one of your aims for the upcoming year? For many Australian businesses, the answer is yes.
Faced with challenging economic conditions, enterprises are searching for savings to help them maintain profitability and, indeed, stay afloat.
This year has seen a spike in insolvencies, with rising costs, weak growth in demand and higher interest rates taking an unfortunate toll.
Some 14,722 companies entered external administration in 2024-25 for the first time, according to ASIC’s most recent report. That’s a 33.2 per cent rise on 2023-24’s figure of 11,053 and clear evidence businesses of all stripes and sizes are feeling the pinch.
Against that backdrop, finding ways to operate more cost effectively makes sound sense.
Taking the axe to an important asset
For some leadership teams, the contact centre may be a tempting target for cutbacks. Reducing staffing levels and replacing scores of human agents with chatbots that can, more or less, do their job can seem a straightforward way to bank some savings.
Alas, things are rarely that simple, as some large operators have learnt to their cost in recent times.
Take Australia’s signature airline, for example. Reduced investment in its contact centre in the wake of the Covid crisis saw Qantas marked down dramatically by customers who, understandably, were less than enamoured with having to make multiple calls and spend hours on hold, to have their issues resolved.
Coupled with unhappiness about lost baggage, cancelled flights, and dubious employment and business practices, this contributed to significant reputational decline. That decline that was subsequently reflected on its balance sheet, in the form of a 16 per cent year on year decline in profits for 2024.
Spending money on staffing and training to deal with customer service issues has since seen things turn around, with Qantas’ improved performance singled out for mention in a 2025 survey by US travel reward search engine Point.me.
Protecting what matters most
The Flying Kangaroo’s experience would come as little surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to the evolution of the contact centre over the past decade.
During that time, it’s shed its standalone status and has morphed into essential infrastructure – a customer experience hub that can have an extraordinary impact on brand reputation and value.
That’s why ahead of the curve players aren’t seeking to slash their contact centre spend. Rather, they’re investing strategically in platforms and practices that enable their agents to deliver the exemplary service today’s customers expect and demand.
Drawing on the power of AI can, for example, allow a business to provide its agents with instant access to comprehensive customer data and automated summaries of callers’ past interactions with them.
Having this intelligence at their fingertips enables agents to understand and resolve issues more effectively at first contact.
So does providing agents with context-based suggestions and prompts, delivered in real time, that can help them answer unusual questions and deliver optimum outcomes at speed.
Why expert advice can be money well spent
Ensuring you derive maximum benefit from the investment you make in your contact centre isn’t necessarily straightforward.
That’s why it can pay to draw on the expertise of seasoned specialists – customer experience consultants who can share invaluable insights into how to support your agents more effectively and elevate the speed and quality of the service they deliver.
Enlisting their services can help your organisation optimise its use of contact centre platforms and personnel to deliver the sort of standout customer experiences that drive sales, growth and profitability.
Saving yourself from a serious CX mistake in 2026
While reducing costs may be an imperative for your organisation over the next 12 months, seeking savings in the contact centre is a short-sighted move. Slashing your spend on systems and staff can do significant damage to your customer experience and brand; driving consumers and businesses into the arms of your competitors who are better equipped to offer the responsive personalised service they’re seeking.
If you’re serious about sales, growth and staying in the black, smart, strategic investment in this vital CX hub will help you get where you want to go.