SCA’s damning assessment of super call centres

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

15 July 2026

Financial advisers have been frequent critics of superannuation fund call centres, and new research by Super Consumers Australia appears to validate at least some of those criticisms.

Super Consumers Australia (SCA) has called for mandatory customer service standards after conducting a mystery shopping study of 20 major super fund call centres which it said had ended in the industry getting a failing grade.

“The country’s largest super fund, AustralianSuper, stood out for the wrong reasons, failing to answer 90% of calls,” SCA analysis said.

SCA said it had partnered with Customer Service Benchmarking Australia (CSBA) to independently assess call centre customer service across 1,000 mystery shopper calls.

The full report includes fund-by-fund rankings and SCA noted that consumers could now use its new online comparison tool to see how their fund’s call centres performed in the pilot study.

Commenting on the outcome, SCA chief executive, Xavier O’Halloran said people didn’t just need a health super balance to have a dignified retirement.

“They need to know their fund will pick up the phone when they’re grieving, need to access their money or ask a simple question, and actually help them,” he said.

The pilot found:

• No fund performed strongly: the average customer experience score was just 49.9%, no fund scored above 55%, and none reached the 80% “green zone”.
• Many funds failed to take ownership: 23% of prospective customers were told to “go online” as the only solution. In 58% of calls where someone rang on behalf of a customer with limited English, funds shifted responsibility back to the caller instead of offering direct support to the customer.
• Many funds failed to provide empathy and support: 70% of calls from customers experiencing vulnerability scored 5 out of 10 or lower for empathy. These calls involved people urgently seeking access to super after distressing events, but funds often failed to acknowledge hardship, ask questions or explain what help was available.
• Service was a lottery: individual call scores ranged from 20% to 86%, showing callers didn’t get consistent support, even within the same fund.

“Two funds, AustralianSuper and Team Super, struggled to answer the phone and were therefore excluded from the overall rankings. Just 10% of calls to AustralianSuper connected and 52% to Team Super, compared with 87% overall,” the SCA announcement said.