2026 SMAART Roadshow: Wrap Up
- Sara Elmstrom
- Jun 9
- 2 min read
What a way to close out the 2026 SMAART Recruitment Contact Centre Best Practice Roadshow. The energy in Melbourne was something else: nearly 500 people in the room, and the conversations matched it. 🙌
The roadshow reinforced what we heard right across Australia: the opportunity in customer experience is enormous. In productivity, in growth, in retention – and in the people delivering it every single day.
Customer experience is one of the most powerful commercial levers a leader can pull. And one of the most underused.
Contact centres provide a window into exactly where friction happens, if leaders are willing to look. 70% of customers say they'll leave a brand after just one bad experience. The SMAART data shows only 39% of organisations say their CX KPIs are understood and driving actionable insight – and a further 33% say their metrics aren't understood at all. Most are measuring with tools built for a different era.
51% nominated process optimisation as their number one priority to improve CX. What's becoming increasingly clear is that years of technology investment has yet to fully pay off. When technology becomes the goal rather than the enabler, the design of how work gets done gets left behind. So do the people doing it: 60% of team leaders receive no structured development at all..
The human side of that story matters more than most metrics capture. The way your people feel at work shows up directly in the experience your customers have. Yet only 23% of organisations currently measure Employee Experience as a CX metric. That's not a gap – that's an opportunity hiding in plain sight.
The gap between where most organisations are and where the best ones operate is wide. But the path is visible. And the appetite in every city we visited this year told us the sector is ready.
SARA ELMSTROM
CEO, CXO2
Sara is a Partner at The Bridge International and CEO of CXO2, The Bridge’s customer experience specialist practice. An experienced executive, Sara spent two decades, working for iconic international brands leading multi-disciplinary teams across strategy, customer experience design, contact centres, and digital transformation. Now, she helps organisations achieve sustainable transformation by combining design thinking, system insight and commercial pragmatism. Her cross-industry career spans financial services, insurtech, health, utilities, and retail, working with brands including Wesfarmers, IAG, RAA, RACQ, icare, Guild Insurance, Virgin Holidays, Coles, NRMA, AXA, AIG, Tokio Marine, and Beyond Bank. Purpose-driven, Sara chairs Bridge to Good, The Bridge International’s foundation supporting Lifeline, Cancer Council, and Dementia Australia and advocates for diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
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