Incentive Program for Quality

[sluelf]

Initating an incentive program to promote high quality standards to achieve high quality performance and scores.

Can anyone recommend any ideas on an incentive program, how to measure the program and how to reward? Would you have a sample of an incentive program that addresses quality?

[ctaylor]

Sluelf- You have hit upon one of the most challenging aspects of contact center operations and the center management is often to blame when Quality incentive programs fail.
Let me share with you a story I have seen many times before;

The 'Company' decides that they can improve customer retention, increase customer satisfaction and increase sales revenue if they delivered a 'higher quality customer experience'. So a memo is writen to the Call Center Manager informing him/her that the company is now 'Quality Focused' and they are instructed to implement the appropriate processes and procedures to make this happen. All of this sounds good so far. Then the other shoe drops... No increase in Budget to create quality programs, no change to the existing contact center performance evaluation so you are still being evaluated on SLA, AHT etc. So you are in a 'no-win' situation. The problem of course is one of alignment.

In order for a Quality program to be effective it must be aligned with corporate goals and must be supported. Once you have aligned the Quality goals with that of the contact center and the organization then you can develop practices and procedures to make it happen. Customer Satisfaction is likely the 'cleanest' form for evaluating quality. Customer satisfaction is whatever you customers say it is. I would recommend funding an initial survey of Customer Sat (unlless you already have this info) and establish a process to review new survey results at least quarterly (monthly is better). Once you have your evaluation metrics in place, then you can focus on what you can do in the call center to achieve positive improvements.

I would suggest that a good quality incentive program would include incenting an increase in FCR or First Call Resolution...was the customer able to get what they wanted when they called us or did they have to call back or contact us through another channel. I would also look at incenting 'mean time to resolution' ...how quickly were we able to solve/address the customers issue. Of course you will need processes in place to benchmark and then evaluate any otf these initiatives.
Adding "is there anything else I can help you with today" is a tried and true mechanism for surfacing other issues that may be impacting Customer Satisfaction and therefore Quality. You will need to make it clear to your management and to your agents that AHT will (or at least should) rise as you implement the new quality procedures in the centers and your agents need to know that they have more freedom in terms of call length to ensure they deliver a quality experience.

Those are a few of my initial thoughts, I hope that you find them helpful. Please don't hestitate to contact me directly if I can be of any further assistance at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com.

Colin