Customer Service incentive help

[mrothenb]

Hello all,
I have been coming to this site for a while now and just registered. I have recently been promoted to call center sup, and need to come up with incentive ideas. I have ideas aplenty from other threads here, but.... my problem lies here. I have decided to use a survivor like game for my sales team. I have quantifiable data that can be used to determine who gets "voted" off. my customer service team however I have no identifiable data excluding available time and talk time. These are not things that i feel should be used in an incentive program. That i feel would encourage shortcutting on service issues, as well as rewarding those who don't need to use the restroom as well as volunteering for off phone duties. I need some ideas that i can use to measure my Service agents in some way. I am working on a retention program so that i can measure the % of customers saved by each agent. , but it will not be implemented for months yet. Any Ideas ?

my service agents are charged with updating CC and banking info on accounts, applying time credits for issues and dealing with disgruntled customers.

thanks
Mike

[Ginny Ellis]

Employee incentive programs can work well or can create competition between team members that becomes more important than serving the customer.

By openly comparing members and voting off the weakest link you stand a good chance of creating animosity between employees. If you run a contest occasionally that rewards the winner, the competition is fair and it will foster a team environment.

Create process flows of the tasks performed by your agents. Assign a key performance measure to each task, and then determine which of the tasks when successfully performed has the greatest impact on the customer. Attendance and above and beyond performance are solid behaviors that can be immediately rewarded. The hardest part is to determine the incentive to reward performance. In today's economy, a monetary reward always works well; however, monetary rewards are taxable. You also have to work within the restrictions of your budget. Additional time off works well also.

If you are assigned the task of incentivizing without funds, additional time off might be the way to go.

Good luck!

[Sunshine]

I too am looking at creating a Survior type contest. I have the same issue, in that I don't want it to be a negative experience.

We are a sales account, so I have a lot of metrics to measure. I plan to have reps "earn" immunity by making certain metrics.

Coming from a customer service background, on suggestion I would have for you is to use quality audit scores to judge them by. This is one metric that is especially important in customer service.

By the way, OrientalTrading.com has a lot of fun decorating ideas for your contest. We have a different theme at work each quarter, and I order decorations, toys etc. from this company.

Good luck with your contest, and please keep us posted on how it goes.

Sunshine

[daveste]

Rather than voting people out of the game, why don't you turn it around and vote people into the game. This takes away the connotation that you want these people out of your team.

Make it exciting when people reach their goals that they are invited onto the island (or game).

Sometimes we just need to re-think great ideas.

[ghorrocks]

check out www.contactcentercampus.com and take the free rewards and recognition course it may offer some assistance to all of you looking for help

[Michcall]

For customer service reps, I would definitely use quality scores and attendance. I disagree somewhat about not using available time as a measurement. The amount of time someone is available is a key performance indicator in a call center. You don't necessarily want to reward people b/c they don't have to use the restroom, but conversely you don't want someone who leaves their desk 20 times a day to get incentivized.

We've used a productivity measurement:

(Total logon time - Not ready time)/total logon time, goal 92%

It can also be modified to add 'off phone productive' work so that workers who volunteer for approved off phone assignments don't get penalized (by subtracting those hours from Not ready).

Is there anything else your agents are required to provide/do that is measurable? Opening a case for every call, 1st call resolution, etc.? There might be other measures that aren't necessarily focused on ACD data.

[Gelo Tan]

I think your idea would create animosity between your team. Voting I think is not a good idea.


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Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.