Criteria for Help Desk Incentive Program

[winniethepooh]

I'm trying to create an incentive program for a 3 person software help desk. We assist callers who have problems with our propriety software application. We handle simple problems (Tier 1) and more complex (Tier 2) problems. Some problems can be handled on the phone (Tier 1) but other require more research (Tier 2). If an issue goes outside of our area, we are at the mercy of the second group for turnaround times.

I'm struggling with what areas should be included in the incentive program. We don't measure the typical call center areas such as talk time, wrap, etc. Obviously, quality is one area.

Ideas on other areas to monitor and incent?
Thanks!

[Dismuke]

If "one call resolution" is an important goal, perhaps there is a way you can track that for the center as a while and incent accordingly.

Do you have a way of sending some sort of customer satisfaction survey to your callers after their issues have been resolved? If so, you could ask various relevant questions about their experience and, based on the results, give the help desk an overall "report card" and make that a factor in everyone's incentives.

Another idea is to announce that there will be a "mystery caller" who will call in about a certain difficult problem - and the representative who was most helpful and effective will receive a nice bonus. That is an idea I used in a call center where the customers were often irate and sometimes even deliberately mean and cruel towards the reps if they did not like the policies that the reps accurately communicated. The prospect that an especially irate customer might potentially be the "mystery caller" helped them maintain a bit of perspective when dealing with the verbal abuse sometimes dished out by such customers. Indeed, it was not uncommon for a rep to announce: "I think I might have just spoken with the mystery caller - this lady was downright nasty!" By the way - we never did tell the reps that the "mystery caller" was, in fact, nothing more than a genuine customer. What we did was simply keep a file of all difficult calls that were uncovered during normal monitoring for the period of the contest. The customer on the call where the rep was most helpful in a difficult situation become the "mystery caller" and the rep was rewarded accordingly. Dealing with irate callers may not be as big an issue on your help desk - but the concept of a mystery caller can be adapted towards other skills such as helpfulness, accuracy of information, speed of resolution, troubleshooting skills, etc.