Dear all,

I am seeking your experience and ideas for the following issue:

I am about to creat a recognition program for our call center agents based on (calls) only, I mean no other ( Key Performance Indicators ) will be involved ( such as punctuality...etc).
Well, I am looking for (costless) awards or (not financial awards) for our agents who manage to maintain a certain score ( for 3 months, and for 6 months)beside the recognition letters they will recieve.
some of which I have thought of:

- certain number of off days.......... etc

well can anyone give me a brighter idea?

I really appreciate it
thanks
Sara

It seems strange you would pick "calls" Sara, this is a difficult metric to really give incentives to as well...it's very adjustable by the agent and more calls isn't truly a good thing all the time.

Are you saying...

If Agent A gives bad quality to customers and loses 5 customers but takes 70 calls in a day, and agent B only takes 55 but gives great service he gets nothing while the bad agent gets a reward?

What about agents who work different schedules? Parttime vs Fulltime, what about agents who you need to pull offline for something else?

At the very least you should do AHT as it at least averages the amount of calls but still gives you a reliable measure of how efficient the agent is.

I'm not sure where you work...but giving paid days off is definetly a cost to any company I have worked at...a pretty large cost in fact.

I would just really worry that your incentives would turn into a "if I drop 3 calls a day without saying hello I can get the reward".

again, while I can't critique your own place of work 6 months is a pretty long time to keep something being tracked. It seems this will do one of two things

a) Discourage any agents from trying to compete who are brand new or just started, afterall there are more experienced people who have a headstart on them.

b) Will make the incentive not seem "real" as it is so far away, alot of workers may not envision themselves still being employeed there in 6 months.

My experience of 'costless' ideas is they dont work. Agents appreciate financial rewards much more. Having seen cars, holidays, mobiles (cell phones), vouchers you name it the only thing that has universal appeal is financial.

Appropos the use of holidays not being financial - have you worked out how much it costs the company - there is potentially a financial loss to the company, if the shift cant be covered adequately because of the holiady. What I'm trying to say is all incentives are financial and cost the company eventually.

You need to ask yourself
1. What I am I trying to achieve overall
2. What are the goals of the recognition programme - is there any synergy or are there other tools we can use?

thanks all for your contributions.

Justin Dechaine
thanks a lot for your informative reply, well I have to tell you this :

I am a Quality Assurance member, what we really do in QA is that we evaluate our agents on ( quality of calls, courtesy...) nothing of (AHT), or (number of calls handled) is involved in our evalution this is assigned to other different departments. So we measure how our agents do the (opening, closing, greeting customer, general job knowledge, problem solving.. etc). We evalute agents on mothly basis, 4 calls for each (well I know 4 calls per month for each agent is not satisfactory, but this is due to some business troubles, our agents are about 700 ).
Well my idea is to creat an internal recognition program that is made and run by the QA (based on our work standard). so what I really meant is the final result at the end of each month ( for the 4 calls), just an example if X got for 3 months the result from 88% till 95%, he/she will got the recognition XYZ.


Mr. Closed Account
thanks a lot too for your answer, I can understand it fully now, and thanks to you I will start to change some of my recognition plans.
what I really want to achieve at the end is to give some of job satisfaction to our agents.Yet if you could tell me (other tools) I can use i will really appreciate it.


thanks

Hi Sara

I have read this with great interest as this is something similar to something we designed for a customer of ours however instead on focusing on the number of calls handled we focused on the quality of the calls and introduced a matrix to rate against.

I think that this would be more productive that incentivising the number of calls being taken.

If I can be of any further help, please feel free to drop me a line.

Wishing you every success.

Neil

Sara

Recognition doesn’t always have to be about incentives. For most people the "verbal thanks" from somebody that they did a good job is enough. Ask you agents if this happens enough? I can guess the answer now, because so few of us do it enough.

Rewards also don’t have to be high value. I expect quality in all our interactions so I am not going to heavily incentivising it. Each month the person in the centre with the highest QA score gets a £10 voucher of their choice (even if it means I have to go out of my way at the weekend or on the way home to get it) and a certificate. I make a big fuss by getting everyone together and announcing it.

Sara,

>>>so what I really meant is the final result at the end of each month ( for the 4 calls), just an example if X got for 3 months the result from 88% till 95%, he/she will got the recognition XYZ. >>>

and if agent Y maintained their calls from 95% at 95% for 3 months they get what recognition? - presumably none, even though they are consistently performing at a very high level which is arguably very difficult to do.

The trouble with recognition is that you attempt cant grade it, one person's effort might be harder than another's but for less result. Trying isnt the same as achieving.

I'd love to answer all your questions but we are crossing into the field of motivation. I'd suggest you read up on motivational theories before tackling this issue, recognition is only one tool to increase motivation/quality and its by no stretch the best and only tool available.

Neil Wilkins

thanks dear for your reply, it is pushing me toward having my plan completed.
so can you tell me some of the (rewards) you included in your matrix?


Andy Brown

thanks to you Andy. Well I agree fully on what you have mentioned about (lack of verbal thanks). Well what made me really think of something rather than verbal thank is the current situation in our call center. Big business is being done, lots of calls, pressure, management busy with operational projects (we are a Mobile operator which is very young-one year).
I loved the voucher idea, and I will include it.


Closed Account:

thanks for your point. But should I understand that you disagree on having a recognition plan? or just you disagree to its mechanism I am going to implement. If it is the second, I assure you that the way of recognizing our people will go through many stages according to what my boss sees. I will read what you have advised me with. But yet, I think I could not get your point.

(((and if agent Y maintained their calls from 95% at 95% for 3 months they get what recognition? - presumably none, even though they are consistently performing at a very high level which is arguably very difficult to do. )))
why not? there will be surly something for them. Did not they get 95% for 3 months?

((((The trouble with recognition is that you attempt cant grade it, one person's effort might be harder than another's but for less result. Trying isnt the same as achieving.))))
for this you are right. That is why I have included something like a ( recognition letter to all staff with the achievement of an agent) this achievement can be (positive attitude with customer, handling an angry customer rightly, give customer satisfaction, excellent job knowledge within a call....etc) regardless of the score of the call.


thanks all

Hi Sara

Because budget was tight what we agreed on was to buy a shield which had 12 mini shields on it and each month the person with the high quality score had their name (and their teams name) engraved on the shield and they kept the sheild on their desk. The shield itself was presented by the QA manager at a monthly breakfast meeting that the whole call centre attended.

With regards to other ideas, I have a whole list that I would be more than willing to email to yourself.

Wishing you every success.

Neil

My advisors calls are dip checked weekly and a score is given; achieved - if they have met company criteria, not achieved - if they didnt and a development plan and extra coaching support is put in place. If i am `WOW`ed an Exceptional quality score is given and this is enough of an insentive, every single advisor remembers their `exceptional` (also a personal letter from the head of department is sent to the advisor at home) and they talk about it to others which in turn encourages others to deliver better than their best!

Is that a call centre term? Or a bit of English slang (as in checking a car's dip stick?)

My slang i guess, all calls are taped so i randomly select one.