7 Simple Tips for Designing Call Centre Agent Incentive Programmes

Dick Bourke gives us his advice for creating great contact centre incentives, highlighting seven key areas for doing so. 

Working as a call centre agent can seem like a tedious, thankless job. In some cases, agents spend hours talking with people who don’t want to be on the phone any more than the agents themselves do.

Even in the best circumstances, where customers are calling to purchase high-demand products, not only can each day look the same… each hour can as well.

So it’s not surprising that some call centre agents take an “eight and skate” approach to their shifts.

It’s equally unsurprising that some call centres are satisfied with settling for employees who coast through the day, as long as they’re not directly alienating customers.

But that’s a mistake.

While we’ve known for a while that there’s a correlation between employee engagement, performance and profit, there is that sweet spot where the employee wants to be there and is invested in the outcomes they produce. It’s been well documented that there’s a causative relationship.

According to Martin Hill-Wilson, a blogger and thought leader with a long-standing track record in customer engagement strategy and implementation for call centres, “for every 10% increase in employee engagement levels, a company’s customer service levels go up by 5%, and profits by 2%.”

Recognising the connection between employee engagement and the bottom line, however, is the easy part. The challenge lies in figuring out how to increase employee engagement. And, as we outlined above, that can be especially difficult when it comes to call centre agents.

But difficult is far from impossible. It’s a matter of identifying the behaviours that impact the bottom line and then incentivising employees to do those things.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Choose Your Measurement Criteria Carefully

This is the most important step in any incentive programme. Successful call centre incentive programmes focus on things that improve company performance — and steer clear of things that undermine it.

Focusing on time spent per call, for example, encourages employees to complete calls quickly rather than ensuring that the caller’s needs have been met. Focusing on first-call resolution discourages agents from asking for help when they need it.

The key to getting it right is first to decide what you want employees to do and, only then, to think about how to motivate them to do it.

2. Be Able to Clearly Explain the Link Between Your Metrics and Company Goals

People tend to rebel against rules that seem to exist just for the sake of having a rule. And they have no tolerance whatsoever for rules that dictate the opposite of what they’re supposed to do.

As illustrated by the framework of the P&Q challenge, an important element in increasing employee engagement is being able to clearly explain why the things you ask them to do matter.

If you measure and/or incentivise employees on calls per hour, be able to explain why that’s important and how it impacts the bottom line. And if you find yourself having to really stretch to find a link, that’s a red flag.

If you know the explanation is flimsy, your agents will too. They’ll also think you assume they aren’t smart enough to figure it out.

3. Do not Set Your Call Centre Agents up for Failure

When you give agents a goal, make sure they have the ability to achieve it.

It’s not fair to incentivise agents on first-call resolution, for example, if you have outdated technology that frequently drops calls.

4. Do not Base Incentives on Things that Are out of Your Employees’ Control

Customer compliments make great stories — but a lousy basis for incentives.

This is because no matter how outstanding an agent’s performance is, it’s still up to the customer to call or write with a compliment.

Relying solely on customer compliments can easily wind up with a mediocre agent who served a customer with extra time on their hands being rewarded over an good agent who provided exceptional service to someone who was in the middle of a crisis and had no time to call with a compliment.

5. Focus on Behaviours You Want to Encourage

Sometimes an agent will bend over backwards to make a customer happy, but they do it by circumventing the rules.

Since actions that are rewarded will likely be repeated, you can end up encouraging behaviour you don’t want based on one exceptional outcome.

If you don’t want everybody to do it, don’t reward it.

6. Ensure Rewards Are not Patronising

Rewards that cause employees to roll their eyes and snicker are the kiss of death for an incentive programme.

If your employees truly love gold stars and smiley face stickers, then go shopping for stickers.

But don’t just adopt a particular reward system because you read about it in a blog somewhere. Rewards that employees see as patronising are worse than no rewards at all.

7. Match the Reward to the Person

A gift certificate to a fancy restaurant might be a great reward, but an employee with three toddlers at home and a spouse who works an opposite shift will probably never be able to use it.

Tickets to a major league baseball game won’t mean much to an employee who has no interest in sports. And employees who cringe in the face of public attention won’t enjoy being praised in front of the whole team.

Choose incentives that will have value for the person being rewarded rather than incentives that would have value for you.

Dick Bourke

The biggest misconception about call centre incentive programmes is that they are difficult to design. They’re not — in fact, they’re deceptively simple.

It all comes down to identifying employee behaviours that support your objectives, incentivising employees to do those things, while discouraging behaviours you don’t want, and doing it all in a way that is meaningful to the employees in question. What could be simpler than that?