Workforce Management Featured Article
Build Rewards and Incentives into Call Center Performance with Workforce Management
In the contact center, some agents seem born to the job. They are “people who like people,” and they genuinely enjoy helping others. For most workers, however, call center work is challenging work. Engaging these workers takes effort on the part of call center managers, including motivation and goal setting. The process needs to be an ongoing one: a single motivational program, tried once and abandoned, is not going to help. In fact, it will only waste resources and demonstrate to agents that managers and executives simply don’t care.
While motivational speeches and goal-oriented performance evaluations have their place, most workers know that employee engagement really counts when companies back up their expressions of appreciation. This means providing incentives and rewards for workers who meet or exceed their goals. These rewards should be customized for employees, according to a recent blog post by Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo. “Incentives” and “rewards” are not the same thing.
“Don’t make your program one-size-fits-all,” he wrote. “A new hire should not be incentivized in the same way as a five-year veteran. Your top performers are already highly motivated – the program should reward them in a way that inspires those just under that top 5 percent or 10 percent tier to up their game. Likewise, strive to incentivize ‘average’ agents into stars, and those that are struggling to achieve a more consistent performance.”
Pressing high-performers with incentives to “improve” may make them feel like their already-considerable efforts aren’t appreciated. Likewise, offering average performers accolades may not induce them to improve their performance. This is why incentive and rewards programs need to be carefully considered and tailored for each category of performer. By customizing the program, you can include all agents and not just the top performers. This is important for bringing the whole workforce up, wrote Ciarlo.
“Contests can be motivating, but if awards are only bestowed on the top three performers in a month, that won’t do much for the agent who also improved his job performance but finished fourth,” he wrote. “Make sure everyone who is getting better is sharing in the accolades for doing so.”
The rewards and incentives can be in the form of money, recognition (“employee of the month” and a photo on the wall), non-monetary rewards (a primo parking spot close to the building) or first pick of vacation time. (Workforce management solutions can help keep track of where agents should be in the priority list for rewards based on performance.)
In fact, according to Ciarlo, workforce management software can play a key role across every aspect of employee engagement programs. By building the programs into the workforce management, managers can ensure that these incentive and reward processes are ongoing and not something that will be forgotten next week.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi