Bonus

Seanachai

Hi, I am eligible for a pay for performance bonus in work that is linked to CSATS, coaching scores and attendance etc. I've no problem with the coaching scores and the attendance but we often get bad CSATS through no fault of our own caused by customers complaining about the company that makes the products I support.

Does anybody else have this issue where they work or can they offer an explanation as to why this is the case?. I've asked management and they just tell me that that's the way it is, I requested that our individual performance be completely separated from bad feedback about the company from customers. I can't understand why this can't be done unless there's some technical element preventing it maybe?.

Clearlier

Seanachai wrote: »

Hi, I am eligible for a pay for performance bonus in work that is linked to CSATS, coaching scores and attendance etc. I've no problem with the coaching scores and the attendance but we often get bad CSATS through no fault of our own caused by customers complaining about the company that makes the products I support.

Does anybody else have this issue where they work or can they offer an explanation as to why this is the case?. I've asked management and they just tell me that that's the way it is, I requested that our individual performance be completely separated from bad feedback about the company from customers. I can't understand why this can't be done unless there's some technical element preventing it maybe?.

I used to work in a big multinational that did this. The reasoning is straightforward. By and large the guys in support have a huge opportunity to influence how customers feel about the products. If the customers feel good about the products then they're more likely to buy again. Sure it's impossible to determine how every customer feels about the products but if support staff have an incentive to make the customers feel good then you get better results.

Seanachai

Clearlier wrote: »

I used to work in a big multinational that did this. The reasoning is straightforward. By and large the guys in support have a huge opportunity to influence how customers feel about the products. If the customers feel good about the products then they're more likely to buy again. Sure it's impossible to determine how every customer feels about the products but if support staff have an incentive to make the customers feel good then you get better results.

It's after sales support so the damage is done already in a lot of cases where we get the bad scores. It's often the failure of the company to update in line with software in time etc and it really annoys some customers. Another element is a certain section of the customers being very childish and having ridiculous expectations both of what we are capable of doing for them in support or what the products are even capable of doing.

My point is why should the agent be penalised for the mistakes of the company?. Why can't the scores that are given in the survey for the agent and the company be completely separated, I can't think of a technical reason for it, maybe there's somebody who knows about statistics & metrics who could explain it?.

1hnr79jr65

The only way to guage would be based on a companies individual requirements vs performance.

What company do you work for ?

Seanachai

Sour Lemonz wrote: »

The only way to guage would be based on a companies individual requirements vs performance.

What company do you work for ?

I'd rather not say, I think there's a manager who knows my handle on here. They are very strict about employees discussing work policies on social media, forums etc. It's an American company that has contracts with consumer electronic brands and some IT support. The bonus was offered as our pay has been frozen for seven years, a carrot and stick kind of thing, more stick than carrot though tbh.

You can reach all the targets for your individual performance but if a disgruntled customer sends in a bad review just at the very end of the quarter it can mean you not getting your bonus. The customer could give you a glowing review but if they give the company zero then it's part of the agents overall result.

1hnr79jr65

Seanachai wrote: »

I'd rather not say, I think there's a manager who knows my handle on here. They are very strict about employees discussing work policies on social media, forums etc. It's an American company that has contracts with consumer electronic brands and some IT support. The bonus was offered as our pay has been frozen for seven years, a carrot and stick kind of thing, more stick than carrot though tbh.

You can reach all the targets for your individual performance but if a disgruntled customer sends in a bad review just at the very end of the quarter it can mean you not getting your bonus. The customer could give you a glowing review but if they give the company zero then it's part of the agents overall result.

Best thing i could reccommend is that you go to your quality coach and ask for any call recordings or quality notes in relation to your performance to be sent on.

Then request a meeting with reporting manager to discuss the contrast between the CSAT and your performance.

Clearlier

Seanachai wrote: »

It's after sales support so the damage is done already in a lot of cases where we get the bad scores. It's often the failure of the company to update in line with software in time etc and it really annoys some customers. Another element is a certain section of the customers being very childish and having ridiculous expectations both of what we are capable of doing for them in support or what the products are even capable of doing.

My point is why should the agent be penalised for the mistakes of the company?. Why can't the scores that are given in the survey for the agent and the company be completely separated, I can't think of a technical reason for it, maybe there's somebody who knows about statistics & metrics who could explain it?.

I'm not familiar with your particular scheme so I can't comment on the fairness or otherwise of it. I used to work in a very similar environment to that which you describe and had experience on both sides of the counter so to speak where I was initially a support agent and later did a lot of work reporting and analysing results. As part of the latter I had a very close view and some influence into how the schemes were designed.

One thing that I took out of it all was that you get what you ask for. If you ask people to finish all calls within 1 minute then that's what they'll do. A lot of time was spent trying to determine what would deliver the best customer experience and what we discovered was that there wasn't any one metric that delivered great customer experience because customers needs differ. Some might want you to spend 2 hours on the phone walking them through a process step by step whereas others following the same process preferred that you set them on their way and call back and others just wanted a written guide. The people who could deliver what the customer wanted were the people on the phone, not the managers and not the backroom guys like me.

The results improved enormously when the focus of the bonus scheme switched from the process (any kind of measurable statistic about logs and phone calls) to the outcome - how the customers said that they felt about their experience. Of course you got the odd customer about whom there was nothing you could do but we made sure that there was a high enough volume of responses so that they wouldn't make a significant difference to the final outcome from the agent/team point of view.

That's not in any way to say that what you are experiencing is fair or justified or anything like that. I'm not in any position to make that kind of judgement.

What I do hope I'm giving you is an insight as to why a company might measure performance using customer satisfaction survey results.

All I can suggest to help you is that you keep giving feedback not just about the bonus scheme schema but also about the problems that generate customer dissatisfaction that are out of your direct control. Those kind of changes take longer to happen and often only happen when repeated regularly and from several sources because influence has to be brought to bear outside of your particular department but I did see them happen in my company. I guess I'm suggesting that you see how much more control you can exert over the results. Of course if your company is acting in bad faith then nothing you can do will help but if that's the case you have a whole other set of problems!

Edit to add that when I said that if you ask people to finish calls in a minute then that's what they'll do I should have added that they'll also be complaining loudly because by and large people want to do a good job and they don't like being asked to do something that will result in them doing the job less well than they could.

Seanachai

Clearlier wrote: »

I'm not familiar with your particular scheme so I can't comment on the fairness or otherwise of it. I used to work in a very similar environment to that which you describe and had experience on both sides of the counter so to speak where I was initially a support agent and later did a lot of work reporting and analysing results. As part of the latter I had a very close view and some influence into how the schemes were designed.

One thing that I took out of it all was that you get what you ask for. If you ask people to finish all calls within 1 minute then that's what they'll do. A lot of time was spent trying to determine what would deliver the best customer experience and what we discovered was that there wasn't any one metric that delivered great customer experience because customers needs differ. Some might want you to spend 2 hours on the phone walking them through a process step by step whereas others following the same process preferred that you set them on their way and call back and others just wanted a written guide. The people who could deliver what the customer wanted were the people on the phone, not the managers and not the backroom guys like me.

The results improved enormously when the focus of the bonus scheme switched from the process (any kind of measurable statistic about logs and phone calls) to the outcome - how the customers said that they felt about their experience. Of course you got the odd customer about whom there was nothing you could do but we made sure that there was a high enough volume of responses so that they wouldn't make a significant difference to the final outcome from the agent/team point of view.

That's not in any way to say that what you are experiencing is fair or justified or anything like that. I'm not in any position to make that kind of judgement.

What I do hope I'm giving you is an insight as to why a company might measure performance using customer satisfaction survey results.

All I can suggest to help you is that you keep giving feedback not just about the bonus scheme schema but also about the problems that generate customer dissatisfaction that are out of your direct control. Those kind of changes take longer to happen and often only happen when repeated regularly and from several sources because influence has to be brought to bear outside of your particular department but I did see them happen in my company. I guess I'm suggesting that you see how much more control you can exert over the results. Of course if your company is acting in bad faith then nothing you can do will help but if that's the case you have a whole other set of problems!

Edit to add that when I said that if you ask people to finish calls in a minute then that's what they'll do I should have added that they'll also be complaining loudly because by and large people want to do a good job and they don't like being asked to do something that will result in them doing the job less well than they could.

I get what you're saying about optimising the chances of creating better surveys, my main point is that within the software the feedback that relates solely to the agent should be sidelined and added up separately altogether. The company can do what it likes with the feedback relating to how it's products are made, their repair process etc and the agent gets assessed on if they did everything they could do. It's supposed to be an incentive when in actually has the complete opposite effect, some people have even opted out of the bonus with frustration.