Is it all about the money? Yes, reward is about the financial element - but encompasses more than just cash; Then recognition is about staff knowing that they are doing a good job and feeling valued as a result; And finally, real-time feedback provides information to agents and teams so that they know how they are performing and what good things will happen to them if they raise their game - right here, right now! So for an incentive scheme to be successful it needs to address all three factors.

Balancing efficiency and effectiveness In a sales environment, how do you ensure that the right behaviours are reinforced? It is about having some “stick” as well as “carrot”. For example, be prepared to withdraw the incentive scheme payments from those that don’t achieve the minimum standards you expect. In the run-up to Christmas, one of our retail clients wanted to maximise the efficiency of their call centre at the same time as incentivising agents to sell. The scheme ran cumulatively for a month and each day the ’scores’ for each agent were produced. The whole bonus would be paid at the end of the month, but only if the agent achieved their cumulative thresholds. The results for the centre were astonishing.

Cash, think differently Commission payments worked well in this situation as the money had meaning because of the time of year, but how do you sustain this type of performance uplift across an entire period? Think of alternatives to just paying cash. There are many incentives and motivation companies that administer different types of scheme where your agents earn ‘points’ which then qualify them for prizes. Members that run a house and raise a family then the ability to use the scheme as gift vouchers for certain stores or even a discount off the weekly shopping bill could be important.

Recognition: hidden weapon Each month anyone in the company can post on it a personal thank you to another member of staff - the nomination can be for anything, however large or small. At the end of the month a winner is drawn from those people nominated throughout the month. All winners are displayed on the wall next to the board in the rest room, and - yes, you guessed it - they win a box of Cadbury’s Heroes or any other thing which is can fitted into your budget. To make this more fun all agents have a super hero alias and all nominations are delivered under these aliases. To get everyone’s involvement they even had a charity dress down day - or more to the point, dress-up day - all wearing their super hero costumes!

Creating creative buzz The idea is that every time an order was taken a layer of the parcel could be unwrapped by that specific agent. But the incentive aspect was that the parcel was only available for one hour. No one knew how many layers there were, so would enough sales be made in that period to get to the prize? Worked brilliantly at energising the whole sales team!

Real-time information is key The incentive programmes make sure that agents know exactly what their performance is. For example: Vcare Call Center, have produced highly creative real-time wallboard displays. Their requirement is to analyse key targets by contract and to create innovative and visual media that drives motivation on the floor. The wallboard application displays real-time data and telephony statistics that allow the manager to performance manage without having to constantly browse through various reports to check agent status, lead totals or agents status, how many agents are on call and how many are on hold or on other status. The development approach Vcare uses is very much ‘bottom up’ - getting agent ‘buy-in’ through involvement in the design stage as much as possible.

Game On: The game is used for an appointment-making project. Each time the agent makes a lead, they can roll an electronic dice and move themselves around the board. The wallboard displays mini characters of all the agents. The goal is to reach the finish line and receive a prize. This incentive creates a great sense of interactivity, motivation and participation; all the ingredients that make incentives schemes work. Author: Paul Weald , callcentrehelper.com