1 800 Flowers - Undercover Boss Draws Wrong Conclusions

How can anyone even think that agent incentives don't work? Incentives in themselves don't make the perfect work environment, but they certainly help raise motivation and morale. Knowing that the company is at least trying to make the agent's work shift more bearable makes the agent think the company recognizes that the job of an agent can be gruesome at times....being cussed at by rude uneducated people, routine tasks, hung up on, is some days simple too much to handle. Stress builds, headaches and body aches ensue as the respondents continue to receive rude comments, hang ups, etc. Having some support, little company logo trinkets, cash bonuses based on performance, competitions between groups, candies, etc have all produced higher morale from my experience as both a sales and customer service agent while working 1-800-Flowers at Datascension and working as Client Services Manager at Orbis Global Solutions for other accounts. I was able to be on both sides and with all due respect do not agree that incentives do not work. Now....if a higher wage was offered that would be much better than an incentive, but of course that is not always possible.
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i know it is altruistic but every call is a sales call. If all, from top down would recognize this then call centers would not be a cost center. Although more often then not a call is made in anticipation of a resolution of some sort even if it is just the satisfaction of being heard, regardless if the paradigm can be shifted to, every call is an opportunity rather than a potential cost and train it consistently to those on the front line, you would see a drastic change in dollars! I know I know, I love living in my delusional world!
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I agree with some of what each of you have had to say but the three big hits are - if the caller is calling because they want to place an order, not calling because we did something wrong the are generating revenue not costing us money. If they are calling for resolution then the tracking systems should be in place to identify the key down falls of the ordering and delivery processes that have generated the call. But your question of why the decision makers fail to see the errors of their ways is because it is their jobs to focus on payback to the shareholder thus the bottom line not relationships. If you want to sway the decision makers you have to define how the relationship downfalls relate to the bottom line in a metric that shows where the bottom line will increase without antedotal information - hard numbers and trust me decision makers will follow the dollars.
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I agree with some of what each of you have had to say but the three big hits are - if the caller is calling because they want to place an order, not calling because we did something wrong the are generating revenue not costing us money. If they are calling for resolution then the tracking systems should be in place to identify the key down falls of the ordering and delivery processes that have generated the call. But your question of why the decision makers fail to see the errors of their ways is because it is their jobs to focus on payback to the shareholder thus the bottom line not relationships. If you want to sway the decision makers you have to define how the relationship downfalls relate to the bottom line in a metric that shows where the bottom line will increase without antedotal information - hard numbers and trust me decision makers will follow the dollars.
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Tripp we created a metric to monetize customer time for exactly the reasons you've stated - it's the missing value in management's decision equation. The book, Customer Why and How Everyone in Your Organization Must Think Like a Customer details the metric and the framework for companies to use it to offset customer-blind and deaf internal metrics. It also addresses employees as internal customers and mutual stakeholders which speaks to your productivity and incentive compensation argument. A very large percentage of employees empathize with the customer metric and view work differently using customer as a performance lens. Jremach - you will see the connection to Taylor, Byrum and Reichheld and restructuring work, processes, metrics and compensation Michael R Hoffman
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Mr. Babbitt - good thoughts, good recommendations but not convincing for a very simple reason: You put "end-to-end" and "systems thinking" in the title of your article. And we all know what happens when "leadership" hears these words: their eyes roll into the back of their heads, they start panting, go into a fetal position, suck their thumbs and think that their brains will explode. The same applies to the true assessment of the cost of running a service desk/contact center - end to end, with all supporting assets and systems being maintained and amortized - not just labor and transactions. Yet, we focus on simple “productivity” metrics ($/call, FCR, AHT, etc.) and locally optimize the service. But the real issue is a philosophic one: Be it manufacturing or service delivery, we insist on considering the relationship between the parties as an adversarial one: YOU are costing ME money when you call! rather than what can be a better model "YOU are calling ME because I FAILED you. The philosophical divide is further compounded by our inability to convince our management/executives/leadership of the error of their ways. Why is it that studies, metrics, analyses fail to move the decision makers? Why is it that progressive practitioners of CRM and call center operators suffer instantenous amnesia and turn to "stubborn bozos" when they get promoted to leadership positions? Just wondering...
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Tripp this is so on target. This was recenly covered at a Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange (session notes: http://bit.ly/afVdUT). There is also a great book on this titled,"The Recovery and Sustaining of the Human Element in Modern Organizations" By: C. Stephen Byrum, Ph.D. In this book he covers constructing a better way using the work of Fredrick Taylor and Robert Hartman. It is very insightful and thought provoking. Bottom line, the McCann brothers need to read it and so do Call Center leaders.
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