Before David Mussa joined hotel chain Wyndham International as vice president three years ago, it was doubtful that he had any idea just how important the concept of motivation and incentives would become to him.
Mussa joined Wyndham at a time when the company's Irving, TX-based call center was experiencing annual turnover of about 150% and was conducting between 20 and 25 training classes per year to keep up with all the new hires.
"When I started, my number one goal was to reduce turnover," says Mussa.
His first step was to examine the call center and the agents who worked there to find out why employees were so unhappy. He conducted informal and formal focus groups to find out directly from employees what they liked and didn't like about working in the center.
"I spoke with every single employee, from the reservations agents to the highest directors," he says.
With the information garnered through the focus groups, Mussa was able to construct a motivation and incentives strategy. The program was so successful that within one year, turnover was down to just 35%, and the center was able to reduce its staff of reservations agents from 200 to 135 without increasing average handle times.
"I knew that by focusing on motivation we could make some improvements but I didn't realize just how far we would go," he says.
We'll go into more detail about Wyndham's motivation strategy a little later on. But one of the fundamental reasons that it is such a success is because the company recognizes that motivation takes more than pizza parties and company prizes. To motivate reps, Wyndham had to address the underlying cause of agents' dissatisfaction
"You have to stop and think about what really matters," says Rebecca Gibson, performance and education consultant with ICMI (Annapolis, MD). "There's no magical prize that's going to save your call center."
Motivation vs. Morale
Before you can implement a motivation and incentive program, you must first understand the difference between motivation and morale.
"Morale focuses on long-term values," says Kimberly King, a consultant with InterWeave (Tampa, FL). "But parties and games don't touch morale. Morale happens when you create a trusting environment where supervisors communicate with agents in an honest, direct and inspiring way."
Merriam-Webster defines morale as "the mental and emotional condition (as of enthusiasm, confidence, or loyalty) of an individual or group with regard to the function or tasks at hand."
While it sounds simple enough, lack of morale is often the underlying problem in many call centers. When agents don't feel trusted, respected or valued, it translates back to their work.
For example, in an anonymous blog maintained by a call center agent, the author frequently states how lack of recognition from supervisors and other high-level executives has taken a toll on employees' morale. In one entry, the blogger tells the story of a pizza party meant to be an incentive for reps. However, during the entire meal, the call center's general manager (who sat in a nearby office) didn't take the time to join them or even acknowledge their presence.
The story illustrates how easily something that is meant as a motivational gesture can actually have the opposite effect. In this case, agents were actually de-motivated by the manager's lack of attention.
In another entry, the writer explains his lack of motivation to assist with high call queues once his shift has ended: "This is not just because I don't care anymore, I still do to some extent. But I notice that even the supervisors and senior people don't stay around either. There could be calls holding more than [five minutes] and they leave. It's just understood by everyone, and never discussed."
So what can you do to prevent your agents from getting as frustrated as this blogger?
King advises her clients to first review three main areas of agent needs:
- Physical needs. Are agents working in a clean and safe environment? Is equipment such as chairs and headsets in good condition?
- Mental needs. Do agents receive enough training and coaching to do their jobs with confidence?
- Emotional needs. Do agents have a sense of belonging and experience positive relationships at work?
"You can have all the money in the world for incentives," says King, "but it won't help a bit if you don't create an environment that fulfills these employee needs."
Have a Plan
"If you don't know where you're going, you won't know when you've gotten there," says Anne Nickerson, president of training and consulting firm Call Center Coach (Rockville, CT).
Most experts recommend that think about exactly what you hope to accomplish. Review your company's goals for the year and find a way to relate those goals back to the call center.
"Avoid 'flavor of the month' goals," says King. "Look at the big picture. Determine what you want to measure and how it relates to agents." One place to start can be with your company's mission and value statement.
"A lot of companies miss out on opportunities to provide meaning by not ensuring that employees understand the company's strategy, how they fit into it and what they do on a daily and hourly basis that contributes to it," says ICMI's Gibson. "It might be hard to articulate this to individuals but it's something that needs to translate into the daily conversation between agents, coaches, trainers and supervisors."
Communication between supervisors and agents is key. According to a recent survey conducted by ICMI and authored by Nickerson, one of the most frequently cited reasons for leaving a company among agents in exit interviews was the relationship with an immediate supervisor.
To help improve these relationships, experts emphasize communication and coaching.
"Supervisors have to understand that the prize itself isn't going to get results," says King. "It takes coaching and mentoring to actually drive change."
Feedback — whether positive or negative — is extremely important to individuals. Without the proper coaching in place, incentive programs can actually work against you. In situations where agents don't have any guidance on how to improve performance, the best agents will always win all the prizes while the other agents have no way of catching up. This often discourages low performers from even trying because they question the fairness of the incentive program.
Be clear to agents about what your expectations are and how you'll be measuring their performance.
Gibson advises that supervisors spend time with agents learning about their goals and expectations for the future. "Even if you think that you might hear something that has nothing to do with the call center, you need to keep the lines of communication open," she says.
"People feel motivated when they are included," adds Nickerson. She recommends that you consistently update agents on happenings within the company and the call center. Let agents know how these issues will affect them and how they can get involved.
Nickerson also emphasizes how essential it is for leaders to show a sense of spirit: "You need to be enthusiastic about what you're doing. Spend time connecting with agents, show enthusiasm, and you'll set the climate for success."
Motivation That Actually Works
To find the right motivation techniques for your center, all you have to do is listen to your agents. One of the best ways to do this is to form representative focus groups to find out what really motivates agents. These focus groups should include agents from all walks of life — tenured, new, happy, disgruntled, high performers and low performers.
When conducting employee surveys, be sure to keep your surveys simple and allow reps to respond anonymously. You should consider using a third-party company to assure agents of anonymity.
While most people assume that agents' primary concerns revolve around their salaries, you might be surprised at what you hear.
Nickerson conducted a focus group once where agents said the one thing they wanted to change about their job was the sterile environment and asked management to put fresh plants around the office.
King advises clients to make sure they ask the right questions during surveys and focus groups. "Too many times we tend to ask questions about motivation when we need to be asking about morale."
King suggests asking the following questions: Do you feel you're getting the appropriate amount of communication from your supervisor? Do you feel confident in your job? Do you feel you can trust your supervisor?
David Mussa's team at Wyndham International was able to gain tremendous insight from focus groups. He put together informal groups of 10-15 agents to talk about issues in the call center. In addition, a third-party consulting company helped Wyndham conduct formal focus groups.
One consistent complaint they heard from agents was feeling undervalued because they didn't receive enough feedback; agents would often go months without any coaching. Wyndham's agent to supervisor ratio was so high that some supervisors weren't even sure who they were supposed to be coaching.
In response, the company hired more supervisors and made it mandatory for agents to spend at least one hour per week with their team leader for coaching.
Wyndham's agents also commented on the call center's facilities, which they felt were messy and dirty.
By doing some inexpensive renovations such as new carpets and paint, agents' morale increased dramatically.
But one of the biggest changes to come about stemmed from conversations about turnover. Most employees assumed that Wyndham's high turnover was due to the high level of call center competition in the Irving area; they assumed agents were leaving for higher pay.
However, Mussa compared Wyndham's starting salary to other centers in the area and felt it was very competitive. "Agents don't just leave for 25 cents more per hour," says Mussa. "There had to be another underlying issue."
At Wyndham, agents are encouraged to increase bookings but Mussa realized that many agents weren't motivated enough to sell no matter what the company said.
To fix this, Mussa developed a sales-incentive program where agents earn commission based on the number of reservations that they book.
"As a result of the sales incentive, we became more efficient," says Mussa. "People were actually coming into work, staying plugged in and answering more calls than they ever had before. Productivity shot through the roof.
"The money I saved in reduced training and staffing costs more than paid for the sales incentives. I paid out about $1 million in sales incentives but saved about $2.5 million in payroll and expenses."
Another source of motivation for many agents is knowledge.
"Agents want to be developed," says Nickerson. "Whether it's creating a career and growth path or training to help them polish their skills, agents like the idea that the company is investing in them."
"A lot more call centers are looking into establishing career paths to eradicate the idea of the call center as a dead-end job," says Gibson. "Whether it's creating different types of specializations or different job levels."
Recognition is also essential. People need to be validated. King recommends public recognition and individual hand written notes. Taking the time to do this makes reps feel as if they're really appreciated.
"I often see hand written notes of appreciate hanging up in agents' cubicles from several months earlier," she says.
Time off and flexible schedules are another reward highly valued by agents. Flexibility might sound like the antithesis of the call center but agents appreciate being able to take a few hours off here and there to accomplish things they might not otherwise have a chance to.
"Agents aren't asking for whole days off but rather the ability to leave a couple of hours early or arrive a few hours later," says Nickerson.
Nickerson recommends an incentive program in which agents earn these hours off when they reach specific performance goals like customer satisfaction, quality and efficiency, consistently over a designated period.
But to keep valuable reps happy and motivated in the future, ICMI's Gibson believes that the very culture of the call center needs to change.
"There tends to be a generation gap in the call center," she says. "We're at a crossroads in our industry because traditionally call centers were run in a very authoritarian manner. But in today's call center many routine transactions of the past are handled by self-service and agents are handling the more complex transactions. Since our expectations of agents have changed, our management style needs to change to reflect this."
Gibson recommends a more collaborative and dynamic management style.
"I hear a lot of complaints that today's workers lack motivation and work ethic," she says. "But there's nothing wrong with the workers, it's the environment that needs to change."
Where the Incentives Fit In
Once you have addressed the fundamental issues affecting morale in your call center, incentives like contests and prizes become much more effective.
There a quite a few incentive companies that offer different options for call center employees.
Snowfly Performance Incentives (Laramie, WY) offers an on-line games incentive program. Employees who meet established performance objectives are rewarded with the opportunity to play on-line games. Agents accumulate points (they can never loose points) in accounts that they can redeem for gift cards or other prizes that you designate.
Dr. Brooks Mitchell, Snowfly's founder, finds that agents respond best to gift cards for restaurants or gas stations or just regular debit cards that they can use wherever they wish.
Snowfly handles all of the administration of the games and provides you with full reporting so you can analyze agents' performance.
If you want to reward gift cards on your own, several companies provide them. For example, American Express Incentive Services (AEIS; Fenton, MO) offers points-based reward card systems. Employees who hit certain performance targets are awarded points that turn into spendable credits on a reloadable reward card.
The Best Present Company (Denver, CO) offers the Best Present MasterCard Gift Card, which is a pre-paid debit card accepted anywhere MasterCarddebit cards areaccepted.
TJX Corporate Incentives (Framingham, MA) offers gift cards that are redeemable at over 1,700 TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods stores nationwide.
Tips To Motivate
Anne Nickerson of The Call Center Coach offers the following tips for call center managers:
- Verbalize and Act with an Inspiring Vision and Mission — What do we want to be and how do we want to be thought of?
- Project a Courageous Spirit — Are you willing to stand up for what you believe in, take risks and admit mistakes?
- Behave with Enthusiasm — Do you attack projects with energy, exude excitement over small triumphs, and affirm other people's contributions?
