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Front-Line Support Incentives
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Front-Line Support Incentives
Publication date: 12/10
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Executive summary
Throughout much of the corporate world, performance incentives have
become almost a religious movement. Stock options, commissions, bonuses,
merit raises, recognition programs—all kinds of financial rewards
and non-financial “gold stars” are dangled in front of employees,
presumably inspiring extra effort to achieve company goals.
For some employees, incentives are a natural fit. Highly competitive
salespeople, for example, certainly thrive in a rewards-driven
environment. Managers also seem to perform well with certain kinds of
incentive plans; here, the greatest value may be that incentives send
an explicit message about real corporate priorities, as opposed to
vague feel-good goals. If the company spends money to accomplish
something, the goal is probably real.
But it’s less clear whether incentives have similar impact on other
employee groups. In particular, early efforts to reward front-line
support agents have a poor track record with using commission plans to
promote sales of upgrades or professional services. In fact, when
these plans have been introduced, the impact has sometimes been a
rapid decline in sales and morale. “I work in support to help people,
not to sell them stuff,” is the typical response.
Nevertheless, the idea of incentive plans for front-line support agents
seems to be spreading in support organizations. The ASP recently took a
look at how these emerging incentive plans are implemented, to see if
we can identify emerging “best practices” and pitfalls. We collected
survey data from 153 respondents and also invited our respondents to
discuss “the best way to encourage superior performance from front-line
support agents.”
Topics include:
- Types of incentives
- Is company size a key variable?
- Individual vs. team incentives
- Salaried vs. hourly compensation
- Performance criteria
- Do incentives really work?
- Lessons learned
Copies of the survey are free to ASP members in the
members-only area.
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