The results of an extensive survey of contact center incentive programs. Survey results were presented in a webinar and here are the slides. More than 50 questions were asked such as: What percent of payroll do you spend on incentives? What activities do you reward and what has improved? What are your agent attrition rates at various stages of early tenure? What prizes do you make available? Describe your most and least successful contests?

1. Survey of Incentive Programs

2. Incentive Programs – The bad news Short lived Prior behaviors return No connection with agent score cards High maintenance Try to keep fresh Manual input & update results What prizes to buy

3. R+Incentive $ “Want-to-do” curve Discretionary Effort R-Base $ MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS “Have-to-do” curve The good news - We all can do betterDr. Aubrey Daniels 20% - 40% People will produce more to achieve something they want, than they will to avoid something they don’t want. B.F. Skinner

4. 30 Contact Centers from: USA Canada South Africa Columbia

5. Industries: OTHER: One Call Credit Monitoring Roadside Assistance

6. Number of sites in your company:

7. What does your contact center do? OTHER: Locate request ticket processing Lead Generation Telemarketing

8. How do you communicate? OTHER: Fax SMS walk-in service Internetfax

9. Types of Contact Centers Inbound = 69% Home agents = 30% B to C = 76% Employee feedback = 60% Control at contract center = 46% Control at corporate level = 15% Combined control = 38%

10. Types of Contact Centers All qualifiers are rewarded = 80% Minimum requirement = 88% Individual awards only = 19% Team awards only = 3% Both types = 77%

11. Who is eligible? OTHER: Coaches & trainers

12. How many agents (FTE)?

13. Agent attrition %?

14. Turnover Attack Zone “Attacking” and lowering turnover in the early days of employment will lower the overall rate

15. Incentives for new-hires Tenure Incentives for the first 90 days Decrease in frequency Increase in $ value

16. Incentives for new-hires Encourage “bonding” Learn names of fellow new hires Peer mentoring Live observations Learn names of other team members Performance tips Car pooling

17. Prizes? OTHER: Tickets to Hockey, Concerts, Football

18. What kind of Prizes? Choice Real value

19. What do you reward? OTHER: Exceeding average handling timesticket quality Key metrics: SPH Birthdays Productivity

20. How long do programs run? OTHER: Annually for attendance

21. How much do you spend?(percent of payroll)

22. Is it worth the money? Spending: 53% do not track the spending ROI: 80% do not track the ROI

23. What has improved? OTHER: Better ticket quality

24. How often can rewards be earned? OTHER: Bi weekly we only have weekly programs occasionally Occasionally throughout the month for specific activities

25. How often can rewards be redeemed? OTHER: Annually bi-weekly Rewards points are paid after $25.00 earned if they request the gift card at that time or they can let them build until December.

26. Drawings, games, randomized value?

27. Games are effective

28. How Games Works Achievement Prizes Game Points

29. Simple and proven waysto change behaviors. $ 50 $ 20 x2 $ 10 x 4 $ 5 x 8 $ 1 x 140

30. Who administers it? OTHER: VP of Operations Events & Communications Coordinator A national team of 2-3, and one designated contact at each center Operations

31. Internal or Outside help? Use outside help to: Create or run your program: 8% To provide rewards/prizes: 15% Internal FTE to manage: 1.65

32. What technology do you use? OTHER: Often manually

33. Most successful contest? Team competitions traditionally work best because it pushes teams to perform as there is something for the supervisor and top performing agents. Every month, we run a variety of team promotions on products depending on where we are on our budget and that has given us the best results of all our programs. Monthly draw that recognizes most improved agent (month-over-month) It was easy to understand & meet the requirements; you earn a ticket, a ticket is drawn & the winners get to choose a prize Ad hoc chance for all to win Large gift programs Christmas theme run up in 2008 earning points in December towards trips, prizes, vouchers and time off. Awarding two points for each time a behavior was exhibited during a month (obtaining a 2-year contract extension). Co- values promotion

34. Most successful contest? We used a "star Trek" theme to promote a new service offering. Agents earned points for their team based on quality monitoring of their calls to see if service was offered. Team points were accumulated and both team and individual prizes were awarded. Individuals who achieved a specific target were entered into a draw from which the winners were chosen. Increased service offerings by 1000 percent Out contests for most improved - with having large items such as bikes as prizes. As well as a contest to drive Sales - with most average sales at the end of a quarter - prize was a paid trip for 2 to Mexico..... was to drive behavior change in the center Anything team driven, when teams are selected at random. Carn-e-val electronic billing incentive. We rewarded staff for signing customers up to paperless billing. Each entry went into a draw, and we did multiple draw per day to play carnival style games. Incentive went for 6 weeks, budget was $2500, garnered more than 2000 signups. That drove a reduction in postal costs of roughly $20,000 annually. We have quarterly sales promotions that focus on specific products. Financial incentive based on personal performance over a specific threshold.

35. Least successful contest? Programs that reward single staff in a large group cause the poor and mid performing agents to loose focus as they know they will not get something and the overall effectiveness of the program is lost! Hard to understand-you meet certain goals & you "compete" with another group & the one with the highest number would win & move on to pay another team- Month long, only top performers are eligible Requiring registration on external website, to then take training, which you had to pass with 100%, in order to even be eligible for the add-on contest that month. Saw only 30% participation from an audience that is normally 65-80%. Chili cook off. People just weren't interested Having a Contest for a Contest idea - this was a monthly contest to have the agents come up with contest ideas for the center to use. Money cage for top 3 performers - too little incentive to motivate the masses

36. Most effective part? Prizes/rewards Offered performance tracking Flexibility Ease of administration, user friendliness & prizes offered Recognizing effort and talent. Rewards offered, team work involved in implementing the program Pay for Performance Performance tracking, user friendliness and tracking selection of prizes and automated shipping recognition and communication Performance tracking is the most effective. If agents do not reach the minimum target are not eligible for the big rewards prizes/rewards Ability for associates to see money left on the table Our reporting allows us to provide daily/weekly/monthly stats to agents for constant monitoring of their progress The most effective part of all our incentive programs is the recognition that comes with it. Personal accountability and uncapped awards.

37. How could it be better? Have a budget to institute a points based system where agents accumulate points that can be used to purchase merchandise. Better prizes/rewards Higher budget increased budget make it more fun & interesting More employee level input Automate the full program Timeliness Individual based and not dept. based Not much communication and having more people tasked with active involvement in cheering up and pumping adrenaline to the programs to gain more focus/attention Improved communications Tracking System

38. How could it be better? Make it more fun with immediacy of the pay out. Currently it takes almost a quarter to get the previous quarters results, tabulate them and then figure out who qualifies before they get paid out. The meaning of the reward is lost in the delay To make it more fair for all of the various teams within our centre. I would really really like to learn of more ideas. Having a forum to discuss and brainstorm different ideas would be great - we need "Change" some new ideas - as it gets stagnant Ability to impact all critical behaviors with one incentive Ability to reward more on the fly rewards without the hassle of getting the extra dollars approved. They change all the time, so we'd like to be able to change the theme, but keep consistent back end processes. Easier reporting

39. Incentive programs best practices(especially with Generation Y & Generation X employees) Reward behaviors as they happen Micro-goals Provide fun and excitement Random intermittent reinforcement Immediate and separate from regular payroll Give choice of rewards

40. Resources: CCPF (ning) Forums, Events, Blogs, etc. Snowfly: Resources > White Papers & Research: Games, Work and Human Motivation Keeping Good People after you hire them 15 Great Ways to improve your Incentive Program Paper or plastic? Learn how a grocery bag full of money can be used to improve KPIs in the contact center. Video educational material One-on-one demonstration On-line demonstration LinkedIn Contact Center Incentives Contact Center Performance Forum World Wide Contact Center Professionals

41. Questions? Bob Cowen 248-324-1161 rcowen@snowfly.com Tyler Mitchell 307-745-7126 tmitchell@snowfly.com Kay Jackson 609-788-3555 kjackson@responselearning.com