Incentive Pay Programs for Customer Service Representatives

“Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life”(Levitt and Dubner 12). Levitt and Dubner once mentioned in their book “Freakonomics”. According to Oxford dictionary, incentives are something tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity (“incentives”). In business field, incentives are something given by bosses to encourage their employees to endeavour in bringing benefits to their business. For a simple example, the employee who hits the monthly or year sales target will get cash or prizes as incentives. Apparently, these incentives are something that motivates employees maintains their great performance and also to motivate other employee, whoever wants to get the incentives, work harder.

It is clearly that the company is experiencing some growth; however, the management needs to find a solution to solve the arising issue where their employees are lacking of motivation in their job. However, the executive team’s decision to raise pay rates for its customer service staff and the vested profit-sharing plan does not improve the employees’ work performance or customers’ satisfaction.

Customer service studies show that when something goes right, customers give credit to the individual employee dealing with the problem; when something goes wrong, customers usually blame the organization itself. This fact makes it crucial for any

3. In relation to your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with), outline the role that customer service plays in this organisation and its industry as a whole.

Compensating the organizations sales staff through the use properly designed performance pay will lead to profitable sales for the organization. Once again linking compensation to performance will benefit the organization in its ability to pay. It is important to design the compensation of the sales staff in a manner that encompasses all of the organizations goals as communicating with production staff will be a key component of the High Involvement Strategy, and it is important for the organization to demonstrate a commitment to the sales team that the relationship is not just purely financial. Therefore direct compensation for them should consist of a minimum base salary upon which their commissions are added.

A well-articulated compensation philosophy drives organizational success by aligning pay and other rewards with business strategy. It provides the foundation for plan design and administration and anchors current and future plans to the company's culture and values (Kaplan, 2006, p.32). Recognizing and rewarding achievement is the cornerstone of the company A’s compensation philosophy. The mission of the company is to attract, select, place and promote all individuals based on their qualifications. The company believes that performance-based compensation helps attract, develop and retain talented professionals. In addition to base pay which based upon local market conditions and targeted to be above market, the company provides the following types of potential compensation to reward performance:

Cicerone et al (2007) suggests that “Rewarding employees for their job performance that meets or exceeds customer expectations is important because:

Pay for performance systems have further been proven to have two advantages for organizations: attracting more high-quality employees and motivating employees to exert more effort at their jobs. (Gordon, Kaswin) This paper will show the positive benefits of performance pay as

Customer Service managers are driven by annual service quality targets set by top management. For example, Reception staff are targeted to answer 90 per cent of telephone calls within 15 seconds, whilst Engineering staff are targeted with installing 90 per cent of internet connections within 6 working days and repairing 90 per cent of faults within 5 hours. Results are monitored daily. Although bonuses are linked to achieving these targets, these are fairly small (a maximum of £1000 per year). In fact, more action is taken when targets are not reached. In these instances, recriminations and formal warnings of poor performance are the norm. Bad news travels faster than

Although research generally confirms that pay-for-performance plans can influence greater outcomes, it is unclear how effective different pay plans are relative to each other (Park, 2012). Like most things in business, compensation is something that requires evaluation, study, assessment, strategy, modeling and integration.  Achieving a pay for performance culture does not happen without paying attention to the behaviors, activities, rewards and motivations that have to be linked and reinforced through a well engineered and successfully executed process.  Actually if that process does not tie rewards to shareholder financial objectives, employ the proper mix of compensation elements, result in meaningful dollars, embrace performance that employees can impact and are effectively communicated and reinforced, then the results it produces will likely fall short (Vision Link Advisory Group, 2013).

1. Incentive compensation is a major practice that has continually been adopted by healthcare organizations, especially for managers. Most of these organizations use this tool as a means of rewarding employees financial for outstanding performance. Generally, incentive compensation involves the use of monetary reward for managers to attain specific established goals. Therefore, incentive compensation can be a motivational tool that benefits health care managers and the entire organization because it enables managers to achieve greater compensation while promoting organizational productivity. As the Chief Executive Officer of a hospital, I would design an incentive compensation program for my management team by aligning the financial rewards with business objectives and people costs. This will involve the use of a comprehensive approach that examines basic pay, health benefits, incentive opportunities, and retirement programs. The alignment of the compensation program is geared towards promoting organizational productivity and employee motivation.

It is imperative to satisfy customers and give them an amazing experience at the company. While it cost less to sell to existing customers and companies can increase profit by selling to the same customers; if customers are satisfied, there is more chance they will come back for more services or products. Satisfied customers are a free marketing for the company. However, it is the opposite if customers are dissatisfied. Dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people about his or her experience (O’Brien, A & Marakas, G. 2004). If by any reason, representatives see that the customer is not satisfy, they should act fast and fix the problem. Furthermore, there is more chance for sale representatives to sell to an existing customer that to a new customer. A good strategy for customer retention is to reward good customers. Companies can easily do

Keeping employees motivated in addition to creating incentives and/or additional ways for employees to receive more compensation will create better performance overall within an organization. Contrary if company B gives their employees incentives to perform, without any motivational tactics they probably will not have as many top performances as company A, in addition the company may only seek short term rewards verses have long term success. Lack of motivation for employees within an organization, can cause long term damage for the company’s success. Different things motivate everyone; therefore there should be a system in place to keep employees motivated for the long term success of the company. In the MBM textbook under the concept of incentives, compensation, and motivation, there are a couple of different views of how it should be applied within an organization. We will discuss The Social Role of Profit, Personal Profit and Losses, and the way Market-Based Management view how incentives, compensation, and motivation should be applied and the things that effectively drive employees’ actions while at work.

Pay for performance is a quite rational theory. According to the U.S. Merit System Protection Board (2006), “Pay for Performance refers to a pay strategy where evaluations of individual and/or organizational performance have significant influence on the amount of pay increases or bonuses given to each employee” (p.1). This theory hope to use different salary to motivate and punish the employees according to the evaluation of their working performance. However, in the real world, it is very hard to implement in every organization, particularly in government and nonprofit organizations.

An incentive pay program can reward employees who continue to produce superior work or encourage employees who already produce good work to best. Sometimes, use an incentive system when employees are lack of enthusiasm of getting down to work and improving things. If everyone in the same job classification gets the same pay, there is no real incentive to do an outstanding job (French, 1990). Various incentive plans used to motivate all employees such as production staff, sales staff, administrative staff and managerial and professional staff on an individual basis. To be improved employee work performance, the incentive pay programs need to be fairly matched with the employees’ expectation. Properly designed and maintained incentive pay program has the potential to increase employees’ productivity and work performance.