What does your Support Service incentive program look like?

Kimberly May

I would like to introduce a bonus based incentive program to Support Services. Does anyone use such a program? How is defined? I am currently thinking of including a bonus based on CSAT performance of cases unrelated to defects or enhancements in the product.

[Deleted User]

Hi @Kimberly May, thank you for bringing your questions to the Exchange! @Justin Nuzum, @Daniel Coullet, @Steve Cloughesy we would love to get your thoughts on this. Have you implemented an incentive program into your organization?

[Deleted User]

There was a great presentation from Sharon Nguyen at ServiceNow on the topic of CSAT incentive programs. I just pulled it up again and even though it dates back a bit, given their success since then, it's worth a look IMHO 😊

https://www.tsia.com/conference-presentations/customer-satisfaction-programs-creating-accountab

@Sara Johnson Have you seen any good examples lately that you'd like to share?

Regarding the implications of an effective incentive program on employee retention, @David Baca touches on this briefly in one of his blogs here:

"What better way to add to employee compensation than incenting your Support professionals with team-based customer satisfaction goals. TSIA’s Support Services benchmarking indicates that the best run support organizations incent and reward their support engineers with a variable compensation option that adds meaning and value above and beyond base compensation." - Dave Baca

Dave Baca

Hi @Kimberly May - you've raised a very important question and one that the Support Services Research Team addressed as part of The Layers of Customer Loyalty (webinar/presentation) located at https://www.tsia.com/webinars/the-layers-of-customer-loyalty.

The topic of Support-focused Customer Satisfaction Incentives is covered on slides 21-23 and reinforced with data correlations that reinforces the old adage, "You Get What You Pay For"! Below are the key recommended practices:

• Comping Support Reps may be difficult due to a lack of sufficient survey replies for the individual. Individual CSAT Compensation should be determined at the group level as an accelerator. Additionally, Support Rep performance reviews should incorporate individual and group performance.
• SS Executive variable compensation should be based, in part, on customer satisfaction survey performance.

The SS Research Practice has supporting benchmark data that reflects the Industry and Peer median values for the variable incentive percentages for Support Reps and for the Support Executive.

I hope this brief snippet helps. And we're always interested in learning about new and innovative ways that others have found works when it comes to incenting Support behavior and performance related to driving Assisted Transactional Support CSAT.

PatrickMartin

Hi Kimberly,

Sorry for the late reply, I've had this tab opened for a while now. We have a variable compensation program for our agents that touches several fronts:

• Incident/Case Management
• Case quality
• Knowledge Management
• Customer Satisfaction

Each area is made up of individual and team objectives that we believe drive the behaviors we expect from our team members. Each has a specific target and is rated either as:

• Not achieved (0%)
• Needs improvement (75%)
• Met Objective (100%)
• Very Good (110%)
• Exceptional (120%)

Each rating is worth a certain percentage of the possible points (as shown above) so it is possible for the agent to exceed their variable compensation amount. This is done on a quarterly basis.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you would like more information.

Stela Koleva

Hi @PatrickMartin - I realize this post is old but if you are still willing to share more information on how you manage the individual and team metrics and incentives, I'd love to hear more.

Thanks so much in advance!