Feature: Motivation: First contact

According to various estimates, between 250,000 and 400,000 people now work in call centres in the UK – nearly 1 in 50 of the workforce. This growing sector has been attracting suppliers of incentives for some time, many of whom directly target the industry at the annual Call Centre Expo that takes place this month.

These frontline staff play a key role in the profitability of companies, particularly when a tough economic environment creates more competition for business. “It is in a company’s best interest to maintain a good level of [call centre] staff morale and to encourage best practice,” points out Steve Baker, director of sales and marketing at Projectlink Motivation. However, it has not always been recognised that a high turnover of trained specialist staff has a negative impact on the bottom line, he adds. “Call centres have long been looked upon as the ‘poor relations’ of the corporate world but a number of companies now want to combat that for these reasons. Call centres tend to be a large or at least significant sector of a company’s workforce, so the scope for incentives in these areas is large.”

Call centres are particularly suited to points-based programmes with rewards such as vouchers, gift cards and merchandise. “To ensure a degree of longevity within the environment, points-collectible programmes work well, where a variety of measures can be incorporated,” says Andy Cakebread, client services director at motivation and communication company BI. “Cash or cash equivalents do not necessarily fuel long-term performance improvement. They merely provide a short-lived feelgood factor and can mask underlying motivational issues.”

Adam Maher, director of loyalty at Maximiles – a provider of online points systems – agrees these kinds of incentives programmes are well suited. “Call centres have higher-than-average staff turnover rates and this means many are having to spend large sums of money to recruit and train new people. Absence and low productivity can also affect sales revenue or customer retention and directly impact the bottom line.”

Derrick Hardman, managing director of Capital Incentives & Motivation, says it is important to understand this aspect of the call centre audience. “Some of them are more job mobile because they are younger with few responsibilities,” he says. “If companies do find good call centre staff, they really want to hang on to them and keep them engaged in the business and have them long term.”

Ellen Perton, development director at AYMTM, agrees that it is important to find out about whom you are motivating, especially as there can be variations at different sites within one employer. “We run programmes that will work across more than one call centre but the way you communicate needs to be different,” she says. “You need focus groups and to launch it face to face because getting up close and personal is very important. But you have the advantage that you have a huge body of people in one place.”

However, she says there are some common features to call centre staff which means she has developed “a real passion” for that sector. “I love their enthusiasm,” she explains. “The audience like a lot of excitement and fun. You get a tremendous response. With call centres, you get a lot of value for your incentive spend.”

Hardman at Capital Incentives says that the communications need to be fun and engaging. “We do a lot of work in theming the reward programme or incentive and have gone in over the weekend to dress the offices in a particular theme such as pirates, which really works well and gets people buying into it. Call centres tend to be younger and they respond to that type of interaction. It gives our creative people some licence to use the latest fashions, films and pop references that fit in well with their interests.”

While big incentives such as holidays are still used to motivate top performers, smaller incentives are the most common in this environment, says Andrew Johnson, director general of the VA, which represents vouchers and gift cards. “Call centre staff tend to be rewarded little and often, sometimes using ad-hoc rewards,” he explains. “Vouchers and gift cards have that kind of flexibility, and you can give a small amount such as a £10 voucher that people can use. The real benefit is that there is quite a diverse age range of employees in call centres, so you need something that’s going to incentivise an 18-year-old, who might be into music and fashion, up to a 60 year old, who would use them for treats and luxuries. It’s fabulous winning a weekend break but if you are a young working mum with kids and a baby, you might not be able to go, but a real incentive would be being able to buy the children a school uniform.”

Manoj Jadeja, national account manager, commercial, for John Lewis, says that call centres are good customers for the retailer’s voucher, especially as it can provide an instant reward because it is redeemable online as well as in-store. “If the recipient has access to the internet, they can spend their voucher straightaway. In the call centre environment it’s often the case that on-the-spot incentives are used to motivate and reward staff.”

Many call centre staff are in a sales role, which provides relatively straightforward key performance indicators (KPIs) for rewarding against. However, other objectives are becoming increasingly common, says Perton at AYMTM. “One telecoms clients started off with a sales objective because they needed to shift product, but now that their people understand the points currency, they are now much more about shifting other behaviours such as rewarding product knowledge.”

Baker at Projectlink Motivation says KPIs are often related to quick resolution of queries, numbers of queries resolved and overtime, such as at BT Customer Service. “They run schemes named ‘Accelerator’, which incentivises staff for speed and volume of queries, and ‘Overtime’ which rewards staff for going above and beyond. BT Customer Service also provides for higher-level nominations for £150 or £500 – quarterly or biannual awards – for those people who have really gone that extra mile. This means recipients see that there is not just one level of recognition, and that they can win more recognition by performing even better.”

However, Perton says that KPIs such as conversion rates or leads generated are often balanced with rewarding staff for customer satisfaction and how customers were dealt with, based on call observation. “The individual will be rated based on their performance and that can contribute towards their overall score or rewarded in itself,” she explains.

To be truly effective, incentives need to be part of a broader motivational strategy. “The distinction between an incentive and actually being motivated is often overlooked, and this must be recognised to truly engage a call centre workforce,” says Cakebread at BI. “You can incentivise people to achieve targets but motivation comes from the desire to be there, and that comes from being valued and recognised as well as having the right tools to perform the required tasks.”