A colleague recently shared his thoughts on old-school employee incentive programs, like Employee of the Month, as an organization’s internal booster of customer service delivery.
Real World Story: “Recently, I’ve been thinking about how employers incentivize employees to deliver better customer service. Many years ago, at a former employer, I attended management meetings as a director. The worst part of our meetings was trying to choose the Employee of the Month.
“Initially, we had no criteria for choosing a ‘winner.’ Any employee could be nominated by any executive. We then voted on all the names submitted for consideration and chose a winner. In a few instances, someone shared a story of an employee delivering great service, not often enough, though. The nominating process eventually became a popularity contest. So, we then implemented an employee-wide voting system in an effort to be fairer. That too quickly became a popularity contest. In one particular scheme, some employees had privately created a list among themselves of the order they wanted themselves voted as Employee of the Month. All participants of this scheme were guaranteed the monetary award and title if they voted in accordance with this plan. And not all employees were on this list, so the incentive was no longer about delivering exceptional service. It was again about who was most popular. This then made the process a competition, one in which most employees felt the entire incentive was about brown nosing than elevating service delivery.
“Another problem was, recognition was only once a month—twelve times a year. So, the opportunity to be recognized was limited, which was more of a morale crusher than an incentive to deliver great service consistently. And when employees feel defeated, they will often offer less than stellar service. On top of that, current research underscores the need that employees have for wanting recognition of their hard work on an almost weekly basis!
“As I reflect back to those days, it’s easy to see how outdated incentive programs, like Employee of the Month, were more of a deterrent than a booster to elevating customer service delivery.”
Strategies that Turn it Around:
- Recognize your employees: Employees need to be recognized. They deserve to be recognized. Long gone are the days when we believed receiving a paycheck was incentive enough to motivate employees to deliver great service, day in and day out.
- Recognize them often: Whether or not you have a monthly, quarterly or yearly job performance award, you must look for ways to recognize employees more often. Keeping employee morale high is a daily battle, so why do we reward employees so few times during the year? An old adage states: behavior that is rewarded is repeated.
- Recognize consistent job performance and exceptional performance. In terms of recognizing employees on their job performance, start thinking of it as a two-prong strategy: recognizing employees who consistently and enthusiastically perform their duties and employees who go above and beyond what is required. For example, award consistent employees each week with a thank you card or a $5 gift card. Award exceptional employees every week with time off, free parking closer to the office, or a $50 gift card. Use your imagination. The goal is to RECOGNIZE your employees!
Remember: Employees want to be recognized. And to incentivize them to elevate their customer service delivery, ensure you have a program that is fair to all employees, that happens often, and that truly results in better service delivery.
How does your organization incentivize employees in order to elevate your organization’s customer service delivery?