Should CSRs Be Paid for Performance?

advocates suggest, is to spread the competition across teams rather than individuals, with shared incentives and bonuses going to the whole team. In this type of scenario, higher-performing agents provide mentoring and motivation to lower-performing ones for the benefit of the whole team.

Fluss also says that adding a little variety can help ensure that the program reaches the largest number of employees.

"You can't have one rewards system that's right for everyone," she states. "There are some people who will work harder for a trophy and others for more money."

Additionally, incentives, bonuses, and rewards in general will not appeal to everyone. "They will drive the behaviors of some but not others," Fluss contends. "There will always be some people who come in at nine and leave at five, and there will be others willing to put in a little extra for some kind of reward. There are those who will strive to make the goal and those who will not."

Based on this, companies looking to motivate their work forces "need to understand what their employees really value, and the answer is bound to differ for each individual," the Harvard Business Review study's authors suggested.

Among the firms that give added incentives or bonuses to employees, spot prizes (such as gift cards and vouchers) are the most widely used at nearly 88 percent of firms according to ContactBabel's research. Some firms even reward employees with preferred parking or a free lunch in the company cafeteria.

The CSR-Cash Consideration

ContactBabel, however, suggests that added cash in agents' paychecks might be a more effective motivator. In its research, it found that 44 percent of employees would prefer to receive financial incentives to other rewards.

Fluss also advocates for monetary rewards. "Organizations have the best chance of motivating people by offering tangible, monetary rewards," she says. "It doesn't have to be a big reward, but it should add up to something."

On this point, though, there is widespread disagreement. Not everyone is convinced that additional financial compensation is the best carrot to wave in front of agents. The prevailing thought is that what makes an incentive meaningful is its perceived value, with that value not necessarily having to be monetary.

Kate Leggett, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, says financial compensation is only part of what motivates employees. "Bonuses are an effective motivator as long as the employee feels valued and has a career path within the company and has a job that satisfies her," she says.

Regardless of the type of incentives offered, they need to be "additive," says Brian Koma, vice president of research and enterprise feedback management at Verint Systems. "They should not be punitive." That was also part of what was wrong at Comcast, according to experts. While agents were rewarded for the customers they kept, they were also penalized for the ones that they lost.

"What you're trying to do with any rewards program is achieve desired goals," Fluss says. Particularly in the customer service arena, "agents should be rewarded for going above and beyond to satisfy the customer," she says. "And when you ask [an agent] to upsell and cross-sell, you're asking her to take on an added responsibility, and there should be added compensation or reward for that."

What to Weigh

"You have to make sure that you are focused on the right things," ICMI's Cleveland advises. "You want to establish incentives with goals and targets that are clearly designed, understood, and accessible to all."

And then the criteria need to be "applied evenly across the board and communicated equally to all employees so that everyone has the 

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