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Cynthetik, you have first hand knowledge of your own work environment. Respectfully, can you please suggest a better way to manage & compensate that call center? I've never worked in one, so I'm pretty blind to the issues.
I assume, given the importance of the customer satisfaction survey, that delighting customers is important in your employer's business. At the same time, the company can't just continuously "buy" customer delight by giving away the store.
Let's say the CEO asked you for your opinion on the best way to manage the facility such that call center employees are treated fairly and yet have an incentive to delight customers, and employees are rewarded for doing a great job & going above & beyond? What would be your informed advice?
I'm not OP, but it seems like a normal hourly wage plus a commission would be fair, and motivating.
Isn't someone here self employed in a trade? How do you bill our your work and how do you pay yourself a wage from that bill?
When I quote out side jobs I take the customer pay flat rate time listed on Alldata and multiply it by 1.5 if the job is under 3 hours, and I do 1.25 when its over 3 hours (eg. flat rate manual says 2 hours, I charge 3, manual says 6 hours I charge 7.5, etc.). I know I've made the case against flat rate in another thread but it's a good way of charging customers and making up a quick estimate. Not saying its a good way to pay employees, however, as I've seen the horrors that come with it. Cynthetik said it best IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetik
Pay per performance = ways to get cheap labor and not paying workers for things that aren't their fault.
I am a one man show, so this makes sense for me to charge by the job. But when you throw dealership politics, warranty work and all the other pitfalls of working in a shop IMO flat rate is not a good way to do business, but as a one man business where I set the labor times it works good. If I don't want to do the job, or the customer doesn't agree to my quoted price, I can try to work with them or tell them to take a hike if we can't come to an agreement. No skin off my nose. I always said working in the shop "I'm here to fix your car, not kiss your ass" and I've carried that sentiment over to my own business.
I'm not OP, but it seems like a normal hourly wage plus a commission would be fair, and motivating.
I think this is the best pay system to both incentivize employees and prevent employers from taking advantage of their employees. It holds both sides accountable and is the all around best choice IMO, at least for jobs where commission makes sense. Obviously for a janitor or a person flipping burgers at Mickey D's it's no good, but it could apply to lots of jobs.
Last edited by jimmy12345678; 08-14-2017 at 02:43 PM..
I think we went through this in the early eighties. Contracting out was going to "solve all our hourly employee problems". It applies to draftsmen, trucking, construction, etc. The scammers still played the system as it changed, the draft horses still pulled their weight plus, those with a work ethic and awareness that their absence hurt other still showed up, and the relatives of management still milked it for all they could, because they could.
People don't change even if you change the system.
All the arguments I've heard against hourly pay and in favor of a pay per performance system sound good on paper but fall flat when applied to real life IMO. I've heard "it incentivizes employees to work quickly and get the job done faster", which is true, but their quality of work WILL suffer 9 times out of 10. Sure, some guys can cope with the pressure and still achieve quality results, but more often than not that pressure leads to taking shortcuts and cutting corners and their quality of work plummets.
Seen this example many times with contractors who underbid a job just to get it and now they're scrambling to penny pinch and corner cut anyway they can in order to somehow make a profit on the job. Also saw this at the dealership, service writers underselling a job just to sell it and the tech suffers because they sold a 6 hour job for 3 hours and the tech loses their ass, but the service writer doesn't care because they still make their commission (and can't forget about that all important customer survey!). Meanwhile the tech works 3 hours for free under flat rate, with no recourse to do anything about it.
Putting pressure on employees doesn't make them produce more quality work, it makes them produce more crap work. But it was done faster so it's better, right???
I think this is the best pay system to both incentivize employees and prevent employers from taking advantage of their employees. It holds both sides accountable and is the all around best choice all around IMO, at least for jobs where commission makes sense. Obviously for a janitor or a person flipping burgers at Mickey D's it's no good, but it could apply to lots of jobs.
They (companies) could also offer profit-sharing for all employees. There is a large but regional family-owned chain of convenience stores on the east coast called Wawa, who has been doing this for decades, and they have the best employees/customer service around.
I used to work for Domino's, and they made us have these stupid pep rallies, where the manager would gleefully tell us how much "we" made this quarter, and how "we" , if we worked hard enough, could be the number one region next month...I would just sit there thinking "why do I care, Tom Monohan is getting it all, not me".
I am a Registered Nurse. Nearly all nurses at the bedside are hourly. Plenty of police officers and firefighters are hourly. Do you think these professions include nothing but lazy people?
I am a Registered Nurse. Nearly all nurses at the bedside are hourly. Plenty of police officers and firefighters are hourly. Do you think these professions include nothing but lazy people?
The complaints about hourly compensation aren't well thought out, and they often come from people who have some idealized, burn erroneous, view of the world. Another constituency is poor managers who do not know how to manage an hourly workforce, or are looking to get something for free.
The fact is that every person you employ has to be paid a competitive wage. Arriving at that wage is messy and imperfect, but it includes regulatory factors such as minimum wage, competitive factors such what the other guy is paying and how much you can afford to pay, availability of labour, etc.
You can develop a piecework, quality, service level of compensation, and in the end compensation will be about what it is now. People need to make enough to eat, or to compensate them for education and experience. If your pay scheme doesn't net out appropriately, people are not going to work for you.
Managers who complain about hourly staff slacking simply don't know how to manage. It is a combination of positive and negative reinforcement. Some days your employees are going to be really productive, other days not so much. Balance them out, figure out average pay at competitive rates, determine your profit margins, write up your business plan and get to work.
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