Many organisations are customer-focused, listen to feedback, and subsequently improvements are made. Everything is aimed at creating enthusiastic and loyal customers. How do you create customer enthusiasm specifically for your employees and how do you encourage colleagues to perform optimally for the customer every day? And to be able to act on it directly and on a daily basis?
If you are going to use Customer Experience KPIs, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), to set goals and targets in your organisation, this will be a conversion for the entire organisation. Determining which Customer Experience KPI to use for your organisation is step one. The second step is to determine the targets for this or these CX KPI(s). When this is clearly defined, you can proceed to step three: linking a bonus to the set Customer Experience KPI targets.
When linking a bonus to a Customer Experience KPI such as NPS, it is important to make a clear choice for an organisational/departmental objective or for an individual objective.
Organisational/departmental objectives
The probability of discussions about the influence of the uninfluenceable factors on achieving the objective is small. The collectivity of the objective ensures that each department will contribute to it. The aspects on which the department does not have influence directly are overcome by the contributions of other departments.
Individual objective
When the bonus is linked to the achievement of an individual goal, there is a great chance that discussion will arise about the factors that are not influenced by the employee itself that can affect the result.
When linking an individual CX KPI objective to a bonus, it is important to look for a solution in which the individual employee’s performance is linked clearly to the customer’s experience.
Practice example for connecting a KPI to the bonus
The following is an example of applying a general NPS question and further querying it with the Root Cause Analysis method.
After the customer has written down their initial thoughts as a basis for the (general) NPS question, the Root Cause 1 question is asked with the corresponding categories: window replacement; making an appointment; service; price and financial processing; accessibility.
In this example, the customer chooses category 1. Windscreen replacement. Then the Root Cause 2 question is asked and six answer options are shown in the form of categories: quality of the window replacement; right window present; cleanliness of the car on delivery; the speed of the work; information provision; lead time.
The customer selects one category. Per category of the Root Cause 2 question is determined whether the service provided by the mechanic is directly affected by this. Based on the results of the factors influenced by the mechanic, the individual KPI score, in this example the Net Promoter Score, is calculated as visually demonstrated below:
Of course, you will want to reward employees who achieve objectives. This is possible by linking a bonus scheme to the CX KPI targets. An extra motivating incentive to achieve the stated objectives!
Fair bonuses
What is fair within your organisation? Will every employee who has achieved their personal goals get a bonus? Or do all employees of a department that achieve the objectives receive a bonus, regardless of their personal result? Will anyone who achieves the goal get the same bonus, or is the bonus higher when someone reaches (far) beyond the stated objective?
Applying a fair bonus scheme as an addition to organisational or individual objectives and the way in which this is implemented must match your organisation and way of working.