Retention Incentives

There is a big challenge hanging over any incentive that deals with customer retention. It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss, but everyone knows it’s there. Trust.

Since incentives based on retention are inherently difficult to track effectively, do you trust your people enough to know they will play by the rules? You need your employees to save customers and to garner repeat business. But how do you know that the customer wouldn’t have come back, or not cancelled their service (whatever service that may be), regardless of what that employee may have said or done? If you’re willing to make that leap of faith, then retention incentives can be very effective.

Let’s say you’re a bank manager and you want to run an incentive with your tellers to keep customers from canceling their account in favor of your competition.

The most effective way to run an incentive like this is to have your employees buy in to the company’s overall customer net growth goals. Base the incentive around that goal for the month. This way the employee takes ownership of the goal and becomes deeply involved in what the company (in this case, the bank) wants to accomplish. Don’t give away sensitive information to the employee obviously, but customize a goal for them that will help you achieve your goals, and make sure it encompasses the retention you need.

When employees have ownership of their employers’ goals, they become more enthusiastic by nature. And if they end up with a perk at the end of the month, all the better.

I wrote the book on incentives. Go to http://www.incentivetoolkit.com to learn more.

Andy