The three performance categories

Table 15: Performance appraisals at Eon CS⁵⁵ Structure

/Content Included actors/structure Content

Performance appraisal 1

The agent and the middle manager; occurring at the end of January each year, lasting for two hours

Salary and bonus dialogue. Middle manager explains decision for the level of salary and bonus for the agent based upon performance during previous year. New targets are set for the agent for the upcoming year:

Suggestions from agent of motivating targets and from middle manager of suitable targets.

Performance appraisal 2

The agent and the middle manager; occurring in August each year, lasting for two hours

Follow-up dialogue of salary and bonus. Discussing target achievement, performance and skill-development so far during that year.

Informal follow-up meetings

Informal meetings continuously during the year, monthly

Keeping middle manager updated of the agent’s status, changes and challenges.

Total Individual meetings, covering the entire year

Middle manager evaluates agents in all parts of their work and tries to have constructive dialogue about what is required by both parties to make them reach set targets, for individual and group. Establishing actions of how to improve agents’ results and work satisfaction in relation to commitment and development, and to increase engagement for the group and the company.

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6.2.1 Performance category A: Routine-based efficiency

As the majority of issues that call center agents at Eon CS face and resolve in their work are recurring, some performance metrics primarily reflect agents’ efficiency in handling routine errands. Performance within these metrics reflects routine-based efficiency. Efficiently performing (incoming) routine-based errands reflects a focus on quantity and speed within all parts of the actual errand, from talk time (the duration of talking to customers) to wrap-up (time spent finalizing each customer errand in the system), and determines the total errand time (total time to solve an errand on phone). The agent’s efficiency in solving routine-based errands is also evaluated by the performance metric of rate of telephone efficiency (the rate of solved errands during a scheduled hour of interacting with customers on phone, or during green time). This also reflects agents’

abilities to quickly, recurrently prepare for an upcoming customer call.

The underlying logic for performance within this category is that rapid handling of routine-based errands is evaluated as good performance, given that these performance metrics are measured by the minutes and seconds agents spend on handling a customer errand. This generates a rate of efficiency.

Actual performance data within this performance category showing organizational performance during the time of my study (Table 23, Appendix 4) highlights that the performance-management system is not entirely functional when it comes to establishing the rate of telephone efficiency based upon performance within solved errands. Since the performance data shows that talk time on an organizational level was relatively stable over time, but also that performance within the metrics of wrap-up time and total errand time on phone improved over time, this should imply improved telephone efficiency over time. However, performance reflecting telephone efficiency instead fluctuated over time at an organizational level. This resulted in targets for routine-based efficiency that were not met during the entire time of my study. This performance data indicates that there were other elements significant in regard to routine-based efficiency.

6.2.2 Performance category B: Social efficiency

Given that some of the performance metrics on which call center agents at Eon CS are measured were evaluated both from an efficiency-based approach and from quality levels in terms of how well agents interacted with various customers, I chose to categorize one performance category as social efficiency. Performing with social efficiency reflected an agent’s ability to satisfy a customer and/or succeed with sales in a qualitative, fast manner. This allowed the agent to reach set targets for customer satisfaction and/or sales rates, and time-based targets for customer interactions. The performance metrics included in the category of social efficiency are talk time (the part of the interaction spent talking), which is evaluated on its implications for the other two performance metrics in this category: Customer-satisfaction (how satisfied customers are with the overall interaction with the agent) and sales productivity (skills and quality in the sales procedure during the talk interaction with customers).

Actual performance data at an organizational level (Table 23, Appendix 4) clarifies two trends at Eon CS within this performance category. First, since the customer satisfaction ratings increased over time as the talk time remained stable, this indicates that agents performed with increasing levels of social efficiency over time. This trend meant that the target for customer satisfaction was met at the organizational level three years in a row (2012, 2013, and 2014). However, the second trend showed shifting performance levels over time, which primarily concerns the organization’s sales performance. For example, impeded sales rates (between 2012 and 2013) resulted in a failure to reach the target at the organizational level (in 2013).⁵⁸ A significant improvement (during 2014) resulted in performance levels well above the target (in 2014), indicating that agents performed with unstable levels of social efficiency over time at an organizational level. However, both trends reflect varying performance levels over time at an organizational level in regard to social efficiency.

58 Increased emphasis on sales (further described in Chapter 7) also entailed refined measurements of sales performance at Eon CS (see Table 22, Appendix 3).

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6.2.3 Performance category C: Problem-solving efficiency

Although the majority of issues handled from incoming calls were routine-based errands (Chapter 6.2.1), some performance metrics reflected deviating errands, which I refer to as problems. These can be specific issues (technical problems, dealing with power outages, or problems that require changes in the company systems) that must be solved differently each time since there are no established routines for how to solve them.

These problems most often occur during non-verbal interactions with customers. However, they are still measured and evaluated from an efficiency-based approach (the greater the efficiency in terms of minutes and seconds, the better the performance), which basically neglects that problems could require more time to solve since they do not frequently occur. Therefore, I labeled performance within this performance category to reflect problem-solving efficiency.

Performance data in this category (Table 23, Appendix 4) highlights a clear trend that actual organization performance levels were not aligned with expected performance levels during the time of my study. This trend was evident regarding the performance metrics of e-mail efficiency (the time spent responding and completing a customer errand/problem by e-mail and web-based chat) and administrative efficiency (the average amount of completed administrative errands and problems per scheduled hour of administration work). Performance data showed that no targets within these two performance metrics were met at an organizational level.

However, the data also showed varying performance levels over time at an organizational level in regard to problem-solving efficiency. This trend was evident, since performance within e-mail efficiency improved over time (which indicated that agents increased levels of problem-solving efficiency over time) but varied in regard to administrative efficiency (indicating fluctuating levels of problem-solving efficiency over time).

6.2.4 Summarizing the three performance categories

My analytical interpretation of how performance is conceptualized at Eon CS showed that performance could be categorized into three different categories highlighting varying performance levels at an organizational level within each category over time. It was also clear that the overall aim

to be efficient⁵⁹ (performance categories A, B and C) and reach increasing rates of quality (performance category B) is a deliberate performance strategy:

We need to increase both customer value and customer quality, and to strive for increased productivity (CFO, April 2015).

I will now present my view of performance at a group level, which is derived from patterns of performance in the four subcases selected for this study.