Slow Response? Free Ice Cream

The right incentives can work wonders. That was the experience of a technical support team that offered callers total satisfaction or a free ice cream sundae. Their ideas was to offer a free sundae to anyone who called for support that month, left a detailed voicemail message explaining the problem, and didn’t feel the call was returned quickly enough.

(Actually, to avoid a mushy melted mess, what they offered to give out was a coupon for a sundae, rather than the real thing.)The team’s objective was to encourage callers to leave more complete and relevant information in their voice mail messages. Detailed, informative explanations would improve the odds that team members would be able to call back with answers rather than requests for more information ("Your what is blank???").

Callers were also asked to indicate a priority, such as "rush" or "within 2 hours." This would enable the team to respond to calls in a priority sequence. Contrary to what you might predict, this request for a priority didn’t lead callers to claim all problems were top priority. In fact, many callers said the problem could wait to the end of the day or the next day for help. As a result, the team knew what was genuinely high priority and could take timely action.

The notice to customers about the sundae offer stated that the tech support team would respond to all voice mail messages quickly. But (and this is key) it didn’t say how quickly. The team debated the pros and cons of attaching a time to the offer, such as, "A free sundae if we don’t get back to you within 10 minutes." But they decided that it’s the customer who must decide whether the turnaround time is good enough; customers have different ideas about what’s good service, depending on their needs and priorities.

Was this offer successful in getting callers to leave detailed messages? Absolutely! Even better, many callers actually hoped their calls would not be returned quickly so they could collect a $1 coupon for ice cream! In fact, some callers complained, "On, no, you called back too quickly . . . I wanted a free sundae!"

And what about those free sundaes? How many hundreds of coupons did they end up giving out to callers who felt their calls weren’t returned fast enough? None at all. Not even one!

This lighthearted way of encouraging callers to leave detailed messages significantly improved the quality of their messages. And the offer of a free sundae gave callers the freedom to categorize the service level as unacceptable — without appearing to be a complainer as a result. Just ask for a free sundae coupon, and the point would be made. Yet, the only complaints the team heard were that calls were returned too quickly.

Clearly, incentives don’t have to be budget-breakers to be effective. Tootsie rolls, anyone?

Source: Karten Associates in MA