Customer ratings put Swisscom employees under pressure

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The clerk at the Swisscom store does an excellent job, but feels compelled to do the favor at the end of the interview. It’s about his assessment and also his salary. He explains: “You may receive an SMS in which you can evaluate the consultant.”

But here’s the thing: 8 out of 10 points wouldn’t do him any good, even if he had a good grade. “Only 9 or 10 points have a positive effect on my score,” he says. The customer is of course free to choose how many points to give.

This is how a reader reporter describes his recent visit to a Swisscom store in Zurich. He was asked if the customer problem could be resolved. Does the customer recommend the company? And how good was the advice? Swisscom wants to know all this when researching its customers. It is based on an established worldwide rating system with Net Promoter Score (NPS).

The union criticized the wage model

NPS is a source of criticism from unions like Syndicom. “The NPS is a sensitive index that can actually be problematic to include in employee evaluation and compensation,” Syndicom spokesperson Matthias Loosli tells Blick.

Loosli finds it difficult for employees to immediately feel pressured by such evaluation systems, even if they do a good job, as in the example above. The union raised its concerns to Swisscom. According to Loosli, the latter later weighed in on certain factors. “But we continue to believe that the impact of NPS should be reduced.” Especially when variable salary components depend on it.

Is the system fair?

At Swisscom there is no issue with customer points affecting employee wages. The quality of customer service is now of paramount importance to Swisscom. Media spokesperson Armin Skulli says a performance-related, variable salary component is also common in on-demand sales. “But at Swisscom this is deliberately moderate compared to the industry.” Additionally, the salary component is heavily dependent on team goals.

But a study commissioned by Syndicom by the University of Applied Sciences Zurich questions this approach in general: It says that NPS surveys should not be reserved for individual workers. The number of ratings is too small to be representative – the result may distort actual performance.

On the other hand, if the salesperson introduces the customer to the evaluation system and explains that the evaluation has an impact on their salary, their evaluation will be more positive. Also, according to researchers, clients are more likely to rate the company overall than individual consulting services.

In short: the system is not particularly meaningful.

Source :Blick