Archive for November 25th, 2008

PTCL Gives Incentives To Employees For Broadband Installation: Is This The Right Approach?

Published by Babar Bhatti on November 25, 2008 under Broadband Internet, Consumer Rights, Customer service, PTCL, Telecommunications

PTCL has started an incentive program where it gives cash to its employees based on the number of phone and broadband installations per month. The amount is divided among CPE installers, line men, technicians etc. What is this monetary incentive? For the installation of 41 to 80 connections per month per CPE Installer, a line man gets Rs. 75. Over 80 connections will give the line man Rs. 125. To me, this does not sound much of an incentive. If PTCL has agreed in principle that an incentive is needed to motivate its employees then it might as well make it a reasonable one.

More importantly though I think this kind of incentive misses the point. Providing as many connections as possible is just one metric which works well for shareholders and executives. I believe that there is another criterion which is more important: is the service working correctly and is the billing correct? This should be the part of the score card for the employees and PTCL which determines their incentive. There’s no point in installing a service for which there are lingering issues and the customers are not satisfied. What do you think?

Here’s the justification for this, taken from PTCL web site.

In order to have sustainable business performance in the highly competitive environment of the Telecom industry, PTCL has to deliver highest quality services to its customers. Quick provisioning of PTCL services brings lot of value to the customers which not only guarantees more revenues but creates goodwill for the company.

In the backdrop of this situation, PTCL management is taking key initiatives in different business areas. One important move aimed at improving the Sales and Customer satisfaction is to boost the morale and motivation level of our employees.

An Incentive Plan has been worked out to present substantial cash rewards to the employees performing beyond the specified benchmarks. This will be the start of an era where the rewards shall be linked with the performance and achievement of targets.