5 reasons why bonuses are harmful to your customer satisfaction

“If we achieve an NPS of +.., the entire marketing department will receive a bonus.” Nice, wouldn’t you say? But what is wrong with this bonus scheme? Well, a whole lot if you ask me.

We still come across it. Organisations want to boost their customer satisfaction(-number) by setting internal targets and linking bonuses to them. Not the way to go! Why not?
Read below 5 reasons why bonuses are harmful to your customer satisfaction:

1) Bonuses harm teamwork
If you want all employees to work together towards a common goal (such as customer satisfaction), you should not reward them individually or per team or department. Everyone has a significant contribution. Collaboration requires a collective brain; individual and selective rewards will then work against you for sure.

2) Extrinsic motivation is short-lived
An external reward, such as more money, does not work for the long term and the positive effects only last about 6 weeks. Rather than give your employees the feeling of belonging, contributing, and being respected; you will achieve much more with this in the long term.

3) Manipulation lurks
If customer satisfaction is the guiding principle for bonuses, there is already the temptation to influence such a customer satisfaction figure. They often suffer from inappropriate behavior. Unfortunately, there is a range of possibilities to give the number an unnatural boost or even manipulate it. You don’t want to let this happen, do you?

4) Customer feedback is feedback for a reason
You use feedback to get better. A low rating with many valuable improvement tips is therefore golden. Of course, you want that satisfaction to increase, but an insufficient number should not immediately lead to an adverse Pavlov reaction. That should be celebrated! Employees should be happy to work with it and not just to achieve a target or bonus.

5) Bonuses cause disappointment
Targets and bonuses that are not met (and, let’s be honest, that can always happen) create a substantial negative aftertaste. If people expect higher amounts than they get, a bonus is more likely to affect them negatively.

In conclusion, bonuses? Not the solution to become more customer orientated.