Bonuses for Technicians? Anyone doing this?

[ComputerDave]

Do any of you offer bonuses to your Technicians, and if so, what are you basing them on. In the past, when it was pretty much just me and who is now my Chief Technician, I pretty much just did it by the seat of my pants three times a year. Now that we’re growing a bit, I need to come up with something more consistent and clear.

My Lead Technician does more business accounts, to where the rest of us are in the shop. We do a lot of (what I call “Residential Work”), where people are bringing in their PC’s, and we offer sales of course.

 

[hambling03]

I offer performance based pay incentives. Techs can receive bonus based on how many come backs, and add on sales ie cloud backup, virus protection and other misc things.

 

[JohnKennex]

I worked for a place that would give a cut for commissions - AV's sold, % of hardware sales etc. With my current business we give a decent Christmas bonus for the hard work. Seems to work well - Kind of a pay back for the end of the year. but we don't sell software / hardware to much just service.

 

[Mokester]

The last MSP I worked for used to provide incentives based on how many tickets a tech closed in a month...up to $1000 for meeting the second tier of the bonus...as you can imagine...there were a bunch of tickets that were closed which shouldn't have been by some of the techs who wanted to make their bonus.

This frustrated me and others on the staff who were actually doing good work as we would get their call backs.

Another MSP I worked at before them would just hand out large, unexpected checks based on how the owner felt/observed. ($1600+)

These were appreciated more than the other company as it was unexpected and represented an acknowledgement of your value to the company.

I prefer the latter method. It's more personal and less chances that you will see abuse.

 

[nesrinamb]

Bonuses can really make your tech move a little faster.

Having said that I suggest you tie bonuses to customer satisfaction. You should have a follow up procedures and if the customer doesn't seem to have a good experience then I wouldn't give the bonus. Having said that, also remember that you can't please every customer.

Example: Friend worked at a wine store as a managerial assistant (secretary). His sales guys where based on commission and low hourly so they would try to unload the most they could.

One issue he had once was that a client came in wanting very sweet wine and bought 3 cases. Well turns out the sales guy would get twice as much commission for a wine that was a little bit more sour and sure enough when the person opens the first bottle she realizes it's not what she wants so she returns all the cases minus the opened one. Sales guy still got the commission because no one was sure who sold the cases and they give commission on the day it's sold without much more linking the person.

 

[nesrinamb]

I actually contract out some work and we agree on a certain price and if the customer thinks the job was really good I give them a little more as a thank you.

I do this:

Give commission on up sells.
Follow up with the customer to see how things are going.
Use some CRM as a way find out if the computer was brought back and then no commission. If it is just obviously a bad job no extra cash and no more work coming from me. If it is a small honest error then no cash but I'll still send some work their way.

 

[pascalou666]

I don't recommend commissions... Your techs will only become sales machines and will not find interesting to repair... they will try too much to sell new systems or put parts that are not useful.

It may seems to be good for the business, but it's not.

Give you employees good vacation pay, christmas bonus, it will help keep the best ones.

 

[mrapoc]

As a tech myself I wish I had a good solid rate of pay, paid on time and a ladder to climb up.

At this point of time I have none of these so will be moving on

 

[brandonkick]

Bonuses are a good way of positively reinforcing your employees good performance. However you do need to be careful.

I would not recommend doing any type of commission.

I would recommend basing it highly off of customer satisfaction.

I would also base it off of how much progress an employee continues
to make in becoming better at their job. Reward those who show the most
ambition, the best work ethics and morals and are the most reliable.

I wouldn't make it a flat, set in stone system. I would simply state that
bonuses are subjective and can be awarded at any time. That they are
strictly performance based and are given where due.

Fact of the matter is, you don't want to offend other employees who may not be worthy of a bonus beyond their current compensation but you DO want to recognize an employee going above and beyond. I can personally say that a little recognition really helps my morale and work ethic, it drives me to continue to do even better than I did before.

It's a fine line, but that recognition is really a helpful thing to those who are doing a good job.

 

[pceinc]

We do 10% service billed. Paid on each paycheck. Also give a year end bonus.

 

[Krynn72]

I'm on the other end, and one thing my employer has just started is handling monthly bonuses essentially on commission but for the entire shop as a whole. We have multiple locations, so what he's doing is giving us 20% commission (as a group) on all jobs after the shop earns 3.5 times the combined monthly payroll expense for the team working that shop.

We literally just started it starting yesterday so I have yet to see any money from it obviously, but it sounds good to me, and seems like its good for him as well, as we try to work together to provide good, fast service to keep people coming back (for paying work, not warranty work obviously). I really like it, as it gets rid of the feeling of having to do "the bad work" like phone calls, administrative stuff, cleaning/organizing, etc because that's all now stuff that helps us get paid more by bringing in more customers, which previously people would only grudgingly do because we got incentivized by the actual repair work we did.

Time will tell how well it works I suppose. It could cause issue if we develop free-loaders, but I think those I work with at least are pretty much self-motivated anyways and will pull their own weight.