Should users see their own performance stats in real time.

Question

I know this questions seems extremely open ended. I will try to narrow scope.

I have been struggling for some time as to include or exclude real time user performance stats in an application gui.

Does anyone have any info on the harm vs gain in including these stats in an app?

i.e. number of emails answered, number of customer calls taken, average time per customer etc.

The users are begging for more info on their stats, as it is how they are rated. However there is concern that given access to see their performance real time or near real time it will negatively affect their work.

I can kind of equate it to being measured on how many lines of code I churned out in one day. Would this help me to be more productive or just teach me write code as fast as possible and most likely make a lot of mistakes.

In my application I can think of these scenario's

i.e. BAD: "I see I have spent 10 minutes on this issue already, I need to finish this up asap"

vs

i.e. GOOD: "I was able to help that customer quickly, My productivity is good today"

Answer 1

KISS principle, is this information pertinent to what the users will be doing? If no, then no do not add it. One thing that I like on web apps is the time it takes for a page to load after updating / submitting something (basically posting back data). That way I / a user can tell if there is an issue with data going to the database or a caching issue.

The problem with displaying say for instance calls to customers is your average times may not be as accurate as you'd hope. You may have a customer who likes to chat, or is having technical issues that are irrelevant to your business but yet get reflected in your apps. This data shouldn't be trusted because of these types of things. Another thing is, if you start displaying call times you end up having employee competitions to see who can get off the phone first..that's when you start hurting yourself more..bad customer service.

A few big names used to rate employees based on things like call volume, average time on the call, etc. Remember when Dell tried to outsource all their technical calls to India? Customers here in the US were frustrated and calls were either too long (not understanding) or too short (Customers did not want to deal with it). Well the big shooters thought hey call times are pretty inline with what we had forecasted and our costs are going down. But it hit rock bottom as time went on...

Answer 2

Your application is useful as a tool to convey this information, and you should definitely include it if users are clamoring for more visibility and transparency into the data it collects. A user's response to the information, however, will largely depend on what the organizational culture already does with it.

For example, does management aggressively encourage users to keep calls short and deal with as many customers as possible, and fire those who don't meet quotas? If so, that's going to provoke an equally strong reaction from users to keep their calls short when they discover they've been a bit on the longer side. ("Uh-oh, I'm getting to the 2-minute mark. I'd better hang up and fake a disconnection to avoid getting my average call length too high.")

Conversely, if management simply encourages everyone to do a good job and provide excellent customer service, this information can be synthesized by users in the overall context of this work. ("I've spent a lot of time on this customer -- I should see if I can wrap things up shortly, or escalate him if I can't fix this problem.")

Answer 3

I think there may indeed be a phenomenon one could call “The Facebook Effect,” where by merely presenting a metric (e.g., number of “friends,” minutes per call), you imply that it’s important. However, I don’t think that’s an issue here because it’s clear that users already regard these metrics as very important, otherwise they wouldn’t be begging you for them.

I believe there is a wealth of psychology research showing that adding faster feedback on a metric will very likely improve user performance on that metric. Furthermore, it is emotionally stressful for people to be evaluated on a metric that they cannot track well themselves, which appears to be the case now.

I say show the metrics real time. Management obviously wants high performance on them otherwise they wouldn’t be rating the users on it. User want it, and it’ll reduce their job stress. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Of course, the customers probably lose out, so there’s a bit of an ethical dilemma. However, if these metrics are problem, then the problem lies in corporate policy, not in the user interface. By showing the metrics to the user, you will highlight whatever shortcomings this policy has to the managers. Maybe management will get a clue.

If it’s part of your role, you could propose measurements of customer satisfaction (e.g., after-call automated survey, random follow-up surveys by a human) so that managers can at least track the impacts of their policy. Assuming they care (how are they evaluated?).