Selling through several channels at once: how UPC set one rhythm of targets

UPC Polska

UPC Polska was a provider of digital services: digital television, fibre internet, and mobile and fixed-line telephony, for consumers and for businesses. The company's services reached more than 4.2 million households in over 150 towns and cities in Poland. UPC employed 1,500 people.

We describe this whole case in the past tense, because the UPC Polska brand no longer exists. On 1 April 2022 the company was acquired by Play, and on 31 August 2023 the two companies formally merged. The programme described below ran in 2021, that is before the acquisition.

Where the company started

UPC sold through many channels and inside a complex structure. It offered services to consumers and to businesses, from large corporations to the SOHO segment, that is small offices and companies run from home. Alongside classic sales and customer service points, it ran a phone channel and door-to-door sales.

As a result the UPC sales teams differed from one another in location, in how their work was organised, in the tools they used and in the group they worked with. An adviser in a store, a consultant on the phone and a salesperson in the field worked on different indicators and to a different rhythm of the day.

While it was extending the reach of its network, the company also wanted to keep the quality of its service high. In 2021 UPC was recognised for the fifth year running with the Gwiazda Jakości Obsługi (Service Quality Star) award in the category of television and internet providers. A year earlier the company received the Service Quality Star of the Decade title and joined the group of companies rated highest by consumers over ten years.

The challenge and the solution

A complex sales structure put two demands on the incentive programme that are easy to set against each other. The mechanics had to be matched to how each team worked, because an adviser in a store works differently from a consultant on the phone. At the same time the programme had to build healthy competition across the whole organisation, rather than six separate contests standing side by side.

The company decided to roll out the Gamfi app, built to motivate teams measured on KPIs: sales departments, call centres and customer service. The app made it possible to run recurring contests and activations covering individuals, teams and regional branches, and to keep them going for many months rather than for a single campaign.

How the programme worked

Every activity designed in the app was built around a virtual olympic stadium. Arena UPC hosted the monthly competition between employees, and each month was given over to a different sport. That setting was the backdrop for the learning activities and for the monthly activations, in which employees were to reach the sales targets the company had set.

The central mechanic was monthly KPI challenges, run separately for every sales team in the company. They stood on the indicators those teams worked on every day:

1. 1x-sellselling an extra service to a customer already in the base,
2. 2value of new salesnot the number of contracts, but what they are worth,
3. 3NPScustomer satisfaction, measured with the same indicator as every day.

Results in the challenges were updated from data in UPC's internal system. Once the month closed, results were settled and points were assigned to the best performers, according to criteria agreed in advance.

Pace counted separately. Results refreshed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and every day in the last week of the month. Employees received e-mails encouraging them to improve their result, matched to the targets set for their sales channel.

Employees competed individually and as teams. Winning teams received a pool of points to share out, and the split followed how far each person had delivered their own indicators. Separate rewards went to the leaders of the winning teams.

Rewards were matched to what each team does. Points earned could be exchanged for physical rewards, electronic vouchers in the reward catalogue or a bank transfer. Call centre employees could also set their own work schedule for the following month.

Results

The activations supporting KPI delivery, run in the app, were one of the elements making up the overall UPC sales result in 2021. We do not claim that whole figure for them, and it cannot be broken down into its parts - that is how the client's material describes it and that is how we give it here.

+44,000

new UPC customers in 2021

193,445

tasks completed by employees in the app

134

tasks per user

7,392,901

points earned by participants

The last three figures speak about engagement, not about sales. They are worth reading together with the first one: 134 tasks per person over a year is a measure of whether the programme held the teams' attention long enough to affect anything at all.