A bunching study finds three times the expected mass of sales reps landing just above a call centre's monthly quota line, tracked to a spike in sale-date corrections at the same time each month.
A bunching analysis of one regional call centre's monthly sales quota finds correction paperwork, not selling, clusters around the line that pays double commission.
The School of Continuous Improvement has spent much of the year either side of a threshold, and its newest study turns the same lens on a call centre’s monthly sales quota. Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor of the Impact Pathway Atlas, led the work with Dr Mirela Hanke and Dr Dagny Okafor, and the University regards the result as further evidence that its instruments travel well past the edge of campus.
The team’s bunching estimate finds close to three times as many rep-months landing just above the quota line as a smooth distribution would predict, and traces a matching spike in end-of-month sale-date corrections to the same handful of trading days each month. Two placebo lines, set well clear of the real one, turned up nothing comparable.
A line that pays double the moment you cross it is going to attract company, and the interesting question was always what kind. Here it was mostly paperwork.
— Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor of the Impact Pathway Atlas
Working with the Adaptive Metrics Lab, the team has folded the estimate into the Indicator Commons’ recommended audit floor for any commission scheme it certifies, and the same design is now being prepared for a second chain running a weekly rather than monthly cycle. The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.868dm1.