CRM Outage Led to Unfair Incentive Deduction – How Can I Resolve This?

Hello, I get paid a salary and incentives in a contact center. There was a KPI that needed to be met to receive the full incentive. The KPI was met; however, on the last day, the CRM had an outage, and we were asked to inform the customer to contact back, resulting in one customer filling out a negative survey.

I informed my TL, who assured me that the negative survey would be removed, and they would make an exception. Fast forward to the incentive payout, it's being deducted, and the negative survey from the contact back period is not being removed. If I had received more than 5 negative surveys on that day, then they would have paid me nothing.

As this is a company CRM issue, why am I being penalized? I want to be paid in full. How can I proceed to get this resolved?

Incentive is not part of salary

Incentive is not part of salary. As long as you are paid a salary not less than the statutory minimum fixed by the government for your role and skills, you cannot demand it as a right. If there is any clarity required, you should ask the officer concerned, like a TL (Team Leader), and take the necessary steps to change the system.

Customer feedback and communication tone

If all employees receive the same negative remarks from customers, you cannot be blamed. However, there can be different tones when asking customers to 'contact back' or 'I will call you back.' If you politely ask the customer, "Can I call you back after checking the status?" they may not give negative feedback. But if you say abruptly, "I will call you back," the feedback will likely be negative. Even I, as a customer, would give negative feedback if spoken to like that. Anyway, it is a matter of incentive and has nothing to do with the rights of an employee.

This is not about how the communication is done. To answer the communication, it was done politely, informing the customers that the CRM is not working and providing alternate options for account-related questions that we could not answer, but any account-related information.

Incentive Plan Based on KPI
We have an incentive plan based on KPI. Why is the KPI set if the CRM can go down at any time, potentially resulting in negative surveys?

Please do not make this about quality. This is about us being required to work when the systems are not functioning and expected to accept a reduction in the incentive, which is tied to performance. The implementation of asking customers to contact back is considered a failure in our performance.