Within the enterprise, gamification – the process of adding gaming elements to a non-gaming activity to encourage action and participation – has gone from being a faux pas to an accepted growing trend. Currently, many software vendors are experimenting by adding gaming elements to their software. I decided to do some experimenting of my own, focusing on help desk software.
The support team environment is a rigorous and demanding one where there is high turnover due to support agents getting burned out. But what if you added gaming elements to help desk software in such a way that helped boost employee retention by providing agents with a greater sense of accomplishment? If they felt like they were “winning,” perhaps agents would be more motivated in their daily activities.
Going off this premise, I focused on a few of the main activities support agents engage in each day (ticket resolutions, customer relations, training) and added some gaming element to it. I made some sketches of what the UI’s of a “gamified” help desk system might look like. Check them out below.
1. Accomplishment metrics
HD Dashboard
Three of the most important metrics to support agents are number of ticket resolutions, number of “quick” ticket resolutions and positive customer feedback. In this UI, you can see that those three metrics are tracked visibily across the top of the agent’s dashboard. The numbers increase as the day goes on, allowing the agent to see their progress and accomplishments in real time. Additionally, these metrics are variable, depending on the organization. For example, a “quick” resolution could be one that happens in 30 minutes or less.
2. Leaderboards
Based on those metrics, you could create leaderboards, allowing agents to see how they are measuring up again their peers. You will notice the added “Score” column. Again, this is a variable metric, depending on how your organization weights the three individual metrics.
You could do the same with a team leaderboard, comparing parallel support teams within your organization.
3. Training
One of the biggest issues support team managers have is onboarding new agents in a timely manner. By gamifying the training process, you could ensure a quick onboarding process, while making it fun for the new agent.
These are just a few harebrained ideas we came up with. You can go to my website to see the full article on my blog. But please let me know what you think in the comment section!
