Turning Customer Support Into a Game

What if you could har­ness the same enthu­si­asm in your cus­tomer ser­vice employ­ees as when they are play­ing Angry Birds or Candy Crush? That’s the idea behind gam­i­fi­ca­tion, apply­ing game mechan­ics to busi­ness tasks to make them more engag­ing. This approach is rapidly gain­ing pop­u­lar­ity in employee train­ing and moti­va­tion.

Gam­i­fi­ca­tion actu­ally is noth­ing new; sales com­pa­nies have been using con­tests to moti­vate employ­ees for years. But with the growth of tech­nol­ogy and social net­work­ing, it has taken off. Online quests are replac­ing sales con­tests, with vir­tual accom­plish­ments as cov­eted as “real world” incen­tives. In fact, gam­i­fi­ca­tion is grow­ing so rapidly that “more than 70% of the world’s largest 2,000 com­pa­nies are expected to have deployed at least one such appli­ca­tion by year end 2014.” (Gart­ner).

Gam­i­fi­ca­tion works because it’s engag­ing. It makes the tedious fun by play­ing into the nat­ural human desire to com­pete. It boosts employee engage­ment and dri­ves per­for­mance and results. That’s why so many com­pa­nies use gam­i­fi­ca­tion in cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing and sup­port.

Some recent examples:

• Call Cen­ter Response Improve­ment: Delta Air Lines part­nered with Nog­gin­Labs Inc. to develop ‘Ready, Set, Jet!,’ a game to train its call cen­ter employ­ees – who help cus­tomers and ‘up-sell’ addi­tional prod­ucts and ser­vices. The game focused on the routes Delta flies, to improve employ­ees’ knowl­edge of its geo­gra­phies and offer­ings. Play­ers earned “money” through the games and could spend it on vir­tual sou­venirs. They also could chal­lenge other play­ers to mini-games. “In the first two months since the ini­tial launch, Delta call cen­ter pro­fes­sion­als have vol­un­tar­ily logged more than 16.2 mil­lion min­utes of game time, the equiv­a­lent of more than 30 years [of train­ing],” accord­ing to the pub­li­ca­tion Chief Learn­ing Offi­cer.

• Prod­uct Knowl­edge Train­ing: The global mar­ket­ing com­pany Exact­Tar­get, which helps Coca-Cola, Gap and Nike mar­ket new prod­ucts, devel­oped a game — The Knowl­edge Guru — to train sales staff. It brings play­ers to a moun­tain with three paths. By learn­ing top­ics, play­ers can move up the moun­tain, ulti­mately deliv­er­ing the scroll of wis­dom to a guru. There are prizes for high scores and an over­all win­ner. The game helped sales teams rapidly increase mas­tery of new prod­uct infor­ma­tion while reduc­ing call response times.

• Lead­er­ship Train­ing: NTT Data’s Ignite Lead­er­ship Game immerses employ­ees in man­age­ment sit­u­a­tions while build­ing skills in nego­ti­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, time man­age­ment, change man­age­ment and prob­lem solv­ing. It enables play­ers to col­lab­o­rate and pro­vides instant feed­back. Man­age­ment believes it can iden­tify future lead­ers sim­ply by fol­low­ing the game’s results. Forbes reported that “50 employ­ees ended up tak­ing on team lead­er­ship roles, which was 50 per­cent higher than had done so through tra­di­tional train­ing and coach­ing meth­ods.” In addi­tion, play­ers have gen­er­ated 220 new ideas, which led to a 40 per­cent increase in employee sat­is­fac­tion.

An Impor­tant Caveat

Not all games are cre­ated equal, and as many com­pa­nies have failed as have suc­ceeded with gam­i­fi­ca­tion. To be effec­tive for your com­pany, your gam­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram must be care­fully planned and tied to busi­ness goals.

Look­ing for More Information?

Here are a few exam­ples of short videos that pro­vide a deeper glimpse into the topic. Gam­Ef­fec­tive offers a good basic expla­na­tion for enter­prise gamification.

Freshdesk shows how to gam­ify your help desk. Badgeville shows how gam­i­fi­ca­tion boosts cus­tomer engage­ment, employee pro­duc­tiv­ity and col­lab­o­ra­tion. The Train­ing Game makes the case that mil­len­ni­als, who grew up with gam­ing plat­forms, find gam­i­fi­ca­tion train­ing very effective.

We wel­come your input. If you have a suc­cess­ful gam­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram, please share it. If you find a help­ful video, please post the link in the com­ments sec­tion below.