Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Working to Win: How Gamification Can Improve Performance at Work
Every company has within it, some jobs that most would rather not do. Often, the lowest-paid, highest-turnover positions are found here. Things like call center work or retail sales typically fall into this category. But these are often the front-line positions between the company and the customer, and therefore are vital to the long-term health of the business. How can companies keep people interested in these positions and turning around the best results? Gamification.
Gamification is the practice of rendering work into something similar in nature to a game. In other words, it draws on the natural impulses of competition among humans to fuel interest.
Social media and real-time measurement tools make gamification much more valuable at work, and as such, give the field a huge new value. But how can you put gamification to work? There are some key points that can help, and given that Gartner (News - Alert) also projects 80 percent of gamification efforts will fail, keeping these points in mind will help keep you from losing.
First, start with goals specific to the business. Remember that the goal isn't just to play the game; the goal is to make contacts, make sales, solve problems, and more. Making the purpose of the game work around these points, meanwhile, is likely to not only make a game that's easier for the staff to get behind, but one that makes the business a success in the process.
Second, once the goals are established, figure out how to get the players on board. Remember to make the objectives and the means to achieve those objectives clear; a lack of clarity will leave the employees uninterested and not likely to follow the paths to success as laid out. Beyond that, however, remember the employees' own interests, and make sure the game works as much as possible to promote those interests as the company's own.
A game can go nowhere without players, so having the employees behind the game, invested and ready to go, will be a huge help. Consider rewards tied into call center scheduling for examples, where employees are able to pick the times they work. This way, they are more likely to be invested overall while making time to handle personal matters and feel in control of their work schedules. While advances in the employee's own goals happen, the will also likely have improved work habits and higher engagement.
Finally, it’s important to make the game as simple as possible. A few rules to keep things straight, a few key targets to shoot for; the simpler the game is to work with, the more likely it is going to be played.
Consider the recent incredible success of “Flappy Bird,” a game the inventor pulled for a while due to its addictive nature. All users needed to do was press one key to send the bird flapping, and flap through a maze of obstacles. Simple yet incredibly challenging, just like a gamification system should be.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi