You’ve probably heard about gamification; it is one of those buzz words like unified communications that swirls around in top trend stories and among those looking for the latest edge.
Gamification is the idea that people are better engaged when work and goals are viewed more in terms of a game experience. There’s a fine line between the work we groan about and the video games many of us play on our own time when we come home from the office, and gamification recognizes that this difference largely is in our head. Thus, making work more like a game can drive engagement and improve our work lives.
While many people have heard about gamification, and the concept is generally recognized as sound, not nearly as many businesses have put it into practice. That’s a shame, because it can benefit most businesses—especially the contact center.
“Used correctly, gamification can engage and motivate agents, in turn lowering employee churn (and the related costs), reducing hold times, and boosting customer-satisfaction scores,” noted Karen Hsu in a recent blog post for Nearshore Americas, the vice president of marketing for gamification firm, Badgeville.
Gamification can help reduce contact center churn by engaging agents more completely, according to Hsu.
“Many younger staff members come to expect a certain level of feedback and interactive play in their workplace platforms,” she noted. “So contact centers should strive to alter gamification strategies to fit pools of staff members based on their job functions or demographics, including age and location.”
Gamification also can help with training.
Savvy contact center managers can use gamification to boost new staff training procedures by injecting tasks and rewards into the process, effectively turning training into a fun experience that agents will be more likely to remember when the training is needed on the floor.
Further, gamification can be used on the customer-facing side to help with call-deflection. By injecting some gamification into self-service portals, according to Hsu, businesses can cut down on support requests by encouraging greater use of self-service options.
“Gamification can extend into the company’s online Q&A by providing visitors with badges that mark how much content they have consumed,” Hsu noted. “This structure allows the company to build levels of ‘experts’ through badge tiers.”
So while you may have heard about gamification, it might be time to start putting it into practice—especially if you work in a call center.
Edited by Maurice Nagle