What on-earth is Gamification?

While gamification might be a new term, there is nothing new about its motives. Since the early days of contact centres incentives, competitions and rewards have been a popular method of motivation. The only difference now is that technology has allowed the automation of the process to become even more inclusive and used for both motivation and education. Gamification is all about employee engagement – putting people first.

Recent reports identify what anyone involved in the contact centre world has known for years ie, that internal recognition for positive performance and competition with other team members are the top non-financial motivators. So what are the benefits of automating the recognition and reward process by way of gamification?

Top Six Benefits of Gamification

1. Cost effective – awarding points and badges via an online game is better value for money than costly mobile devices or dinners for two
2. Not location dependent – online competitions can run across different sites, countries and continents. Colleagues from across the globe can take part
3. Ongoing employee engagement – individuals can choose to compete against themselves. Many agents want to do more – more calls, more sales, decrease average handling times. Gamification can be used for measuring performance and try to beat ‘personal best’.
4. Faster employee induction/onboarding – one contact centre reduced its training time from 20 days to 14 hours and found more people completed extra training and advance learning modules using gamification techniques
5. Corporate goals – gamification helps align people’s actions to corporate goals
6. Retain Talent – increased internal recognition leads to a decrease in staff churn rates.

Where to start?

Puzzel’s advice is to start small, walk before you can run and begin with a phased approach in one site or department first. Taking this approach means it is possible to conduct a pilot first before rolling out the “game” to the rest of the operation. Enjoy the fun and the benefits.