Life is a Big Game, or How Call Center Gamification Can Help Your Agents

First of all, what is Gamification?

The problem of motivating call center agents has always existed; after all, motivation is what we need everywhere. 

Contact centers are places where the outflow of personnel occurs faster than in other departments. It is not surprising because they are on the front line. Customer-centric trends have done their job: now, the customer and his level of satisfaction with a specific service are at the center of everything.

But without motivated agents, it is almost impossible to deliver customer satisfaction.

Any business can create a perfect IVR journey, even for the most demanding person. There are plenty of technologies and vendors to do so. But as we already mentioned in some of our posts, human-to-human relationships have the power to make the customer experience exceptionally good.

So, how can we give the agents a reason to come to work and do their best?

Recent trends make us turn our heads to Gamification. 

Gamification is the way of doing specific activities by using game techniques to make them funnier and more exciting. 

Professor and famous TEDx speaker Karl M. Kapp used the following description in one of his articles:

"A well-designed game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules, interactivity, and feedback that result in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an emotional reaction. Games can be designed and delivered in an online environment with multimedia graphics, interactive characters, and automated scorekeeping, or they can be face-to-face and conducted in a classroom with simple interactions and engagement."

Some of the TOP executives of contact centers say it could raise the effectiveness of the agents to 20-30%.

Here are a 3 reasons why you should involve your call center agents in Gamification:

1. Employee's happiness and productivity According to the Talentlms' Survey, 89% of employees who participated in it said that Gamification would make them more productive and even happier (88%). That's not surprising, as an agent's everyday activity can be exhausting and frustrating. A company should have a strategy of inspirational practice to keep the team's overall mood. 2. Remote onboarding and Elearning facilitation Covid-19 and the pandemic regime made it clear that remote work is the most probable future of business workflow. It means that we all must learn how to deal with it. The biggest issue in a remote workplace is onboarding new employees and keeping the old ones integrated and motivated. Gamification could be a good solution. It brings an element of fun competition as in sports, allowing faster and more interactive learning of basic concepts.

3. Improving the Customer Satisfaction The gamification strategy aims to make agents better in what they do through competition and closer engagement with each other. With access to their scorecards and marks of excellence, anyone would like to become a top performer. And the best performance in a game must be connected with the main KPIs of an employee. Call centers are ones that, in the end, make customers happier.

Gamification strategies can be complicated or straightforward. It consists of giving real-time feedback to the agent, defining the goals, rewards, or bonuses for the accomplishment of different levels, and engaging the team to collaborate and communicate in the process. 

There are many ideas and concepts of games for call centers. But they all have 5 common key elements: 1. Badges There is no game without a transparent system of awards and levels the player needs to achieve. It is similar to what is often used for the customers to get loyalty. Employee loyalty has the same level of value.

2. Competition Excitement is an integral part of the motivation. If done wisely, it could bring a lot of value and will keep your team on a high level of collaboration with each other. And when we say wisely, we mean that there should be a good balance between competitiveness and fun to avoid conflicts or dissatisfaction with the process. 3. Community One of the goals of Gamification is the reduction of staff turnover. A strong community of fellows united by common goals and a system of awards positively impacts team spirit. 4. Compensation Gamification can be not only a way of learning or a source of inspiration but also the possibility for the agent to earn extra bonuses. Combined with an aspiration for higher success among colleagues, it could affect performance. 5. Feedback Real-time feedback and self-evaluation instruments are essential parts of Gamification. They help to keep agents excited and inspired not only by awards but by the process itself.

Nowadays, there are a lot of digital and interactive tools and platforms for Gamification. Besides, many professional instruments include elements of the game. But it is also essential to find the appropriate game design. Some companies mention that poor design can become the reason why Gamification fails. When choosing the tools, it should be considered as well.

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