A well-planned gamification program provides healthy competition among agents, a new excitement to the day, and a focus on increased productivity. These are the primary purposes of gamification solutions in contact centers. Well-implemented gamification programs improve efficiency, employee engagement and retention.
All Fun and Games?
Gamification uses contests and games to motivate agents while reducing the overhead to administer them. This lowers the demand on managers and supervisors, allowing them to focus their time where it is needed most.
Gamification is not entertainment. However, it uses the entertaining aspects of games and contests to promote company goals, reinforce agent training, and motivate employees. Employee dashboards with information on the current programs – leaderboards, badges attained, points accumulated, etc. – can foster a collaborative, friendly competition among employees, organized in teams or as individuals.
6 Tips for Using Gamification in Contact Centers
Here are six tips for creating your
gamification program. [infographic]
Start Small
Begin with a simple challenge, such as the number of times an agent resolves a customer’s issue on the first call.
Plan Your Program
Plan and run campaigns that boost employee morale and improve specific key metrics. Don’t run never-ending contests.
Inspire Teamwork
Structure your contests so agents can work together as a team, yet still reward the best individual performers.
Learn, Too
Use your contests to discover areas where training is insufficient, or agent skills need improvement.
Generate Buzz
Target your program to create excitement about short-term company goals and contest rewards.
Have Fun!
Keep it light and inclusive, encourage agents to ask for help, learn new skills, and spend more time finding solutions for your customers.
Key Performance Indicators
A good place to start looking for initial game/contest goals are your contact center’s key performance indicators (KPIs): response times, close rates, customer satisfaction, etc. Create a formula for rewarding points to agents based on these KPIs.
Weekly rewards can be as simple as preferred scheduling or a free lunch. Longer contests – monthly, quarterly, annually – should provide a more significant reward, scaling upward to match the effort required to achieve goals, while inspiring those who didn’t make it this time.
Once the program begins, don’t stop. Contests should end, but the program should continue, regardless of when agents are rewarded, providing short, medium and long-term goals and rewards to employees. When the grind begins to wear agents down, something more than a routine paycheck is needed to boost enthusiasm.
eCoaching and eLearning
Gamification becomes more powerful when combined with
Evaluations, eCoaching and eLearning solutions. This trio of workforce optimization solutions can enhance and automate agent training, improving performance and contact center efficiency.
eCoaching simplifies training, providing coaching for agents as needed, even when supervisors are busy. eLearning assignments can be triggered when an agent’s score falls below acceptable in automated evaluations. Together, the solutions directly impact an agent’s performance by providing them with a clear understanding of training concepts, methods, and goals as needed, on demand.
Combined with gamification, eCoaching and eLearning solutions give agents the tools for success and the motivation to strive for higher performance and better outcomes. These solutions for employee engagement translate directly into improvements in agent retention, customer satisfaction and contact center performance.
Encore
The Encore® Gamification solution from DVSAnalytics promotes friendly competition while motivating and rewarding your contact center agents. eCoaching and eLearning solutions are two other components of
Encore Workforce Optimization, along with call recording, screen recording, speech analytics, quality management, customized reporting, dashboards, and more.
Case Study: International Cruise & Excursions
As with any high-end hospitality business, competition in the travel-vacation industry is ever present. Customer service is a major differentiator. International Cruise and Excursions, Inc. (ICE) faced the challenge of continuously improving the quality of agent/customer interactions in their busy contact center.
Download the International Cruise and Excursions case study to learn more about how ICE uses Encore Workforce Optimization solutions to boost agent performance and improve the quality of agent/customer interactions.
