Boosting employee motivation, training effectiveness, and quality of output can all be done by an ingenious method called gamification. Gamification refers to incorporating gaming elements into the training process or other elements of a workplace to diversify and improve the agent development.

Gamification doesn’t just improve the working and training processes of agents; it also allows managers to better track and adjust training to accommodate for employees based on their performance.

While a large proportion of recent studies have shown that gamification can improve KPIs in virtually every touchpoint of a contact centre, there are still dozens of areas of consideration that need to be evaluated to provide an effective gamification system. Read on to discover what they are.

1. Look Long-Term

With any system, not just gamification, it’s crucial to outline and understand the long-term benefits. Understand what problem you want to solve with its implementation. Employing systems based on short-term problem resolution can have large long-term implications. The saying, “everything in moderation”, definitely rings true in this circumstance. Start small and test the waters. Pick one thing and build from there, developing more sophisticated ways of using the solution as you learn from your agents about what works best. You will get more from a system that is continuously updated as it will keep your agents engaged.

2. Understand the Value in Rewards

Rewards are among the biggest motivators throughout gamification; it incentivises good performance and constantly encourages agents to better themselves throughout the training process. There are two big things to bear in mind when designing your gamification systems, one is not to overemphasise rewards, and two, to moderate the number of rewards.

If a gamification system overemphasises rewards, this alludes to the idea that an agent can only perform successfully by hitting their numbers, when in reality, there are many other aspects to good agent performance. An over-emphasis on rewards can see agents focus too much on their KPIs and begin to feel like robots. As a result, customer service quality can drop, and agents can lose engagement and not take it seriously.

Levelling up is a way to keep agents motivated to move through content organised in a specific progression. It requires completion or mastery of one level before getting access to the next. Levels typically increase in difficultly as the game progresses and require skills acquired in all previous levels. Levelling up plays to the user’s drive to conquer harder tasks and their desire for higher recognition and reward.

3. Encourage Problem-Solving

As previously mentioned, not everything goes to plan. Especially when many things go wrong at once, or there is an overabundance of uncertainty at any given time, agents may be required to act like a supervisor or a manager. Therefore, developing good problem-solving skills, which improve an agent’s ability to think laterally, is important for contingency planning and setting agents up for future promotion or career progression.

Through its immersive training platform, gamification solutions can help develop enhanced problem-solving abilities and integrate lateral problem solving to see agents handle uncertain or difficult situations without needing the assistance of a manager.

4. Track and Report

Tracking and reporting plays an important role in gamification success. On the front end, it can reveal areas where agents can improve the quality of their interactions with customers. On the backend the reporting can track and measure the agents’ performance to determine progress and goal attainment which will help you identify tweaks that need to be made and when new goals need to be gamified.

5. Playtest and Market Internally

Playtesting throughout the gamification design process provides insight as to whether goals are being achieved. When the game is ready, playtest with a small group to identify any bugs and to ensure the game is driving the correct behaviours. Also encourage these people to spread the word about the game and to build excitement within the centre so that when it is launched, staff are engaged and excited about it.

If you would like to find out more about our gamification solution, speak to our professional consultants today.