By Aleksandr Peterson, TechnologyAdvice
Working at a call center is probably one of the least coveted, least cherished jobs on the market today. The work can be tedious, repetitive, and high-volume. Reps field anywhere from 50 calls per day (a conservative estimate) to over 100, and many of those calls require them to interact with difficult cases.
The Side Effect
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The unfortunate side effect of this work is that call center reps slip into a state of passivity, like a person driving the same traffic-choked route home from work every day. Job engagement becomes inversely proportional to job mastery. As the systems and workflows come with greater ease, reps approach tasks with less and less focus.
According to a recent Gallup poll, some 70% of Americans aren’t engaged in their jobs, which costs the economy an estimated $350 billion each year in productivity. While that’s a fairly broad statistic, call center reps, of all people, are especially vulnerable to disengagement.
This is toxic to your company. Your salespeople and customer service reps are the first points of human contact — the foundations of customer relationships and retention. What is a business without either of those things?
The Doctor’s Orders
Gamification, as you may already know, is the strategy of applying game mechanics such as badges, points, level progression, and leaderboards to non-game contexts. There are a few reasons why call centers are prime candidates for gamification.
- First, call centers are goldmines for measurable KPIs that are already being tracked by supervisors through customer relationship management software. Call handle time, hold time, information capture rate, adherence, idle time, sales referrals, booked sales, escalated calls, post-call surveys — the list goes on. These KPIs make natural fuel for gamification apps that measure employee engagement via specific metrics.
- Second, managers can use gamification to rectify slippage in areas that are important to the company. Most gamification solutions allow supervisors to orchestrate both communal and individual growth. They can choose to set goals across the board, or single out specific performers for improvement using administrative privileges.
- Third, and perhaps most important, gamification taps into psychological motivators including “the need for community, feedback, achievement, [and] rewards” to bring about long-term, positive results. This means reps will re-engage with their jobs, helping solve the largest call center conundrum.
Does It Really Work?
Gartner predicts that by next year more than 40% of Global 1000 companies will implement gamification strategies. Maybe you want to get on board but still have reservations.
It’s important to acknowledge some of the present opposition to call center gamification. Karen Veazy, TMCnet contributor and former call center employee, says that one of the most obvious flaws of gamification is that employees might feel disrespected by the simplistic notion that their job can be made fun and attractive overnight. According to her, “It rings of an elementary school system of points and rewards for ‘having a good day.’”
You certainly want to avoid making your employees feel belittled, but the fix is not to avoid gamification altogether. Do that, and you’re back to square one.
The fix is to institute a high-quality system that offers users real value. For example, “Congratulations! You win this GIF of a winking cat” is not real value.
Public recognition and an Amazon gift card is real value. Many current systems even offer social-media-esque interfaces that allow users to customize their own virtual profile, track their achievements along with their colleagues, and recognize coworkers who excel.
The Marriage Of CRMs And Gamification
The beauty of all of this, of course, is that gamification can be seamlessly integrated with the CRM software that is already the brick and mortar of your customer service efforts. There are a few newer CRMs that come with built-in gamification features, such as open-sourceZurmo, by eAdvantage. But add-ons or apps that work with existing CRMs form the majority of what you’ll find on the market today. Here are a few worth checking out:
- LevelEleven: Designed with sales managers (not IT) in mind, this easy-to-use platform offers the ability to motivate “literally … everything,” with a choice between group goals or singling out specific users. LevelEleven has mobile capabilities and is compatible with the Work.com badge system, so that badges can be translated into tangible rewards such as gift cards.
- IActionable: Uses “game scenarios” to boost rep engagement, and boasts one of the most flexible and customizable platforms available with lightning-fast real time feedback. IActionable is cloud-based and can accommodate large or small firms.
- CRMGamified: “Motivation Engine” is an add-on for Microsoft Dynamics with the unique feature of “missions” that coax employees through a progression of tasks, where each completion unlocks the new opportunities and points. CRMGamefied also has strong social features like customizable profiles and the ability to “follow” and “like” colleagues.
- Hoopla: Hoopla was created specifically with sales teams in mind and has features designed to motivate team competition, pipeline building, and overall sales performance. With mobile capabilities, leaderboards via big-screen TV, and streaming video, Hoopla is one of the more interactive, innovative solutions on the market.
Once you’ve selected the best platform for your company and learned how to use it, sit back and observe as your employees perk up like plants in freshly watered soil. They may roll their eyes at the beginning, but soon they’ll be busy policing their procedures and refining their technique in order to rise to the top, and your customers will thank you. Let the games begin.
Aleksandr Peterson is a research writer at TechnologyAdvice. He covers CRMs, gamification, project management, and other emerging business technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
