Is Gamification Right for Your Contact Center?

Gamification might be a contact center buzzword right now, but the fact that it’s trendy doesn’t make it right for your agents. In order for gamification to be successful, you have to have analytics, agents and management all on the same page, and your team members’ personalities have to be more cohesive than contrasting. Here are five factors to determine whether or not gamification is a good choice for you.

First Things First: What is Gamification?

Gamification refers to game mechanics in the contact center that are used to motivate employees. Agents compete to finish objectives before others. Competition can be based on practically anything, but should focus on the areas that need the most improvement. These could include hours worked, average speed to answer, first call resolution, total talk time, after-call work time, or percentage of calls segmented by type. Rewards are doled out, ranging from leaderboard ranking to badges, trophies and other physical prizes.

5 Gamification Considerations

1. Everyone will have to see each other’s scores in order to benchmark their own score and spur on the competition. Agents will then know that the winner was fairly chosen, which instills confidence and trust in management. To do this, though, you’ll need a robust, reliable reporting system that includes the metrics you want to track.
2. Several agents must participate, not just a select few, and they have to be agents who are able to engage in healthy rivalry. You may want to create a team building program before deciding if gamification is right for your contact center.
3. You’ll need a system setup to detect and report cheating. Some agents may try to make it look like they’re doing more just for the sake of winning.
4. New hires do well with gamification because it can help them learn faster and retain information better. However, they might be at the bottom of the scoreboard when learning because they’re competing against seasoned agents, and that could inhibit their confidence. Carefully choose the competitions that new hires are included in, and consider having them only compete against other new hires, which will level the playing field.
5. Gamification usually requires some amount of supervision. Consider how realistic it is for management to get involved based on their availability.

Have you setup gamification in your contact center? We want to hear about your experience!