Excellent customer experiences stem from fantastic employee experiences.
Increasingly, companies recognize that more engaged, productive, and satisfied employees don't just reduce churn; they also drive better business results. Indeed, highly engaged employees can generate a 23 percent increase in profitability.
Keeping contact center employees engaged takes time and effort. After all, agents consistently deal with high call volumes, complex workloads, and demanding customers. While implementing improved technologies and processes is helpful, brands must also consider their people and find ways of making work more fun.
One such method is gamification. Indeed, almost 90 percent of employees say gamification makes them more productive at work. Moreover, employees are 60 percent more engaged with gamified work experiences.
As such, many contact centers opt to gamify their operations, often employing the following four tactics.
1. Gamify Performance
One of the best ways to gamify the contact center is to add a sense of competition to agent workflows, gamifying their performance.
Most contact centers already use tools to manage and track agent KPIs, such as quality scores, engagement rates, and schedule adherence. There are even dashboards and wallboards that can allow team members to monitor their performance.
However, monitoring these metrics consistently without gamification can pressure team members more than boost engagement. Instead, to gamify performance, companies need to find a way to motivate and encourage teams to achieve their goals.
For instance, setting up leaderboards for specific KPIs can encourage friendly competition in the workplace. Just be careful only to showcase the leading agents. Showing those that languish in the lower positions is often a demotivator.
Companies can also issue rewards to the employees or team members who achieve the best outcomes as part of a broader recognition system. Also, awards like "most improved agent" ensures that the same agents don't always win.
2. Gamify Collaboration
Bonds in the workplace are highly beneficial to increasing engagement and reducing turnover. Research shows having friends at work can boost productivity and motivation.
With this in mind, consider how gamification can strengthen human connections. After all, it's not all about pitting team members against each other.
For instance, setting up team games, where people compete as part of a group to achieve the best possible results related to a specific performance metric, may inspire a sense of camaraderie. Businesses may also assign buddies to different agents to help them share their skills and accomplish goals.
Developing specific team-building programs with gamified elements often works well too. Some get their teams involved in charity fundraising sessions or invite them to participate in group sporting events.
Even the most straightforward aspects of team collaboration can be gamified. For example, companies can add gaming sessions into Meetings with apps on Microsoft Teams or start each session with a fun whiteboarding event.
3. Gamify Training
Onboarding new agents is often time-consuming and expensive, particularly when turnover rates are high. Moreover, continuous training and development are necessary as businesses evolve.
Gamifying training can be an excellent way to streamline the coaching process and make employee development more engaging.
Indeed, 33 percent of employees already say they want more game-like features in their training software. Additionally, 83 percent of employees feel more motivated to complete gamified training sessions.
Simple strategies - such as allowing employees to "level up" and earn stars for their profile when they complete a training session or unlock new rewards with each development program - may make a massive difference to the stickiness of training.
4. Gamify Customer Interactions
Dealing with customers is the primary focus of any contact center agent. However, it's not always a streamlined and relaxing process, particularly as queries become more complex and urgent.
