Contact Centre Gamification - SJS Solutions · Contact Centre Gamification solves both of these...

Contact Centre GamificationIt’s time to level up! How gamification can help you to boost morale, increase efficiency and enhance the customer experience

Contact Centre GuidesA series of industry reports on the issues of today from EvaluAgent

EvaluAgent | www.evaluagent.net 2

Contents

Introduction 3

When technology fails your customers… 4

Technology Challenges 4

When technology fails your agents… 5

What is Gamification? 6

The Next Logical Step – Contact Centre Gamification 6

Before you start

make sure that you have the right building blocks in place 7

The rules of the game 8

Conclusion 10


Does your call centre have a problem?

If you are anything like most of the contact centres that we talk to,

you are likely to be dealing with an issue that just won’t go away, and

one that is leading to customer dissatisfaction and agent churn.

Somewhere along the way your contact centre has made the

strategic decision that a new organisational chart and technology

alone are your best options to manage the ever-shifting expectations

of your customers.

But technology and the new team structures aren’t delivering on

the business case and the very people the change was supposed to

empower are still de-motivated, leading to poor customer service

and disappointing performance.

Low morale and the resulting impact of high staff turnover and

absence is one of the biggest problems the contact centre industry

faces. It impacts every layer of the business and the fundamental

purpose of your operation.

It can feel like you’re constantly fire-fighting, in spite of your best

intentions. So how can you break the cycle?

We think there is an answer: It’s time to put people at the heart of

great customer service once again. And contact-centre gamification

– the application of game-mechanics to customer service to make it

more engaging – is one way to achieve that vision.

Jaime ScottManaging Director, EvaluAgent

Introduction

Jaime has 17 years’ experience leading customer service operations and customer experience improvement teams and programmes for leading UK brands. As Head of Customer Insight and Improvement at Orange, he established the organisation’s first customer experience function and played a leading role in helping the company to top the JD Power customer satisfaction awards six years running. As Customer Experience Director at Barclays Bank and Vertex, he led teams to design and implement enterprise-level contact management and workforce optimisation solutions for a range of well-known brands including M&S, Tesco Bank, National Trust, Scottish Power and Selfridges.

Low morale and the resulting impact of high staff turnover and absence is one of the biggest problems the contact centre industry faces


Smartphones, tablets, social networking, instant messaging; the way we talk to each other has changed massively over the last decade.

The way we communicate is changing fast. And it’s a struggle to keep up.

Smartphones, tablets, social networking, instant messaging; the way

we talk to each other has changed massively over the last decade.

And consumers, especially those who have grown up with these new

technologies, want to be able to communicate with businesses in the

same way.

To say the contact centre industry has been left behind would be

an under statement. And this issue is not just affecting customer

satisfaction; it’s impacting all aspects of the business from agent

motivation through to revenues and the bottom line.

To be fair, many contact centres have made efforts to address the

shift. But in most cases it’s an efficiency-focused, rather than a

customer-focused approach. Perhaps one of the scenarios on the

right applies to your contact centre?

When technology fails your customers…

Bolted together legacy technology that is unable to adequately track and manage customers attempting to communicate

with you across multiple channels.

LegacyTechnology

OR

New technology brought in to address the problem, but with the wrong focus;

rather than enable agents to better manage customers, it attempts to replace agents

with technology. And, by itself, technology does not do a good job of creating engaged

employees or loyal customers.

NewTechnology

Technology Challenges


When technology fails your agents…Not only is technology failing to address the needs of your customers, it is also contributing to agent dissatisfaction.

Your agents are either not being given the tools they

need to do their job, or someone somewhere has decided

a technology system can do a better job of talking to

customers than they can.

Contact centres are driven by metrics, which in itself is

not a negative thing. However, it does become an issue

when managers start viewing their agents as robots and

forget how their emotions and behaviours drive those

metrics.

At the end of the day, business success depends on

people’s performance so helping agents to feel valued,

supported and motivated goes a long way towards

achieving your business objectives.

The first thing to understand about these new

technologies is that, be it a smartphone or a social

network, the technology is still just an enabler for

conversations with real people.

Your contact centre agents speak to thousands of

customers weekly, or even daily. Even though the cause

of all these new channels of communication is technology,

the modern contact centre must not just be technology-

centric, butpeople-centric.

There is a growing body of evidence to demonstrate that

contact centre gamification is a powerful enabler for

creating a truly people-centric contact centre.

According to the Gallup Employee Engagement Index, “service worker” is the only category of worker less engaged today than in 2009.


Gamification is a relatively new phenomenon in business.

Until very recently, it has only been applied to incentivising desirable

customer actions and behaviours. The theory being that by giving

products and services an element of gameplay, customers will buy

more and remain loyal in order to continue to earn points or badges.

In this capacity, it’s a simple way of maximising customer loyalty by

enabling customers to enjoy interacting with your business, while

making them feel rewarded and valued for their custom.

To cite a couple of common examples, you may have competed

with friends to check-in to more places or leave more tips on the

location-based social network, Foursquare. Or perhaps you’ve gained

NikeFuel points while using the fitness brand’s apps and products to

stay in shape.

There is however, a use for gamification beyond marketing and

loyalty, which could potentially bring even greater rewards to your

business…

What is Gamification?

The concept of applying game-mechanics (E.g. points, badges, competition) to non-game environments to make them more fun and engaging.

Typically used to encourage customers to engage with a product or service, and increasingly used to motivate employees.

Gamification /ɡeɪmɪfɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/ noun

Gamification is not new to contact centres.

Many of us remember the “good old days” when there was a

leaderboard on the flip-chart, a wheel of fortune in the corner, and a

star-of-the-day trophy on someone’s desk.

It may bring a wry smile to your face, but that level of engagement

and fun went a long way to encouraging team-work and making

a difficult and sometimes repetitious job more enjoyable and less

stressful.

However there were two major problems with this approach: it was

almost impossible to maintain fairness and consistency across the

whole team; and it just took far too long to pull all the stats together

and keep those flip-charts updated.

Contact Centre Gamification solves both of these problems in a

single stroke because it is based upon a system-based approach

to recognition and reward. That means fairness and consistency is

guaranteed; while contact centre managers are freed up to spend

time on what should be their highest priority - coaching and training

agents.

And the rewards don’t have to be costly – far from it, as we will

explain later on.

The Next Logical Step – Contact Centre Gamification

...the “good old days” when there was a leaderboard on the flip-chart, a wheel of fortune in the corner, and a star-of-the-day trophy on someone’s desk.


The good news is that contact centres actually lend themselves well to the concept of gamification.

A well-run contact centre is already monitoring lots of metrics. The first challenge is using all of that information to coach,

develop and motivate staff in a way that empowers them to strive for higher levels of performance.

With these building blocks in place, you’re ready to start converting all of this activity and data into points – the building

blocks of contact centre gamification…

Before you start make sure that you have the right building blocks in place

Identify the business outcomes you want to motivate and enhance. There are lots to choose from so select metrics and targets using a balanced score-card approach:

Identify and capture accurate data on contact centre activity and (principally) customer-driven actions and results that are linked to those business outcomes.

Implement a robust people-management framework:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

PEOPLE: Improve employee morale and motivation

Feedback performance data in real time to agents and team leaders

Use the data to generate specific actions and goals and track improvement

Initiate collaborative coaching sessions with agents to facilitate improvement.

Implement efficient and effective performance management agreements and HR processes.

CUSTOMER: Deliver a WOW customer experience

COSTS: Deliver efficiency savings

VALUE: Generate more revenue


Every good game needs a set of rules to play by, and contact centre gamification is no different. Based on our experience, here are the 10 rules we believe will make gamification a success in your contact centre:

The rules of the game

Think long and hard about the culture you want to createWhen it comes to changing behaviour, gamification can be very powerful, so before you start, it is important to think

about the kind of behaviour you want to encourage. This comes back to having the right building blocks in place and

creating a very clear link between people, performance and business outcomes.

Enhance, recognise and reward results rather than actionsActions may speak louder than words, but results mean more than both. Make sure you recognise and reward

the outcomes of actions, rather than the actions themselves. Make sure you don’t become prey to the rule of

unintended consequences; for example, if you incentivise agents to close cases, you’ll get lots of closed cases, but

you may also get lots of customers who are dissatisfied because their queries haven’t been fully addressed.

Focus on improvement and consistency as well as high performanceGamification in the contact centre should be as inclusive as possible. It is vital to reward consistency and

improvement as well as high achievement. Gamification is about improving performance across the board, not just

for your star performers. In fact, gamification’s ability to motivate new starters and under-achievers is one of its

main benefits.

Auto-assign points and minimise the manual allocation of pointsWe know that keeping track of metrics on flip-charts and wallboards can be an administrative headache. So ensure

you have the systems in place to auto-assign points rather than allocating them manually. Aside from minimising the

effort required, automating the allocation of points ensures that recognition is fair and consistent.

Minimise the chance of cynical employees gaming the systemWe have alluded (in rule 2) to the unintended consequences of rewarding actions rather than results. Unfortunately

one of those consequences can be agents gaming the system. Make sure you set up anti-gaming controls and create

a reward structure that ensures you don’t end up incentivising the wrong behaviour.

1.

3.

2.

4.

Gamification in the contact centre should be as inclusive as possible. It is vital to reward consistency and improvement as well as high achievement.

5.


7.

9.

8.

10.

Gamification will only work if it supports clear operational goals and if your leadership team embraces it with enthusiasm

Encourage inclusive, healthy competitionThis really goes back to the point about culture, but we can’t stress it too much. Competition might seem daunting

to some agents, but by making it transparent, inclusive and healthy, no one has anything to worry about. You can

do this by teaming up your high performers with low performers to encourage peer support and collaboration.

Encourage everyone to work together by creating supporting programmes, and involve agents in coming up with

their own challenges and targets.

Include real rewards As we said earlier, rewards don’t have to be expensive, but they do have to have value to the recipient. Think about

rewards that will encourage a more positive culture. A half day off, parking spot closer to the office entrance or

your manager taking your calls for an afternoon can all be great motivators. We have also seen instances where a

written letter of congratulations from a CEO makes a huge difference. Involve the agents too by asking them what

rewards will motivate them.

Keep it simpleLike your customers, many of your agents may be at home with the latest technology, but they are quickly going to

lose interest in a system that is difficult to use. A simple and efficient user interface is especially important for those

less tech savvy team members.

Make it fun and compulsive, but not distractingGamification is meant to increase your agent’s focus on customer service, not distract them from the task at hand.

By keeping it simple and easy but focussed on results, you can ensure that gamification doesn’t become another

‘gimmick’ or an additional piece of reporting software that is detracting from your agents’ focus.

Create a people-centric contact centreThis is the most important point. Gamification is a fantastic tool for motivating agents and achieving greater

customer satisfaction, but it is just that: a tool. It will only work if it supports clear operational goals and if your

leadership team embraces it with enthusiasm. Remember for a call centre to be truly people-centric it must

recognise the needs of people, not technology.

6.


ConclusionFor a long time the contact centre has looked to CRM technology to provide the answers, spending hundreds of

thousands of pounds along the way and creating some new problems, as well as solving old ones.

Today, true innovation lies in recognising the needs of the people you employ in your contact centre and those of the

customers they are there to serve. We all really do work harder and more effectively when we are valued – and your

people management strategy should achieve just that.

Imagine a contact centre where the longest queues were made up of staff eager to join your team and where agent

retention was just not an issue! Gamification can help make this vision a reality.

Imagine a contact centre where the longest queues were made up of staff eager to join your team and where agent retention was just not an issue! Gamification can help make this vision a reality.

DigitalCity, Bridge St West

The Boho Zone

Middlesbrough

TS2 1AE

www.evaluagent.net

[email protected]

0800 011 9688

EVALUAGENT

About EvaluAgentEvaluAgent is workforce optimisation and people management software designed

for call centres and back-office operations.

It is cloud-based and offers a suite of modules that can be plugged together in any

combination, with little or no need for integration with your existing systems.

We’ve specifically designed the Contact-Centre Gamification module to apply

game-mechanics to a contact centre environment and put people back at the heart

of great customer service.

Get your FREE demo of Evaluagent Contact-Centre Gamification at

www.evaluagent.net/demo

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