contact centre gamiﬁ cation it’s time to level up! · it’s time to level up! how gamiﬁ...

Contact Centre Gamifi cationIt’s time to level up! How gamifi cation can help you to boost morale, increase effi ciency and enhance the customer experience

Contact Centre White PapersA 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

When technology fails your agents… 5

What is Gamifi cation? 6

The Next Logical Step – Contact Centre Gamifi cation 6

Before you start, make sure that you have

the right building blocks in place 7

The rules of the game 8

Who is raising their game? 10

Conclusion 13


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 fi re-fi ghting, 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 gamifi cation

– 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 fi rst 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 effi ciency-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 fi rst 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 gamifi cation 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.


Gamifi cation 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 fi tness brand’s apps and products to

stay in shape.

There is however, a use for gamifi cation beyond marketing and

loyalty, which could potentially bring even greater rewards to your

business…

What is Gamifi cation?

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.

Gamifi cation /ɡeɪmɪfɪˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/ noun

Gamifi cation is not new to contact centres.

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

leaderboard on the fl ip-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 diffi cult 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 fl ip-charts updated.

Contact Centre Gamifi cation 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 Gamifi cation

...the “good old days” when there was a leaderboard on the fl ip-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 gamifi cation.

A well-run contact centre is already monitoring lots of metrics. The fi rst 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 gamifi cation…

Before you startmake 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 specifi c actions and goals and track improvement

Initiate collaborative coaching sessions with agents to facilitate improvement.

Implement effi cient and effective performance management agreements and HR processes.

CUSTOMER: Deliver a WOW customer experience

COSTS: Deliver effi ciency savings

VALUE: Generate more revenue


Every good game needs a set of rules to play by, and contact centre gamifi cation is no different. Based on our experience, here are the 10 rules we believe will make gamifi cation 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, gamifi cation 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 dissatisfi ed because their queries haven’t been fully addressed.

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

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

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

main benefi ts.

Auto-assign points and minimise the manual allocation of pointsWe know that keeping track of metrics on fl ip-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.

Gamifi cation 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.

Gamifi cation 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 offi ce 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 diffi cult to use. A simple and effi cient user interface is especially important for those

less tech savvy team members.

Make it fun and compulsive, but not distractingGamifi cation 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 gamifi cation 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. Gamifi cation 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.


A handful of enlightened contact centres are already introducing gamifi cation principles and reaping the rewards.

Taking it to the next level

NS&I (National Savings & Investments) is one of them. Driven by

a strong and supportive leadership culture, it has achieved some

outstanding performance improvements through higher levels of

motivation facilitated by game-based competition, recognition,

collaboration, and reward.

One of the largest savings organisations in the UK, with over 25

million customers, NS&I outsources its contact centre operation to

international information technology services provider Atos. The

operation employs 260 front-line agents and over 340 back-offi ce

staff in total, in Blackpool, Durham and Glasgow, handling a mix of

inbound and outbound customer service and sales enquiries.

Following the successful implementation of a new cloud-based workforce optimisation platform, NS&I and Atos decided

to trial the use of gamifi cation. The system enabled Atos to manage and engage contact centre employees using customer-

focused metrics such as quality, fi rst contact resolution, and real-time customer feedback, with a number of systemised

approaches to game-based recognition and reward:

Who is raising their game?

Building social reputation Everyone could access their own tailored personal profi le where they could select an avatar,

upload a photograph, view their points-total, achievements and badges as well as follow

friends and colleagues. This level of transparency and personalisation, made it easier to share

learning and understanding of how high performers consistently deliver great service.

Gamifying & automatically recognising performance Atos were able to decide the outcomes they wanted to encourage and the rewards for

employees when they achieved them.

NS&I is one of the largest savings organisations in the UK, with over 25 million customers

Introducing a dose of healthy competition Agents could team up and challenge their friends to see who could achieve the highest number

of points on a certain outcome. Teaming together high and low performers, proved a very

useful way to informally share best practice and encourage peer support.


“It’s made us talk and get to know each other. I have started to talk to people who I wouldn’t normally chat with. Mostly about how they are earning their points in the fi rst place but I have also made some new friends.”

Building a community Just like a social media news feed, agents were able to see when colleagues and team members

achieved badges, reached new levels or won challenges. The system allowed agents to

‘congratulate’ achievements to make them more visible and follow high performers to gain

inspiration and ideas for improving their own performance.

Gamifying rewards Employees were able to use their points to bid for a range of prizes, with each auction set up in

a matter of minutes. The gamifi cation control mechanisms ensured the Rewards system never

impacted front-line service levels.

Enabling a level playing fi eld Traditional leader boards can be divisive, but by providing tips on how to gain more points and

assigning agents to ‘clubs’ competing against colleagues doing similar tasks, Atos was able to

maintain healthy competition and kept everyone motivated to improve their performance.


Results

Because Contact Centre Gamifi cation is focused on changing behaviour, its

impact is felt almost overnight.

Before EvaluAgent Contact Centre Gamifi cation, a trial group’s Average

Handling Time (AHT) was typically 3.5% higher than the rest of the operation.

Following go-live, the trial group’s AHT is 2.0% lower. Similar changes were

observed with customer satisfaction and adherence metrics.

200

04-Mar 01-Apr 29-Apr 27-May 24-Jun

Gamifi cationtrial went live

22-Jul

205

210

215

220

225

230

235

240

Rest of Operation: AHT

Gamifi cation Trial Agents:AHT

“Gamifi cation has added a healthy dose of competition, allowing agents to compete across teams or even by site to improve and maintain performance. They are free to set up personal challenges so they can focus on key areas identifi ed for improvement, as well as challenging other individuals or groups to do the same. Some might have been hesitant about that at fi rst but everyone enjoys it now they’re stuck in and it’s really improved the culture in the contact centres.

“My time can now be spent giving the support and direction needed to help agents make the required improvements. The welcome spin off is that they earn points for doing it so also feel recognised for their efforts. It’s now possible for me to get a complete view of the level of service being offered by my team and offer immediate help to those most in need of it.”

Lesley ScottTeam Leader, Atos

The team leader view

Reduction in Average Handling Time (AHT) of

5.5%

EvaluAgent | www.evaluagent.net 13 EvaluAgent | www.evaluagent.net 13

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! Gamifi cation 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! Gamifi cation 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-offi ce 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 specifi cally designed the Contact-Centre Gamifi cation 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 Gamifi cation at

www.evaluagent.net/demo

contact centre gamiﬁ cation it’s time to level up! · it’s time to level up! how gamiﬁ...

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