Dan Katz, Director, Product Management

Next week, I’ll be moderating a panel at JiveWorld featuring T-Mobile, Pearson and UBM. We’ll be talking about gamification–of course–and the other day, as I was putting the finishing touches on prep work, I caught myself reminiscing about all that’s happened at Bunchball in just a few short years.

It wasn’t all that long ago that people would hear the term “gamification” and jump to conclusions. The automatic assumption was that it had something to do with entertainment or that it was some kind of short-lived tactic for tricking employees into doing things they don't really want to do.

But that’s not gamification at all.

What is it?

Gamification is a data-driven motivation strategy that taps into your employees’ intrinsic motivators, engaging them in activities, content and systems that are meaningful to their productivity and your business success. It’s about inspiring active participation–which is much more powerful than having employees who are passive consumers of content or who perform tasks simply because someone “told them to.” With gamification you can leverage the big data that your employees generate to help you motivate them to perform better and drive a hard ROI.

Leading companies throughout the world are now using gamification to:

• Drive employee development and higher revenue per employee
• Improve talent retention and recruitment
• Accelerate onboarding
• Enhance the customer experience

But even so, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:  As much as we talk about what gamification can do, there’s only one thing that truly drives that message home–results.

And at Bunchball, we’ve got plenty of results to share.

Since the company was founded in 2007, we’ve amassed scores of case studies that show how gamification improves business performance in real, tangible ways. That’s where Ryan Sefko from T-Mobile, Kim England from Pearson and Tracy Maurer from UBM come into the story. At the JiveWorld 2014 session, they’ll tell you about why they chose to leverage gamification within their Jive communities, the business improvements they saw and the lessons they learned along the way.

For instance, you’ll hear how T-Mobile used gamification to promote quick adoption of its “T-Community” social business environment. After rewarding customer service and in-store reps when they searched for information, posted new inquiries, answered peer questions and “liked” valuable content, T-Mobile saw:

• 30,000 T-Mobile call center and store employees regularly using the T-Community
• More than 15,000 frontline employees complete a set of self-guided tutorials

• Month-over-month improvement of call resolution rates and customer satisfaction scores
• Widespread employee collaboration resulting in:
  
  • 96% increase in participation
  • 583% increase in contributions
  • 783% increase in responses
  • 31% improvement in customer satisfaction scores

In addition, you’ll have a chance to ask your own questions and get ideas on how gamification can help your community.

If you're headed to JiveWorld 2014, please join us on Tuesday, October 21 at 11:30 am in Gracia 4 … and to make sure you're fully prepared, don't forget to download Bunchball’s free JiveWorld 2014 toolkit.

Vice President, Marketing
@ErikaBlaney‎

Contests have been a motivational staple in the workplace for years, ranging from sales “president club” competitions to dumb-luck drawings for random prizes. And while the approaches have been varied, one thing has always been true: when there is only one winner, there are scores of losers, and you have little control over which label you get. Where’s the motivation in that?

This isn’t any huge insight. I mean, anyone who has ever watched a single episode of a reality TV show can see the underbelly of winner-takes-all contests. What starts as fun and games to motivate collaboration and camaraderie quickly dissolves into something far more destructive, because no one wants to be a loser.  

That’s why innovative enterprises are doing away with workplace contests that pit employees against each other for big, one-time prizes; and just in time, according to Joel MacCharles, vice president of innovation for Allied Global. At the recent ICMI Contact Center Demo & Conference, Joel gave a presentation titled, “Take This Job And Love It! Using Gamification to Improve Motivation and Performance,” in which he shared examples from Allied Global’s implementation of gamification, powered by Bunchball Nitro. He discussed insights gleaned from Allied Global’s own experience about how to use gamification to create compelling and engaging experiences for employees that improve performance.

Contests are commonly geared towards top performers, but as Joel explained, your top performers were already performing without the sales contest. With most motivation contests “the closer you get to the end of the contest, it becomes obvious who is competing to win and who has no chance of winning,” he said, “middle performers and low performers in this case are giving up far too early, that is exactly why contests need to focus on an individual competing against their personal best rather than competing against their peers.”

In the talk Joel also reviewed for the audience the ways that outdated contests fail to motivate employees:

1. The same person wins all the time. Top performers almost always remain top performers. How many times have you heard someone say, “What’s the point? I never win these things.” One person being known as the de facto winner can create a sour attitude and can even make the winner feel guilty that he or she is beating out colleagues and friends.
2. Contests can incentivize the wrong behavior. If employees think they have a better chance of winning, they might take action that is not in the customer’s or the company’s best interest. 
3. They make folks feel like losers. By the end of any big contest, only a few people are motivated because the lower performers have no chance of beating the top performers. When the contest is over, you have one happy grand prize winner but a whole team of disillusioned or apathetic employees.
4. They frequently can’t see or control their progress. There’s a threat of competition fatigue, and a lack of control. When the data and insight into their contributions are held by management, they can’t self-regulate, and success seems like a “lucky” outcome, because they can’t see their own progress. It is outside of the vision and, to some degree, their control.
5. The extrinsic gift cheapens the intrinsic motivator. When we go into an organization, 99 percent of the employees coming to work wanting to do a great job -- they want to be a good team player, contribute to business success and be acknowledged for their contributions. It’s why they took the job in the first place. So, when we motivate with some big, fantastic “prize,” we actually run the risk of cheapening their motivation. Sometimes, a gadget or gift card cheapens the bigger and more meaningful pay-off, which is frequently as simple as shining a spotlight on a job well done.

Joel discussed how Instead of sticking to these outdated tactics that tend to make up the call center status quo, Allied Global blazed their own trail to ignite employee engagement, enhance performance and improve retention. Joel shared their secrets for success:

1. Create a “personal best” mentality: Instead of only competing against each other, Allied Global employees compete against their own “personal bests;” providing more opportunities for recognition, advancement and prizes among employees of varying skill and experience levels.
2. Reward employees for a variety of small “wins.” Allied Global employees are not only recognized for getting the job done but also for doing it well, learning new skills and hitting  milestones in their careers.
3. Offer prizes designed to foster teamwork and social interaction. Instead of one giant prize like a golfing trip or big screen, Allied Global offers experiential and group prizes like wine and cheese tastings or a month of free coffee for the winner and five officemates.

By leveraging gamification strategies from Bunchball, Allied Global has rejected the call center ways of yesterday that resulted in high-turnover and performance issues. They have embraced a new way to engage employees and are reaping the benefits.

To get more insights from Joel around call center management, check out his recent article on the subject.

By Rajat Paharia, Founder and Chief Product Officer
@rajatrocks
Google+

It’s that time of year – the season for fresh starts, resolutions to improve and bold new initiatives. As I read article after article about “Top Business Trends for 2015” and “What to Watch for in the Year Ahead,” I can’t help but be struck by the number of times I’ve seen gamification mentioned, or even featured. We’ve come a long way from questions like, “What is gamification?” Today, most business execs know the definition of gamification, and they recognize it as a data-driven motivation strategy that can improve company performance across the board. Many are eager to get platforms in place in the New Year because they understand that engaged employees form the foundation of the service-profit chain.

If you have questions about gamification in the workplace and how it can improve business results for your company, let me break it down. Here are the top reasons why I predict gamification will revolutionize the workplace in 2015:

Gamification taps into intrinsic motivators. We all share the same basic intrinsic motivators, factors that inspire us to initiate an activity for its own sake, because it is interesting and satisfying in itself. The five most important intrinsic motivators – Autonomy (“I control”), Mastery (“I improve”), Purpose (“I make a difference”), Progress (“I achieve”) and Social Interaction (“I connect with others”) – are common to everyone, and behavioral research has shown that satisfying them can make anyone’s work more productive and more pleasing. That means gamification can be used to unlock potential across all employees, all job titles and all departments.

Gamification connects the dots between employee motivation and company success. Tapping into your employees’ intrinsic motivators is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. You also need to be able to connect their increased engagement directly to the company’s better performance. In other words, a well-designed gamification platform starts by inspiring active participation geared to specific business goals. Then, it monitors results, measures the business impacts and supports perpetual learning and improvements that fuel even greater satisfaction and engagement.

Gamification is data-driven. Simply put, gamification uses data to motivate performance. Years ago, most business got done in face-to-face meetings or via memos sent around the office. But today, sales, training, service, collaboration and almost every other aspect of business occurs in systems that produce mountains of data. Gamification platforms capture the relevant data and put it to work to create engaging experiences that drive performance, business results and competitive advantage. With gamification, you can use data to build a 360-degree view of all your employees and take advantage of opportunities to motivate them everywhere they work.

Gamification is sustainable and proven – across sectors and departments. Bunchball’s 350+ customers span every industry you can imagine, and our gamification platform is helping them improve business results in a variety of different ways. For example, gamification is being used to:

• Increase adoption and use of learning management tools. The financial services company Sun Life Financial created a gamified learning management tool called money UP. This online education platform has helped Sun Life’s customers inspire financial literacy in their employees, while simultaneously improving participation in savings and retirement plans at work. How? By explaining workplace retirement and savings information via a series of missions that are progressively challenging, yet attainable. In the first six months after launch, Sun Life customers who implemented money UP saw that 33 percent of their employees who finished Level 1 increased their retirement contributions and/or added a new product. Of those who added a new product, 88 percent also added new assets to their plans. The latest results show that participants who've taken action have increased contributions, on average, by an impressive 74 percent.
• Promote retention and results among hourly employees. RMH Franchise Corporation, which operates more than 130 Applebee’s restaurants throughout the United States, is using a gamified website called Bee Block to tap into the motivations of its hourly workforce. When logged in, employees can manage their profiles, review their own data and participate in automated challenges broadcast in real-time via “Bee TVs” placed strategically throughout restaurant workstations. Early results show improvements in employee engagement and a 20 percent reduction in turnover – that’s striking, considering the average turnover for hourly-employed restaurant workers is 125 percent! Ultimately, one of RMH’s goals is to transform its wait staff and bartenders from “order-takers” to sellers – a change that could have a big impact on revenue overall.
• Drive up employee knowledge sharing to increase service levels. After T-Mobile incorporated gamification within their employee collaboration platform, participation increased 96 percent, contributions jumped up 583 percent and responses skyrocketed 783 percent. The company also saw a 31 percent improvement in customer satisfaction scores, 40 percent improvement in call deflection resulting in reduced support costs and month-over-month improvement of call resolution rates and customer satisfaction scores.
• Boost call center employee performance and satisfaction. Gamification helped Allied Global make real, measurable improvements to its call center KPIs. Allied used gamification to reduce employee turnover, improve workflow and create a winning feeling among call center agents –all of which helps the company deliver the best quality service in an efficient and effective manner.
• Enhance customer loyalty and drive revenue. The Coca-Cola Company used gamification to update its loyalty program and connect the brand with new, younger consumers at scale. Leveraging its “Open Happiness” mantra, Coke wanted its loyalty program to convey happiness to site visitors, drive repeat visits and encourage users to share content with their networks and grow the community. The brand expanded its definition of rewards to include extrinsic elements such as exclusive and advance access, and intrinsic rewards such as badges and experiences. The new platform allows My Coke Rewards to reward both social and interactional loyalty – but not only on a transactional basis – and early figures for membership and social engagement have exceeded expectations.

As you can see from even this small sampling of examples, gamification has application throughout the workplace, and done right, it can impact employees from all generations, departments, tenures and educational backgrounds. Moving forward into 2015, I fully anticipate that we’ll be hearing many more success stories from companies using gamification to achieve real business results.

By Molly Kittle, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Bunchball
@MolKittle

Odds are, you're familiar with the term "gamification." You may even be able to point to a specific use case where it proved to be a powerful tool for improving business performance. But here's something you might not know: Gamification can be used throughout the entire enterprise, for all business units. In other words, gamification can unlock your company's potential across all employees, all job titles and all departments.

That's possible because, done right, a gamification platform leverages basic human intrinsic motivators (which we all have), data (which we all now generate when we work) and strategic business goals (which we all should be working towards).

Who can be motivated by this strategy? Let me give you a few gamification examples in buisnesses:

• Call center agents. Call centers collect huge amounts of data about their agents. But, instead of using this data to intimidate and/or spy (as though "Big Brother" is watching), call center managers are putting this data to use with gamification, to influence employee actions in positive ways. As I mentioned above, gamification is about motivating people through data – and it has been proven to work well in call centers. In a case we highlighted last year, Allied Global used gamification to reduce turnover, improve workflow and create a winning feeling among its call center agents.
• Sales reps. A gamification platform can systematically engage sales reps wherever they are, while continually adding data to established systems. Consequently, managers can learn about the business in real-time and drive meaningful change. A Fortune 500, multi-national IT company, created a gamified environment within Salesforce.com to onboard a new inside sales team, encourage best practices and proficiency. Not only did they see a 65 percent increase in weekly users of Salesforce.com, but average days-to-close dropped 54 percent while the rate at which opportunities converted to closed or won increased by 14 percent – all within one month.
• IT support staff. Gamification can help establish, and then nurture, a collaborative, self-service IT Service Management (ITSM) environment. That's precisely what's needed to keep help desk teams fresh, so they can drive improvements. In fact, we've seen IT support managers use gamification to improve a variety of key performance metrics, such as tickets closed, call time reduction, CSAT score improvement and knowledge articles created. 
• Hourly employees. Hourly employees are typically difficult to engage, motivate and retain. But RMH Franchise Corporation, which operates more than 130 Applebee's restaurants throughout the United States, is finding that gamification can have a positive impact on each of those fronts. RMH created a gamified website called Bee Block to tap into the motivations of its hourly workforce, and the early results show impressive improvements in employee engagement, along with a 20 percent reduction in turnover (considering the average turnover for hourly-employed restaurant workers is a whopping 125 percent, a 20 percent reduction is nothing short of remarkable). Ultimately, one of RMH's goals is to transform its wait staff and bartenders from "order-takers" to sellers – a change that could have a big impact on revenue overall.
• Millennials. Employers often find it challenging to engage millennials, particularly when it comes to the kind of long-term planning required for participation in workplace programs, like retirement plans. That's why Sun Life Financial, a financial services company, used a gamified online education platform called money UP to inspire financial literacy and increase participation the workplace retirement programs offered by its customers. In the first six months after launch, Sun Life customers who implemented money UP saw that 33 percent of their employees who finished Level 1 increased their retirement contributions and/or added a new product. That result showed that money UP had a positive impact across all age groups, but digging deeper, Sun Life found that millennials have been among the highest proportion of participants in the platform. What's more, millennials have also been the most active, comprising 33 percent of all players and 44 percent of employees who increased contributions or added product. But don't make the mistake of thinking gamification is just for Gen Y. Our customers are using the Bunchball gamification platform to inspire employees of all ages and levels, including even...
• Senior executive leaders. Gamification can motivate constructive conversation in social communities, and that, in turn, can inspire sharing, collaboration and innovation across all levels of employees. We've seen Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) use gamified social networks powered by Jive to improve collaboration between customers, partners and employees – including senior executive leaders. As a result, gamification has helped HDS generate valuable intellectual capital.

As you can see in the above gamification examples, companies are using gamification platforms to engage their employees, motivate better performance and drive ROI across all levels and all departments. Remember, at its core, gamification is a data-driven motivation strategy. Who can gamification motivate at your company?

By Molly Kittle, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Bunchball
@MolKittle

We live in an age of distraction, and perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in a modern classroom. After all, today's students have grown up with information and entertainment at their fingertips. Cable TV, the Internet, smartphones, tablets — is it any wonder that the average person's attention span has plummeted to eight seconds¹— one second less than the average attention span of a goldfish?

How can teachers keep their students interested in learning? What does it take to grab their attention and — perhaps even more importantly — maintain it?

For a growing number of educators, the answer is gamification.

Gamification in education platforms can motivate students to spend more time learning and increase their engagement with extracurricular activities.

Here are two compelling examples:

• PowerMyLearning is a popular K-12 digital learning platform used by more than 30,000 schools throughout the United States. Owned and operated by the nonprofit CFY, PowerMyLearning is designed to personalize instruction and drive student ownership of learning via playlists of educational content customized to meet students' needs. The platform has become a go-to destination for curated content aligned to the Common Core State Standards and spanning a range of subjects, including math, English Language Arts, science, technology and more.

  In 2013, CFY's team was looking for ways to optimize their already successful platform. They wanted to motivate students to visit PowerMyLearning more frequently and to spend more time on-site once they are there. That's where Bunchball came into the story. We worked with the folks at CFY to develop a student engagement strategy and identify key performance metrics and analytics. Then, we helped them integrate the Nitro Platform into the PowerMyLearning online learning system.

  Now, PowerMyLearning students earn "Power" as they interact with learning activities on the site. They can compete with friends and classmates, check their progress on class leaderboards, and level-up as they perform challenges and accomplish more.

  And students aren't the only ones impacted by the new gamified platform. The PowerMyLearning user base includes educators and parents, and they're benefiting, too. For example, teachers are using the gamification features to assign playlists of activities to keep their students' skills sharp over breaks or even long weekends. Meanwhile, parents are establishing their PowerMyLearning goals and tracking progress online so they can offer real-world rewards for successes.

  Since gamification was incorporated into the PowerMyLearning platform, CFY has seen a 42 percent increase in the time students spend on-site, as well as nearly a three-fold increase in the number of pages students view per visit. Clearly, students are motivated to spend more time learning, connect and compete with friends and earn rewards set by their parents. (You can see examples of PowerMyLearning student dashboards and many more details in this case study.)

• A few months ago, Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management launched the Goodman IMPRESS Program as a way to initiate meaningful partnerships and responsibilities to encourage student success. As illustrated in this infographic, IMPRESS gamifies extracurricular education to help students achieve these five learning objectives:
  • Major and industry exploration
  • Personal and professional leadership development
  • Certifications
  • Community engagement
  • Global context

Even better, IMPRESS was designed around a "Harry Potter" theme to make it more engaging to students. Students are organized by "houses," and as the current standings reveal, the competition is stiff. It's too soon for us to report on results from IMPRESS, but the early buzz is encouraging. In Fortune last September, Amanda Nicholson, associate dean and professor of practice at Whitman, described IMPRESS as a potential game-changer for schools that want to keep students motivated and encourage them to become well-rounded.

These are just two examples that help illustrate the benefit; when education platforms are gamified, students see a connection between their work and positive feedback, and so they become eager and willing to learn and contribute. As a result, academic performance (or, as with the IMPRESS program described above, extracurricular performance) improves, measurably and fast.

I anticipate we're going to see many more applications of gamification in education in the year ahead. Gamification works because it taps into the intrinsic motivators all humans share, no matter whether it's students in grade school, college, or adults in the workplace.

Look out, goldfish.

¹http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/

By Gary Chavez, Vice President, Client Services, Bunchball

At Bunchball, we know gamification is a powerful business tool that can motivate better performance and drive ROI across all levels and all departments. However, we're also well aware not all gamification projects are created equal and some managers are struggling to achieve desired results. Gartner has even predicted up to 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives. Is your gamification delivering less than you expected? Have you been up at night wondering, "What are we doing wrong?"

For help answering your questions, I asked gamification experts to describe the most common reasons gamification projects fail – and what you can do to get back on track. Here are their responses.

Gamification is unsuccessful when:

• It's not tied to strategy/business goals. Contrary to popular belief, gamification is not about competition or workplace contests that pit employees against each other for big, one-time prizes. Instead, gamification is about motivation. Done right, it blends strategy with a scalable platform that motivates ongoing engagement, business insights and ROI. The only reason to implement gamification is to drive business results, and if you're not realizing ROI, it's likely you need to take a step back and re-think your intentions. You need to define clear goals supported by tangible and measurable objectives.
   
  From Ross Warnlof, Marketing Manager, Bluewolf:

  "What are the objectives of your behavior modification program? High-level goals must be supported by tangible and measurable objectives. Whether it is sales/service effectiveness, social collaboration, or adoption of new technologies, these initiatives are ambiguous without quantitative backing. Metrics are something that can garner executive endorsement. Keep this in mind when developing your key initiatives and their measurement criteria."
   

• There's a lack of participation. If people aren't engaging with your gamification project, it's because they're not motivated to do so. That's a problem – and one that signals a flaw in project development. Successful gamification taps into basic human intrinsic motivators. That means it's designed to inspire active participation, because participating is interesting and satisfying in itself. If your gamification project wasn't designed with intrinsic motivators in mind, your employees probably consider it nothing more than another item on their (already endless) "to-do" lists. Is it any wonder participation is low?
   
  From Caitlin Donaldson, Sr. Data Analyst, Bunchball:

  "The first step in building a vibrant, active community, is understand exactly who's using your platform – and how. Then, once you have that data in-hand, you can work to optimize collaboration by facilitating participation, broadening conversations, and encouraging dialogue that endures. Interestingly, we've seen implementations where the top 1% of users comprises one-third of total activity (on average), and where the average daily activity for the top 1% is more than 2,000% higher than the average daily activity for everyone else."
   

• The design doesn't resonate. Effective gamification design starts with an intimate understanding of what motivates your users. From there, you need to: 1) create experiences that tap into those motivators and inspire behaviors (especially high-priority behaviors), 2) build in elements that will surprise and delight users and keep them wanting more, and then 3) use the big data made available by your program to continually optimize it and drive higher ROI. If you haven't followed those steps, you'll be missing the real opportunity to engage your employees.
   
  From Molly Kittle, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Bunchball:

  "At Bunchball, we've found that as users get closer to the next milestone - reaching a level or accomplishing a goal - their activity increases. This is one of the reasons why it's essential to offer a mix of short- and long-term, easy and hard goals; so that all users, regardless of where they are in their motivation life-cycle, are encouraged to engage. As part of your design planning, we also suggest introducing new elements into your program over time to keep it relevant and interesting. One way to do this is to tie the new elements to the cadence of your business and align with existing events such as conferences, employee recognition vehicles or performance reviews."
   

• You try to go it alone. The field of gamification is becoming increasingly focused on the power of enterprise-class gamification platforms. In order to succeed with gamification, you need to partner with a proven provider, one that not only understands the fundamentals of human motivation and the distinct motivators of your employees, but also offers a scalable means for delivering enduring engagement, business insights and ROI. It isn't quick or DIY – but it is highly effective and scalable.
   
  From Rajat Paharia, Founder and Chief Product Officer, Bunchball:

  "I've seen too many ‘out of the box' or ‘one size fits all' apps flop because all they do is apply meaningless game mechanics to a program, hoping users will be tricked into earning goofy badges and trophies. After an initial spike in interest, these slap-dash programs fail to ignite any enduring or long term change. Why? Because they aim to trick your audience with short-term bribery, rather than respectfully engaging them in a win-win scenario that embraces their personal desire to succeed and be recognized for their contributions. If you only focus on badges, the result (if there is one) is fleeting, and the program gets abandoned with the other 80 percent of the gamification failures."
   

Hopefully, this list will help you better understand why your gamification project isn't delivering the results you expected. Remember: Analysts expect the gamification market to reach $2.8 billion by 2016.

What's the driving force behind all this growth? The fact that gamification works. If it's not working for you, do you know why?

By Kim Wyrick, Training and Retention Consultant for the On Your Side Centers – Nationwide

I know from first-hand experience how challenging it can be to motivate employees to engage with training and learning programs. Two years ago, Nationwide had a strong virtual learning program that included live courses, videos and quizzes, but regular attendance was lower than we liked, and it seemed like engagement was dipping, too.

We wanted to do something innovative to jump start engagement. Why? Because our workforce is probably a lot like yours: over-busy, over-committed, and/or over-distracted. Since it's difficult for anyone to find the time (or energy) to devote to training and continuing education, we realized early on that we would need to bring creativity and a fresh approach to training–we needed to make sure it would fit in with all the other “stuff” daily lives and work schedules require.

Ultimately, that's why we chose a gamification solution, and to be even more specific, a gamification solution from Bunchball.

With Bunchball, we were able to integrate data-driven motivation right into the employee training and learning platforms we were already using. That made the process incredibly seamless and stress-free! We launched the gamification platform earlier this year, and I'm thrilled to say that the results we're seeing are quite impressive. Engagement is up dramatically. Learning has improved, too. Best of all, employees say they like the program and look forward to participating.

Want to learn more? Tune into How to Motivate Employees to be More Effective Learners, a new Bunchball webinar scheduled for Tuesday, June 30 @ 12pm PDT / 3pm EDT. During the webinar, I'll walk you through our process step-by-step and explain how we put gamification to work at Nationwide. Tune in and you'll learn:

• What gamification is – and isn't!
• Who at your company needs to be involved and how to get them onboard
• What to look for in a gamification vendor
• The basics of game mechanics and how to implement them within your current company structure
• More details about the results we're seeing
• A few tips I picked up along the way

If you think your employees could be more effective learners, I encourage you to do your research and create a well-defined approach. As part of that process, please join me next Tuesday for How to Motivate Employees to be More Effective Learners.

Vice President, Marketing
@ErikaBlaney‎

Reading Don’t Think About the Chips, a recent blog post by Hongyu Chen, reminded me how people frequently confuse gamification with “reward-based” incentives. Like Chen, I’m well aware of the popular misconception that tangible rewards can be terrific motivators. “Get a free cup of coffee after your tenth visit.” “Top salesperson of the month will win this plasma TV!” Etc. Etc.

In the post, Chen reminisces about when, as a kindergartener (!), he participated in a chess tournament and witnessed one of his friends blow a sure victory – despite the fact that the friend’s mother had promised her son a bag of his favorite chips if he won. As Chen now understands, tangible rewards like the chips are lousy motivators. In fact, they can have the opposite effect.  He then goes on to underscore his point, stating that “over 40 years of management research corroborates the evidence that material incentives rarely improve, and in many cases harm, individual performance on cognitive tasks.”

That’s precisely why gamification is not about tangible rewards. Instead, gamification is grounded in intrinsic motivation.

On some level, I can understand the disconnect. For decades, those looking to motivate behaviors in the name of “loyalty” have leveraged approaches where points translate into some sort of “currency” that can be spent on tangible rewards. The jaded premise is that motivation occurs only when there’s a promise of some item in return –and even today, many purported “gamification vendors” are actually continuing this fallacy. It’s a bit like the carnival workers who trick you into playing a rigged game for the chance to win a stuffed toy. Sure, games like this can be fun every now and then. But, even if you do win, you realize you overpaid (in time and money) for your prize. And if you don’t win, you know it’s your own fault.  You were duped. When you apply these methods in the name of engagement, will it engender trust, drive return visits and encourage repeat behavior among your customers, partners and employees? Not likely.   

At Bunchball, we take a different approach.

We know that for gamification to be an effective business tool, it needs to take scientifically-based methods and apply them to non-game contexts. So the end result is not a game, and it’s not a traditional reward-based contest, either. With Bunchball, our customers get an enterprise engagement platform –a data-driven motivation strategy that harnesses the innate ambitions of your employees, customers and/or partners while engaging them in activities, content and systems that are meaningful to them, and beneficial for your business success.

If the primary driver of a loyalty program is free swag or a winner-takes-all contests, many will feel like they are being bought or manipulated for cheap trinkets, and that response actually erodes intrinsic motivation. Decades of behavior science prove that a one-dimensional approach does little to inspire better performance – and, in fact, it can actually have the opposite effect. At worst, it could demoralize your audience.

But don’t get me wrong. Incentives aren’t always wrong. Many of Bunchball’s customers do tie point economies to incentives –and they frequently see an increased “good will halo” as a result. However, that response only comes when incentives are the extension of a fully developed and already-effective gamification program. Smart companies, like Nationwide, have adopted a staged strategy: they started by addressing employee motivations and frustrations, drove a 100 percent improvement in engagement, and only now are looking at incentives. 

At Bunchball, we approach each customer with a holistic strategy engagement combined with a robust enterprise platform. With hundreds of programs under our belts, we have the greatest industry breadth and experience. And I can assure you: Our solution is about more than badges and leaderboards. When a gamification platform taps intrinsic motivators –when people understand why they're doing what you're doing and how they can improve; when they can see their progress toward meaningful goals and how their efforts relate to others –users become eager and willing to contribute and grow. As a result, business performance improves, measurably and fast.

True engagement is absolutely worth it. Gamification has helped crack the code to a decades’ old disengagement problem, and solid programs routinely deliver incredible business results.  But don’t be fooled when a vendor comes knocking with a bag full of badges and a whole slew of give-aways. Don’t be swayed by that stuffed toy. True engagement pays off each and every time… but it takes more than a bag of chips.   

¹http://randomdirections.com/chess-chips/

Director of Product Marketing, Bunchball
@JPAatBunch‎

Training and Learning are the yin and yang of employee engagement.  Training is generally regarded as a formal, top-down activity designed to build understanding, proper practices and even compliance. It tends to be a purpose built to teach specific content set by HR or another department or group. Learning, by contrast, is multi-dimensional and driven by the individual. People can certainly learn while they’re being trained, but they can also learn in informal, less structured ways. Regardless of how you slice it, both training and learning represent an enormous challenge for today’s business managers. Why? Because researchers have found that without practical follow-up or meaningful assessments, some 90 percent of new skills "learned" are lost within a year.¹

I find that statistic as stunning as it is troubling. Only 10 percent of skills are actually retained? What impact does that have on compliance? Plus, 10 percent represents absolutely dismal  ROI, especially considering that each year more than $130 billion is spent worldwide on corporate training. 

Fortunately, many of the folks involved in corporate education are realizing that gamification can be a game changer for virtually any kind of educational initiative. In fact, gamification platforms are now being used for everything from improving the financial literacy among Millenials to creating lasting changes in the moral behavior of sales associates.

Gamification is effective across this wide range of different learning/training use cases because it targets key intrinsic motivators, the internal desires all humans share. More specifically, gamification is a data-driven motivation strategy that harnesses the innate ambitions of your employees, customers and/or partners while engaging them in activities, content and systems that are meaningful to them and beneficial for your business success. That means the audience for gamification is virtually anyone –and it has proven particularly effective for motivating employees to engage with training and learning programs.

Here’s a great example: Just six months ago, Nationwide implemented a gamification platform to help ensure new and experienced employees are up-to-date on the products, programs and systems the company has to offer. Already, the results have been impressive:

• 97% of employees have logged into taken a class.
• Test and quiz scores have improved.
• User responses have been overwhelmingly positive.
• There have been major impacts in sales, with significant gains in retention, attendance and other business metrics.

For more about how Nationwide is using gamification to improve its training and continuing education, check out How to Motivate Employees to be More Effective Learners, our latest webinar featuring Kim Wyrick, Training and Retention Consultant for the On Your Side Centers – Nationwide.

One of the most important things to keep in mind here is that the Bunchball gamification platform is applied strategically within existing enterprise learning management systems (or CRMs, websites, apps, etc.). It functions behind-the-scenes, seamlessly within other data-generating systems your employees are already using, and allows you to capture data from these existing processes and leverage it for insights that lead to better performance.

At Bunchball, we sum it all up by saying that we are generating  Performance Enhancing Data– and this PED not only motivates your employees, but it provides your CLOs, management and executives with valuable data and insights on how these newly inspired behaviors impact business results.   New employees will be onboarded faster, and the programs you create will have a lasting, impact – including greater retention of the newly acquired skills and knowledge, and continued opportunities for growth.  .And that’s what it’s all  about, isn’t it? Not only do you need to be sure your employees are well-trained; you also need to be sure they’re inspired to continue learning throughout their tenure.

¹So Much Training, So Little to Show for It

By clearly defining your sales goals, setting roles and clarifying expectations, and rewarding incremental progress towards achieving major milestones, the Bunchball Nitro gamification platform can help your business coordinate your strategy for managing customer relationships.

A Diversity of Incentives

The key difference between a gamification platform like Bunchball Nitro and a traditional sales contest is that Nitro provides a comprehensive and ongoing way to track every aspect of organizational performance—it recognizes the workers who consistently achieve excellence on multiple axes, not just those who single-mindedly grind away at the weekly quota.

Traditional contests often force your staff to prioritize short-term targets over long-term success. For example, when the sales team feels pressured to make a weekly call quota, they may let other tasks slide, failing to provide adequate follow through after the sale, letting unfinished deals linger in the pipeline, or leaving potential upsells on the table.

A gamification platform solves this problem by rewarding employees who are staying on top of every function of their jobs. The platform recognizes the totality of a worker’s contributions, providing incentives for the holistic excellence that will help build your strongest customer relationships.

Gamification Across the Life Cycle

Building robust relationships and long customer life cycles should be your sales team’s top priority but managing customer relationships over the years can be challenging. A carefully cultivated relationship can be derailed by miscommunication and competing priorities within your organization. Gamification can help your business coordinate incentives between departments, smoothing every stage of the customer relationship life cycle.

Gamification can break down long-term goals into immediate steps, providing instant feedback for moving along projects that would otherwise take months to show results. For example, if your goal is to create loyal repeat customers, your incentive structure needs to provide a more immediate reward to keep the team focused. Bunchball Nitro can help prioritize long-term goals by incentivizing each incremental step along the way—rewarding the team for paying attention to simple tasks like maintaining regular contact and prioritizing service requests.

From the generation of initial leads to the growth and retention of long-standing customers, your team will need a coordinated strategy. Effective cooperation is necessary if your business is to offer the best value proposition to customers at every stage of your relationship. Gamification can quantize this coordination, keeping track of the workers who reach out to strategize with colleagues, and allowing workers to give special recognition to the unsung heroes that make the plan come together.   

Upending the Silo

Your customers’ needs will change over the course of your relationship; as the relationship grows, it will become more complex. As the number of stakeholders expands, incentives can begin to conflict: Your sales team may want to focus on maximizing quarterly revenues, while marketing liaisons may see long-term value in pushing for referrals to new customers. One team may be exploring the potential for branding partnerships while another is laying the groundwork to launch an integrated sales channel. Keeping everyone on the same page can get complicated, and the last thing you want is for the customer to start doubting your strategy’s coherence.

Gamification can help you develop an incentive system that enhances cooperation between all stakeholders, upending the departmental “silos” that keep teams from working together. The platform can be set up to smooth interdisciplinary handoffs across the stages of the customer relationship lifecycle, helping each team member build on top of the contributions of their colleagues and setting the stage for future success. When the initial sales contact knows they will share in the rewards for successfully cultivating a repeat customer, they will be incentivized to plan for the long term.

If employees are told to “stay in their lane”, opportunities for synergy can be missed. Bunchball Nitro can spread rewards across the organization. For example, to recognize the role of excellent technical support in customer retention, the platform can award special trophies and badges to the support staff whose attention makes customers stay. 

Working for the Long Term

Gamification provides a more inclusive incentive structure that reduces interdepartmental conflict. The platform can be set up to reward employees who shift their focus away from short-term wins, giving immediate recognition to team members who are busy laying the groundwork for projects that will yield long-term value and build durable customer relationships.

Bunchball Nitro can also open the incentive structure by allowing employees to recognize one another’s cross-departmental contributions. The software platform encourages colleagues to think outside of departmental lines, recognizing the teammates that go out of their way to share valuable insights and lend a hand across the org chart.   

Gamification provides the tools that will keep the team working together and build durable customer relationships. By encouraging cooperation and aligning incentives, a platform like Bunchball Nitro will help your sales team see over the horizon and work strategically to achieve long-term success.