By Natasha Oxenburgh, Product Marketing Manager, Bluewolf
Nearly 90% of CEOs cite customer engagement as their primary initiative in the next five years, yet most businesses capture only a fraction of their opportunities for customer engagement. While the entire company must be enabled to deliver on customer engagement, customer service and support is tasked with the all-important front-line customer interaction and problem solving.
I’m a big believer that customer engagement begins with employee engagement. What does that mean when you bring that concept down to the contact center? It means that the catalyst is agent engagement, which can be achieve with the right knowledge, technology and processes, and with the right motivation.
There are different ways to approach the ‘motivation’ piece. And since Gartner estimates that more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application by 2014, I am focusing today’s blog on three specific ways to motivateyour agent workforce through game mechanics:
1. Job satisfaction is crucial for good business because often what is making the agent unhappy, is also making the customer unhappy. Many agents leave because they are not getting the feedback they need to do their jobs—which explains the statistic of 40-80% annual agent turnover. Since the relationship the agent has with a supervisor is critical to job satisfaction, it’s important to improve communication as much as possible.
Through game mechanics, supervisors can give recognition to agents who are high performers and more easily identify where personalized guidance and additional agent training is needed.
2. Badges, points, and leaderboards can be designed to motivate agents to meet expectations and service levels. But, agents also want to contribute to the business’ bottom line. When agents deliver above stellar service or are able to up-sell/cross-sell,you can recognize and reward them for their contribution. Many contact centers use incentives like competitions or gameboards to reward and recognize performance. With gamification technology, contact centers can automate rewards within the system.
3. The Generation Y workforce—the fastest growing segment in the workforce—is connected, entrepreneurial, and collaborative. Those are elements you can enhance in the agent experience using gamification. You can even extend gamification to the use of a knowledge-base and to reward agents for contributing knowledge. Supervisors can use it to see how agents rank against other agents or by set standards. All the rules and processes are completely automated and integrated within contact center operations.
As Bunchball has pointed out, gamification works by addressing innate human desires for competition, goal-setting, achievement, recognition, and community. You don’t necessarily need an integrated gamification program, but you do need to work towards driving agent morale by fulfilling their key needs on the job. Implement the technology and processes that enable agents to better service the customer, and recognize them for that.
At Bluewolf, we implemented a gamification program as part of an internal initiative, #GoingSocial, to increase collaboration both inside and outside our enterprise walls. Key takeaways for a successful gamification strategy include:
● Garner executive sponsorship, identify internal advocates, and survey your employees to gain program buy-in.
● Spend a lot of time aligning your organization around the benefits achieved by the gamified behaviors.
● Use an internal social network to elicit feedback and suggestions around ongoing gamification efforts.
For more on contact center gamification and solving some of the biggest customer service challenges, download the guide “Empower Your Agents to Engage Your Customers.”
Also, join Bluewolf and Bunchball for a joint webcast on July 16th around gamification in the contact center:
