“Games are the only force in the known universe that can get people to take actions against their self-interest, in a predictable way without using force.” – Gabe Zichermann
Customer support can be a challenging task. The support agents have to deal with people who might be trying to figure out something related to your product or service. And what classifies it as a challenging job? The agitated customers. Imagine someone turns to you when upset, frustrated, and angry, and you have to pacify them with a solution. Oh, and you have only one chance to do that. The mere thought of it builds a great pressure, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what your service engineers deal with day in and day out!
This is where gamification can help. Everyone can use a chill pill every now and then. But when you are dealing with something so delicate (the angry customer, for instance), a breather might be essential. In Cisco’s Global Contact Center Survey 2020, 74% of the respondents affirmed that content agents create happy customers. So, if you want your customers to be happy, you need to keep your agents happier.
What is Gamification?
When we say gamification, we are not talking about playing games every now and then. That can be distracting. After all, the goal is to boost their spirits and not divert their attention or awareness. Although, yes, this involves games as well.
Gamification theory works on the principle of desire – the desire to compete, improve, out-do, and be recognized and rewarded for that. The psychological needs in the famous Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, mentioned in his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”, is what explains the success of this particular theory. So, it could be anything from the workplace games, to gratifying the employees for their contributions and creating a healthy competitive environment.
So, why do you need to implement this for your support teams? Because a) employee engagement is crucial to keep the productivity from dropping, b) motivated and happy employees can give better output, and c) employee attrition is infliction, and a happy work-space is the cure.
6 Ways to Gamify the Customer Service Team Culture
So, we discussed what gamifying can do for your support teams to amp up the work environment. Now, let us see how you can bring this into practice and make it a part of the team culture.
1. Recognize and Reward
Associating tasks with scores or points make them appear more engaging. Let your agents feel a sense of victory when they earn extra points for the first call resolutions (FCR), or when they resolve tickets faster than average resolution rates.
Even sharing positive customer feedback on resolved tickets and acknowledging agents when they publish new solutions (knowledge articles) or quickly resolve tickets on social media can be a great motivator.
The feeling of being recognized and awarded for good work amplifies an agent’s capability to contribute more. This can be done by employing leader-boards, point systems, badges, contests, avatars, virtual currencies (like vouchers, movie tickets, etc.).
Creating inter-team or intra-team communities and circulating internal newsletters for support teams to highlight achievements of agents are also known to work.
2. Glorify Learning New Skills
It is only natural to pick tasks that you know you will do well. But being enterprising enough to choose new or challenging tasks can only happen when you associate it with something rewarding or fun.
Creating in-house courses and quizzes that help your agents acquire new skills can be a great way to do that. Gamified training elevates employee motivation up to 83%. And as even one agent is able to enhance their skill set, they motivate their peers to follow suit.
3. Recognize Customer Feedback
Often, agents receive feedback directly from the customers while they are resolving the tickets. It is essential to highlight customer feedback for agents.
Also, calling out the agents who have successfully resolved the maximum number of tickets and have received positive feedback from the customers, and applauding them for the same works wonders.
4. Recognize Collaboration
It is crucial to understand and recognize the uniqueness of each agent. Sometimes teamwork achieves better results than individual efforts. This promotes a healthy work culture where one agent supports the other to achieve better results as a team.
This is where apps like Agent Helper step in. It analyzes case data and instantly populates a list of top agents that have resolved similar cases in the past. This helps the agents to quickly identify and reach out to the subject matter experts (SMEs) for help. As a result, supportive culture becomes the norm in your organization leading to improved CSAT.
5. Thoughtful and Creative Rewards
The rewards do not always have to be points or badges, or even a thank you note. Getting creative with these and offering something valuable to the agents strikes the right chords. This can be offering perks like a choice between shifts, day-offs, preferred seating locations in the office, preferential parking spaces, and so on.
When you offer workplace perks to the employees, it creates a sense of belonging among them which motivates them to contribute better. This also is a great way to motivate other agents simultaneously.
6. Understand Their Personal Goals
Every employee has some personal goals. And when the agents realize that their personal wishes are also being recognized and fulfilled, they do not hold back from putting in more effort.
Such rewards can be offering bonus shares or a scheme to buy their dream car. A personalized touch creates a sense of gratitude towards the organization as well.
Celebrating the efforts of an agent and giving them something as a token of appreciation functions as a validation of their hard work. And, gamifying training and skill development motivates more and more employees to invest their time into it. This way, you not only upskill your service mavens but also delight them and keep attrition under check.
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