Increasingly, sales forces are made up of a generation of individuals who have grown up playing games - whether on their cellphones, a gaming console or on Facebook. Thus, by applying the gaming principles of reward, competition, social recognition, mastery and immediate feedback (termed 'gamification'), companies can use familiar and effective strategies driven by technology to motivate, engage and retain this ever-expanding group of workers, Generation Y.
In contact centre sales you are only as great as the next deal you close. It can be a relentless and unforgiving job so keeping motivation high, results flowing and retaining quality people can seem like an almost impossible task. This method of engaging employees has been particularly successful in contact centre environments where employee morale is typically very low and, as the face of the business, agents have a direct impact on the customer experience.
Monitoring and mentoring
A younger workforce is different to previous generations; they thrive on constant monitoring and mentoring. This is the perfect environment to apply gamification or game mechanics as it both measures employee productivity and uses unique drivers via technology to motivate a workforce. There many ways in which gamification can be used in employee engagement, but three different examples are highlighted below:
- Instead of sending employees away from their workstations for training, companies can create achievement 'badges'; in order to win these badges, the employee would need to unlock certain achievements, such as by reviewing product documentation, proving product knowledge and improving on it and measuring high on customer satisfaction monitoring scores. These can be done throughout the day while agents are at their desks, and is a particularly effective way of using up idle time in a contact centre to improve the overall experience of your customers;
- Competing within the contact centre: the company can devise an appropriate reward such as 'best sales agent of the week' and place this title on a leader board linked to performance scorecards. According to the desired outcomes of the contact centre's business, there can be several of these title races running consecutively; and
- The badge or reward system works well in motivating the best employees to share their secrets and their knowledge with others an improve the sales performance in the contact centre. They can use noticeboards or forums, for example, to describe their winning techniques so that their colleagues can also benefit. The areas in which they are successful can also have ongoing badges, titles and rewards, so if the agent most able to cross-sell the most products, for example, in a given time gets the 'X-Sell Crown'. He is then publicly rewarded for the achievement and may qualify for other incentives, such as a day off. He can also inspire other agents by explaining the techniques used to cross-sell in the most effective way.
The goal of any sales-based contact centre company is not just profitability, but also the best possible customer service. A workforce that incorporates agent scoring from customers, for example, can inspire and motivate the agents to achieve better ratings in order to gain badges, public recognition and rewards. In this way they're constantly seeking to improve on their score by competing with themselves and others, so the desired outcome of better customer service is achieved, too.
Gamification is not a quick fix, but it can provide an inspiring, challenging work environment for sales agents in a contact centre.
