Make Every Day “Game Day” in Your Contact Center

Modern contact centers use gaming science and psychology to increase agent productivity while reinforcing positive behaviors. This “gamification” incents and recognizes agents, motivating them to meet or exceed expectations by completing specific objectives and outpacing their peers.

But gamification’s ultimate goal is a customer-oriented one: superior experiences that result in more satisfied and longer-term customers.

Developing your first gamification program might seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. We find most contact centers launch inaugural gamification initiatives that feature one or more of these three key strategies:

• Rewards and recognition
• Training
• Peer competition

And we can help you start. Calabrio recently queried several top Calabrio customers to get a few real-world ideas you can leverage in your own contact center, to make every day “game day.”

Rewards and Recognition

Prizes are great, but they only work if you give agents rewards they actually want and recognize agents in ways that matter to them.

Here are a couple of tactics our customers use to recognize and reward their own agents.

• One customer set up a full incentive structure to keep its agents engaged. Rewards are given to agents who maintain higher adherence numbers, productivity numbers and quality scores. Weekly rewards are given for the lowest weekly wrap time and highest weekly adherence.
• Another Calabrio customer uses a BINGO card program where agents stamp a space when they complete designated activities (i.e., hitting their outbound call target) and demonstrate preferred behavior (i.e., achieving 100 percent schedule adherence). Those agents who achieve “BINGO” receive a work-from-home day of their choice.
• Another customer gives gift cards to agents who meet quarterly key performance indicator (KPI), attendance and quality score targets.

Training

Both new-hire onboarding and ongoing skills development are important programs for the modern contact center. Here is how a few Calabrio customers use gamification for both needs.

• One customer uses the “Hot Potato” ball throwing game to teach new agents how important it is for the contact center to operate as a single entity and what happens when one agent disengages from the team—such as when they take a break at the wrong time, call in sick, etc.
• Another Calabrio client uses a similar BINGO game as mentioned above to encourage sales trainees to keep their multiple product lines top-of-mind. In this game, managers mark off a BINGO square each time an agent speaks to a customer about a particular product focus area. The first trainee to get “BINGO” receives a cash prize and peer recognition.
• And, for ongoing skills development, one Calabrio customer architected a training program featuring 11 “bytes” agents need to master to progress through the ranks of its customer service representative (CSR) hierarchy. Via shared calls, coaching and standardized evaluation forms, agents learn skill sets for their current byte, which they must complete before they’re able to move to the next “byte.”

Peer Competition

Peer competition taps into agents’ competitive spirits by recognizing “winners” (top performers).

• Many Calabrio customers use what’s commonly known as a “leaderboard”—a dashboard displaying top performers and their “scores” against key metrics set ahead of time as goals for them. Agents actively monitor the leaderboard to see who’s in first place, who’s rising to the top, who’s losing their lead, etc.
• In addition, many Calabrio customers use the common gamification concept of “badges”—visual representations that track and measure agent status—that are awarded to individuals. Different badge styles or colors denote different accomplishments, with badges becoming more intricate and complex as agents advance to higher levels. Badge dashboards help agents learn about the badges they earn and are pursuing and track their individual performance stats.

Let the games begin!

Find out more about gamification with Calabrio. Watch our on-demand webinar, The Game is On! Gamification and the Next Generation Contact Center, to learn more.

Kat Worman

Kat Worman has been working in the contact center industry longer than she cares to admit! With more than 20 years of experience, Kat has held numerous contact center positions including management, data analysis, strategic operations, and service level planning. Prior to joining Calabrio, Kat was a Principal Consultant specializing in the implementation of process and applications within the contact center. She has provided consulting services to Fortune 500 companies throughout North America, Europe and Australia. Kat specializes in partnering with key stakeholders and workforce planning teams to deliver unique solutions to contact center challenges.