What is Gamification?

What is Gamification?

Gamification is a method of turning everyday work or life into a game, to apply the excitement and rewards of gaming to common work tasks.

This is the concept of turning call centre performance into a game. It is a management technique of getting high levels of performance from the agents in the call centre. It can be an effective way of combating the repetitive tasks, which can get dull and boring. This makes a change from the normal motivational techniques, which sometimes can lose their lustre.

Games are fun, and they excite people. Indirectly, this makes agents happier and, as a result of being happier, they perform better. It is much more effective than offering ‘employee of the month’, as this is just one reward, to which some agents may have a “take it or leave it” attitude.

Gamification plays upon the psychology of motivation, of wanting to win, and wanting to be the best. It provides a lasting incentive to keep performance elevated. It comes about from the reward system within your brain.

Effectively, your brain rewards you and make you feel good by releasing the chemical dopamine. This creates a reward circuit, which gamification plays into.

This can create a competitive environment, as inevitably there will be losers, and people may get disheartened and ‘drop’ out of the game. A solution to this is to create the competition internally: instead of inter-agent competition, there is intra-agent competition. The employee competes against themselves and their past performance.

For example, there could be certain ‘levels’ where the employee earns extra holiday time or a bonus.

Small incentives, produced at different levels, maybe hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, means that success can be close at all times. This is a good method to ensure that performance is maintained, and doesn’t slump.

Team games create a spirit of camaraderie, and can collectively increase performance.

The articles below demonstrate some motivational games to improve performance.
Motivational Games for Call Centres.
5 More Motivational Games for Call Centres

Author: Jonty Pearce