Ways to Gamify your Call Center

• The War Room - This game is a great way to lift spirits during a dull work day. The idea of the game is simple — the agent making the most sales during a certain period of time (for  example, 2-3 hours), gets a reward. This game will foster a healthy competitive spirit among the employees. You can tailor the game to fit customer support agents by rewarding the employee who gets the greatest average customer satisfaction score for support calls within a fixed timeframe.

• Bingo - It is a twist to the classic Bingo game. Each agent receives a bingo card and instead of numbers, it will have goals such as — ‘Obtained a lead’ or ‘spoke with 5 customers whose number ends with 8’. The agent or sales rep to meet all goals on their card first gets a reward. This game helps the team keep track of their daily goals and at the same time, rewards them for their efforts. The goals can also be modified on a monthly basis to match the organizational goals.

• Mystery Boxes -  This fun and engaging game involves building reward boxes, containing anything from movie tickets to days-off and preferred shifts. You could also include a few standard prizes (such as pencils or sticky notes) that are usable every day to make the rewards more appealing. Targets are set and at the end of each hour or day, the agent who meets the target, for example- most number of calls answered, can choose to open any of the boxes without knowing the contents inside. You can publicly display the boxes to attract attention and get agents actively involved.

• Knockout - This easy-to-implement game doubles up as a team building exercise and all you require is a white board. The game involves drawing grids and the number of grids depend on your team strength. Agents are put in teams and once an agent makes a sale or gets a 100% customer satisfaction score he/she gets to put the starting letter of their team name on the grid. If the grids becomes full, an agent can take over the grid of the opposing team and occupy their square. The winning team at the end of the day is the team that occupies most squares. The winning team can then be rewarded with a complimentary lunch or tickets to a popular sporting event.

• Chase the Parcel - Have you ever noticed how performance wanes as the day progresses? This game is the perfect solution to keep agents interested and ensure peak performance consistently. At the beginning of the day, create 3 parcels containing rewards (such as gift cards or movie tickets) and keep the rewards as a surprise. Once an agent closes a sale or receives a 100% customer satisfaction score, they get the parcel BUT the parcel keeps changing hands (depending on which agent meets the next target) until the end of the day, when the person with whom the parcel remains is the winner.

• Points as reward - As the name suggests, this game involves giving agents points for meeting certain desired outcomes. After they have accumulated a given amount of points, they can exchange it for rewards. These rewards can be monetary benefits or in the form of gift cards that can be encashed at specific stores. The numeric value on the gift cards can match or correspond to a certain number of points that the agent has to accumulate.

It is easy to go wrong with gamification, especially if it is used as a scoreboard or measuring tool. The objective is to engage people and motivate them to work to their potential. At no point should hypercompetitiveness be encouraged as it can drain agents and cause burnout which is the exact opposite of what we want to achieve.

During implementation, care must be taken to ensure that not only is the end goal rewarded, but each intermediate stage is also rewarded. Otherwise, gamification might have the opposite effect — for instance, why would agents play a game in which they hardly win? It becomes imperative to reward the steps taken towards the end goal. For example, the end goal for sales is to close the sale, but if the employee never picks up the phone to dial the numbers, he would never be able to find a lead. In this scenario, the number of calls made by a sales rep must also be awarded since it is a step towards the final goal. You can provide smaller rewards for partial completion (50%, 60%, 80% etc.) of the goal too.

It must also be ensured that it’s not the top 3-5% who are always awarded. Other than standard performance indicators, positive behaviors like lesser absenteeism can also be rewarded. If implemented successfully, gamification can do wonders to your call center. Try some of the games and meet your goals — all while turning work into play.