How to Use Call Center Games to Improve Agent Performance

Gamification’s ultimate goal might be superior customer experiences resulting in more satisfied and longer-term customers, but the way it does this is through modern agent engagement that leverages gaming science and psychology to increase agent productivity while reinforcing positive behaviors.

How? By motivating agents to meet or exceed expectations by completing specific objectives and outpacing their peers.

Proven as one of the best ways to engage agents, gamification also helps contact center leaders more easily measure and manage agent performance, which naturally improves due to gamification’s ongoing effect.

It seems the hardest part about contact center gamification is just getting started. But it doesn’t have to be—here are four ways you can rock gamification right now.

1. Connect gamification to corporate goals.

Each contact center needs to tailor its gamification strategies and tactics to the unique goals and needs of its business. A company trying to decrease costs might make “decreasing handle times” part of its program, while a company wanting to improve agent performance might build “customer satisfaction ratings” into its program instead.

For example, a Calabrio customer wanting sales trainees to keep top-of-mind its multiple product lines uses a BINGO game as part of its gamification strategy. Managers mark off a BINGO square each time an agent speaks to a customer about a particular product focus area, and the first trainee to achieve “BINGO” receives a cash prize and peer recognition.

2. Use gamification to foster competition and collaboration.

Peer competition—a natural component of any gamification strategy—taps into agents’ competitive natures by recognizing top performers. That’s why most gamification programs incorporate some form of “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 leading the pack, who’s catching up, who’s dropping behind, etc. And supervisors monitor the leaderboard to identify agents who may need more coaching.

What you may not realize is that you also can use gamification to encourage collaboration between agents. If you want to foster active peer mentoring—where agents ask questions of each other and exchange tips—you could even design a gamification program where agents advance to higher levels when they help other agents expand their knowledge and hone desired skills.

3. Make your gamification meaningful.

If you want your gamification program to be as successful as possible, you want the prizes you use as incentives to be meaningful to your agents. You most easily can achieve this feat by asking your agents what kind of prizes they value and then building those into your gamification efforts. Some examples include restaurant gift cards, Amazon Prime memberships, more influence over their schedule, preference over the types of inquiries they handle, a premium parking spot for the month or an extra vacation day.

And frankly, many agents just prefer cold, hard cash. That’s why some companies set up a full incentive structure to engage its agents, with cash rewards given to agents who maintain higher adherence numbers, productivity numbers and quality scores.

4. Use gamification concepts to motivate agents.

In addition to leaderboards, a common and powerful way contact centers motivate agents by recognizing top performers is by utilizing the gamification concept of “badges.”

Much like the badges used to denote player status in online gaming, the badges used in contact center gamification track and measure agent status: different badge styles or colors signify different accomplishments, with badges becoming more intricate and complex as agents advance into higher levels. Badge dashboards help agents track their individual performance stats and learn about the badges they’ve earned and those they have yet to achieve. An added bonus? Badges help supervisors quickly, visually monitor their agents’ performance metrics and progress against goals.

It’s time to get in the game! Find out more about how to launch a gamification program for your contact center by listening to our on-demand webinar, The Game is On! Gamification and the Next-Generation Contact Center.

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.