Gamification In Customer Experience

‍1. What is Gamification?

The use of game-design elements and game rules in non-game situations such as business or sales is called Gamification. It is also defined as a set of activities and processes undertaken to solve problems by using or applying the features of game elements.

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2. What game elements are used in gamification?‍

Under gamification, games and game-like elements are used for education, entertainment and engagement purposes. Some classic game elements are; Points, Badges, and Leaderboards.

• Points are used as a benchmark and indication of progress in sports, reward cards and video games.
• Badges are a symbol of achievement, which showcase that the assigned task/ game has been completed beyond satisfaction. Different types of badges are given depending upon the level of achievement.
• Leaderboards are used across sports, sales teams, and in general life to display competitive placement and ranking of where you stand in the game.

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3. What is gamification in customer experience?

The concept of Gamification is used for increasing customer engagement by adding game-like features to products, services, or brands. By copying the engagement and the environment of games in customer experience, gamification has led to increased engagement across multiple sectors including healthcare and electronics. The main aim of gamification is not to acquire customers, but rather to increase engagement with already existing customers. Gamification could be done in many ways, like a leaderboard between friends/neighbors or colleagues, or badges that are awarded with the increased use of a product under loyalty programs such as gold, silver, platinum, etc. 

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4. What is a Gamification strategy?

Gamification strategy is the process of taking a software application or online gaming community – and using gaming techniques to encourage consistent participation in order to gain a long term engagement. Gamification in the workplace or in a business organization is not about playing an actual game, instead, it focuses on the systems of games and their working. This helps to make an easy way for employees to view their own progress and build continuous engagement within their company. 

5. What are some of the Gamification Techniques?

The most common gamification techniques are -

a. Collecting: Asking people to collect virtual goods or elements such as coins or cash in the games.

b. Game aesthetics: Adding aesthetically pleasing animated backgrounds to invoke certain emotions of the customer.

c. Challenges: Assigning challenges to players to check their ability to perform or to derive certain results.

d. Characters: Each person is assigned a character and can also build their avatar according to their liking.

e. Goals: Setting a benchmark that needs to be achieved.

f. Rules: Rules are a set of guidelines to be followed while playing the game.

g. Time: The time taken to complete a game/a certain task in the game is recorded in a lot of cases.

h. Role playing: The participants are asked to take up roles for eg - A customer can be asked to play the role of a shopkeeper or a chef in the restaurant.

i. Story and Plot: Each game has a certain storyline which is predecided based on the use case of the gamification process

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6. Why should one use gamification?

Here are 4 reasons why gamification must be used:

(i) Gamification provides an immediate check on performance feedback.

The player immediately knows where they stand amongst other competitors. For example, you know exactly where you stand if you are using a very basic gaming component such as a leader-board/ scorecard at the end of the game.

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(ii) Increase employee engagement with Gamification.

One way to increase the engagements between your employees or your customers is to do so by using a badge-based system within the organization. Hence the employee/customer collects rewards for various activities done. Taking this one step ahead, you can allow employees/customers to cash-in or give vouchers in exchange for these badges, rewards, and points.

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(iii) Gamification can boost productivity.

Implementing a reward system based on a specific set of activities can be a point of encouragement for employees and for the customers . In the case of employees, it would encourage them to perform predefined tasks in an orderly fashion and when it comes to customers they can be pushed to buy more to earn these rewards and much more!

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(iv) Gamification can increase learning retention.

Be it with rewards, through friendly competition, or just for fun, gamification helps employees better memorize the content as they relate to it and understand it differently while playing the game than just reading a job description document/e-mail or watching a training video – both of which have just a one-way monologue.Talking about customers, it helps them understand the product inside out from a different perspective.