Competition Helps Engagement

Simon Dutton explains how a little competition could help to combat the monotonous nature of the call centre environment.

One of the biggest issues affecting the call centre at the moment is employee engagement – as customer expectations for excellence continue to increase, it’s important that staff are engaged, motivated and empowered to own customer issues.

This is where gamification comes in – the application of game-mechanics in the workplace. In the contact centre, this involves putting engagement first in the contact centre by introducing a system that uses point scoring, competition, incentives, goals, tracking progress and leader boards to align agent behaviour with the goals of the organisation.

Gartner recently predicted that “gamified” applications will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon – and it’s easy to see why. The vast majority of call centres run whiteboards and email to manage leader boards and incentive programmes, but this creates a lot of admin for the organisers, which often means these initiatives can become neglected and unmanaged.

Gamification can help to smooth this process so that engagement is consistent, while also allowing agents to pursue multiple targets and challenges at the same time.

Employees in any role are much more likely to be happy, engaged and work harder if they are recognised.

With thanks to Simon Dutton at EvaluAgent