Gamification's Impact on Corporate Success
In the world of business, making informed decisions is key to success. This principle holds true when considering the implementation of gamification, a popular strategy used to engage employees and drive productivity. A recent article emphasizes the importance of ensuring the viability of gamification exercises by keeping business outcomes in mind.
A UK mobile phone industry company, faced with poor press regarding aggressive sales tactics, commissioned expensive customer care training. However, the training, while successful in increasing customer satisfaction, led to a decrease in profits due to extended call times and an inability to hit sales targets. This serves as a reminder that understanding a business outcome before investing in any intervention, such as gamification, is crucial to avoid interventions that don't succeed in their objectives or degrade the overall performance of the business.
The article highlights several key reasons for this alignment. First, when gamification is designed around specific business outcomes, it integrates directly into critical workflows and priorities, preventing it from becoming a distraction. Second, modern gamification platforms leverage data from various systems to provide real-time visibility into performance gaps and coaching opportunities, transforming gamification into a continuous feedback loop for optimization. Third, understanding which rewards genuinely motivate employees in their specific roles ensures that gamification fosters meaningful engagement rather than hollow competitions based on points or badges.
The example of Google Glass is given as a product that failed to solve a problem for its potential users due to a lack of mindfulness of its usership. Similarly, the mobile phone industry company could have realised that sales were not affected by the poor press, and instead, invested in better PR at a lower cost for a positive return on investment.
The success of gamification projects depends on everyone involved in the project focusing on the business expectations throughout the design process. Engaging with all stakeholders in the business is important when determining an appropriate business outcome to avoid costly interventions that generate high volumes of customer complaints with no increase in revenues or profitability.
In conclusion, understanding the intended business outcomes serves as the foundation for gamification, enabling it to become a strategic lever rather than a gimmick. This focus preserves and enhances overall business performance by making gamification a means to continuous improvement, real engagement, and goal fulfillment—avoiding the risk of wasted resources or declining effectiveness from poorly aligned gamification efforts.
For those interested in learning more about gamification, the book "Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software" by Janaki Mythily Kumar and Mario Herger is recommended. Frank Chimero, author of "The Shape of Design", states that design should speak the tongue of art with the force of commerce, a sentiment that rings true when it comes to effective gamification.
- Incorporating design thinking, interaction design, and service design in the gamification process can help ensure that the gamification strategies align with the intended business outcomes, thereby maximizing both user engagement and business performance.
- A successful implementation of gamification requires investing in methods that foster real engagement, such as understanding which rewards genuinely motivate employees and integrating gamification directly into critical workflows, all of which can contribute to a positive return on investment.
- Finance professionals can play a crucial role in the gamification process by tracking the KPIs that matter most, such as customer satisfaction, productivity, and profitability, to evaluate whether the implemented gamification strategies are meeting the intended business objectives and contributing to overall business success.
