Customer service agents have stressful, high-pressure jobs. They often need to deal with frustrated customers calmly and with empathy. But when fully equipped and motivated to handle the rigors of the job with confidence through thorough training, proper support and an engaging work environment, agents have a sense of job satisfaction. Contact center gamification is a unique and powerful way to engage agents and enhance performance management.

People thrive on achievement, recognition and competition. According to the Genesys report “Human values: The operating system for a high-performing contact center,” the highest performing contact center employees want to take on responsibility and will thrive when allowed to do so.

When customer experience (CX) managers introduce game-like elements into the contact center, agents become more invested in their performance. That leads to a better workplace experience, improved customer service and CX agents who can reach their full potential.

With the use of leaderboards, point systems and rewards, contact center gamification enhances routine activities by encouraging friendly competition around performance-based KPIs. Employees are motivated to continuously improve, which can boost retention.

Whether competing to learn new information or complete tasks, gamification can motivate agents. And it makes CX managers’ jobs easier.

Let’s look at 5 ways adding gamification to your contact center can boost employee engagement and simplify management.

  1. Enables employees to self-monitor and improve

Gamification creates a fun and interactive work environment that motivates employees to monitor and improve their own performance.

By automatically consolidating key metrics in real time, gamified performance scorecards and leaderboards encourage agents to track and manage their KPIs in engaging and collaborative ways.

Point systems add a dose of healthy competition, so agents can compare their work to their personal and team goals. Agents also have greater visibility into their performance and receive actionable insights that point to where and how improvements can be made.

  1. Streamlines performance management

The average contact center produces mountains of data. For CX managers, employee performance evaluations and reporting can be a timely task. But with gamification embedded directly into the contact center platform and powered by artificial intelligence, reporting is streamlined in manager dashboards.

Cleaning up employee performance data and surfacing it as real-time, gamified KPIs in user-friendly dashboards allow managers to easily track, manage, and reward individual and team performances.

Having more time to provide support, managers leveraging gamification can create challenges that boost employee performance during peak seasons.

Game design dynamics, like award points and other reward systems, put an agent’s progress and achievements on display in real time. This encourages employees to improve their performance and it promotes teamwork.

When agents and managers are empowered with real-time performance insights — all coming through the same interface used to interact with customers — employees are inspired in the moment. They can focus on driving results to meet and surpass current goals.

  1. Supports remote workers

The shift to remote work requires new approaches to managing employee performance and KPIs. Regardless of their locations, every contact center agent needs to feel like they’re part of a team. Gamification, by way of collaboration and competition, creates a sense of community among a disparate workforce.

As agents earn points and rewards, either individually or on teams, shared leaderboards can surface and visualize agent achievements. This recognition nurtures a sense of pride and belonging.

Building a shared culture around gamified metrics does more than just improve operational efficiency; it boosts collective morale. And it creates a highly engaged team that takes pride in delivering better and more empathetic customer care.

  1. Encourages collaboration

While the competitive aspects of gamification can motivate agents, your contact center works best when managers and employees work together. Collaboration is key.

Gamification provides a social, engaging environment where agents can compare notes and strategies. They can rally around their collective progress and help one another achieve both personal and company goals. In some instances, you can even award points or offer kudos to those employees who excel at collaborating with their peers.

It’s easy for managers to design challenges and reward systems that encourage collaboration and socialization between agents or teams. This creates an open environment where everyone feels like part of a broader family, working together, to meet their goals in an enjoyable and rewarding way.

  1. Fosters learning and training

Sharing performance data with employees spurs improvement. However, there’s value in giving them easy access to hands-on tools that show them how they’re performing. The tools should also link them to relevant resources to improve so they can chart their own paths to career success.

In a 2021 survey of 16,000 contact center agents, learning new skills and technologies were listed among the most critical aspects of job satisfaction. With built-in, personalized tools and views, gamification software makes it easy for agents to track and manage their performances as well as access assigned learning content and coaching sessions.

Gamified learning and training transform the software into a personalized, consolidated development hub that consistently provides agents with the insights and resources they need to reach their goals. Over time and across agents, this empowers a culture of continuous learning and improvement throughout the contact center.

Winning Big with Contact Center Gamification

Your contact center agents are often the face of your brand. You want them to be well-trained and engaged. And you want them to stay.

Recruitment affects the bottom line. But employee retention can help raise it.

Organizations that don’t solve their retention problems will spend more resources looking for new talent. According to the MIT Technology Review Insights Report “Customer experience the future of work,” 62% of organizations struggle with the increasing cost of employee turnover.

Giving employees opportunities to learn and grow in their careers fosters happiness and job satisfaction. And that promotes retention. Contact center gamification is an easy and effective way to transform the workplace into a meaningful and enriching environment for agents and managers alike.

Gamification in the workplace empowers agents to self-manage by increasing visibility into and control over their own performance. Gamification allows agents to harness their personal motivation to achieve their goals, enjoy their work and, as a team, encourage each other to excel.

Learn how you can improve employee experience through gamification today.