Gamification is a fun and growing way that can improve collection call center performance and agent engagement. Gamification has been very effective in improving employee performance and business results at collections-focused contact centers. Benefits of gamification programs include increased revenues from higher recovery rates, improved compliance, making training more fun and effective, and improved employee retention.
Employee engagement is a persistent problem of collection-based call centers. Due to unengaged employees, collection call centers often face an issue like:
- Flat or declining recovery rates
- High abandon rates
- Increased customer service complaints
- Increased compliance violations
- High employee attrition rates
However, by adding gamification to the mix, collection call centers can improve script adherence, raising recovery rates, improving compliance with disclosure requirements, and reducing the onboard time for new agents by making training more effective. This change in agent behavior also helps collection centers to improve customer satisfaction ratings.
Having a long experience in the collection industry, Fusion CX has a step-by-step approach in designing a gamification strategy to engage its collection agents.
- Define goals
- Apply interaction analytics to identify baseline performance and improvement opportunities
- Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for the program
- Identify the appropriate motivators for agents
With our experience in this field, we understand that successful gamification is not game oriented but goal oriented. Rooted in clear business goals quantifiable by appropriate metrics, successful gamification needs to have the right motivators so that agents can easily get hooked. Some important things to remember while designing a gamification program:
1. Define Goals
A gamification program without a defined business goal is doomed to fail from the beginning. If you don’t know what you want to achieve through the program, running the program has no point at all. Whether you want to improve customer satisfaction by 5%, reduce 10% employee attrition, or improve your recovery rates, you need to be clear about that even before designing a gamification program.
2. Define KPI
Having the right metrics is the key. You cannot judge customer satisfaction by looking at script adherence rate. To make a gamification program successful, you need appropriate metrics that help you measure your success in terms of your business goals. You can use analytics to keep a track of how things are going and whether there is any scope for improvement.
3. Choose Motivators
Choosing motivators can be a difficult task as not everyone is motivated by the same thing. While baby boomers get motivated to earn points and rewards, millennials get motivated by public recognition. Therefore, it can be easily said that there is no one size fits all reward. While money can be a powerful reward, it is not the only effective incentive. Incentives like paid time off, meals, merchandise, company gear, recognition on the company’s social media page are a few other incentives that work well.
4. Set Time Limits
A contest that goes on indefinitely will lose its effectiveness. Setting a certain start and end time helps businesses raise participation and effort while the contest is in effect. If a long-term program is needed to meet the business goal (for example improving a 5 percent improvement in customer satisfaction ratings every year), consider conducting a series of consecutive contests rather than one long one.
It is important to recognize the end of the program where top performers will be recognized and participants will be updated about the result and how the program helped meeting the business goal. You can also conclude the program with a small party to get the feedback that can help you make future engagements more effective.
5. Inspire Continued Involvement
Contests should have the mechanisms to motivate participants to stay involved, even after meeting the performance required or when they have almost zero chance of winning. You can encourage agents to continue working towards goals as groups. That way, they will be able to achieve more than they can achieve individually.
Fusion CX has seen that providing rewards for meeting performance thresholds is a great way to promote continued involvement and keep participants motivated. Reward thresholds can also be used in combination with more competitive contests to get more effective results.
6. Communicate
To maximize the effectiveness of a gamification program you need consistent communication before, during, and after the contest. This will help organizations maximize agent participation in a program, improve buy-in by helping agents understand why a certain goal or metric is vital, explain rules clearly so that there is no confusion or hard feelings about unclear rules, and make motivation more effective by bringing good performers into the limelight. Fusion CX has always found communication to be the key to successful gamification programs in a collection call center.
These are some of the ways a debt collection call center can improve its employee engagement and customer experience through the call center. The key is to find a defined goal, time limit, performance indicators, and the right motivator, and measuring it all through application analytics. If you rightly engage your employees through gamification, your employees will be inspired to perform at optimum level even after the program ended, resulting in better customer experience as well.
