There’s often resistance to deploying any new data-driven application. The anxiety is that there will be headaches and trauma associated with it. All the data mapping and validation and custom field development and so on. And while call center management is willing to endure that in order to create core WFM capabilities, they get a little skittish when we suggest they turn on Metaphor Workforce Gamification. There’s no doubt that they understand the value of Gamification in driving agent motivation and achievement. But, they think, it’s going to be too much work. Too much time spent putting it up. Too much trauma testing and adjusting the system until it works.

In fact, nothing can be further from the truth.

1. First of all, and this is really the simplest part of it, if you installed Metaphor Workforce you installed Gamification—it’s not a separate module but rather part of the core Metaphor Workforce system. No extra charge, no extra resources required—no set up or configuration or any of the things that we typically think about when deploying new technology. All the data you need to drive the Gamification program is already installed, field-mapped and validated: it’s the same employee data that Metaphor Workforce uses every day.
2. Setting up the badges themselves is possible by deciding upon the badges your team would like to use. You might decide to use one of the many badge icons Metaphor Workforce includes in its gamification program, or you can use graphics you’ve created instead. You also have to define the levels of badges—Metaphor Workforce uses a standard Gold, Silver, Bronze model, but here too you can adopt your own scheme (go ahead and make it herringbone, polka-dot and paisley if that makes the most sense to you and your staff).
3. A more important (but nearly as simple) task is to set the rules that describe how an agent achieves each of the levels. Metaphor Workforce is already measuring the performance of your staff. It tracks and reports on call handling, compliance, FCR: all of the things that you want to reward through gamification. All you have to do is let Metaphor Workforce know what level of achievement you want to reward with which badge level. For instance, you determine that the Gold badge is given agents handling at least 150 calls a day; Silver for agents handling 125; and Bronze for at least 100. (You’ll apply the same approach to FCR, upsell, ACH—every metric you currently track can be gamified.)

Gamification is even easier to use for your agents. When they log in to start their shift, their badges are displayed on their personal portal page. They’ll see three small icons: one gold, one silver and one bronze (or whatever you choose). Next to each icon is a number: the total number of times the agent has achieved that badge level for all the behaviors and performance you’re measuring. If the agent clicks on the badges, a box pops up showing the specific badge totals for each criterion. And agents receive a message through the portal each time they attain a new badge.

Truth be told, Metaphor Workforce Gamification is the poster child for “no-muss, no-fuss” implementation. It takes no more than an hour or two to define the thresholds and establish the rules.

And that means you’re gamified almost as soon as you flip the switch.