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Leveling Up Boost customer loyalty and employee engagement by making business more fun. By A.J. Kaufman
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he term "gamification" was coined about 20 years ago. Wikipedia describes gamification as “the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users.” In simpler terms, gamification is a way to make non-game activities feel like they are indeed games, often within a business environment. This could mean incentivizing engagement or sales, with rewards like earning badges, rewards, accumulating points and so on.
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The origins of gamification lie in basic psychology and the human need for recognition and reward. The three main psychological drivers that make gamification effective are: Achievement: Earning points and achieving goals motivate people by giving them a sense of accomplishment, which keeps them coming back. Competition: Competition drives people to perform better — to beat their peers and strive for the top. Rewards: Perhaps the most common form of gamification, tangible rewards such as gift cards or swag, create extra incentives and increase motivation.
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These drivers are generally accomplished through the application of game design elements and where you’d not necessarily expect games to occur. There are many examples of this in today’s business world. Duolingo: This language learning app tracks progress and encourages users to return so they can extend their “streaks” of learning. –––––––––––– Peloton: A workout equipment and software company, Peloton uses a leaderboard to motivate users to compete and outwork each other. –––––––––––– Starbucks: The coffee chain’s mobile app is responsible for
one in four of Starbucks’ transactions, with over 30 million users. It rewards users for purchases through earning stars/bonuses that get them free drinks. –––––––––––– LinkedIn: The professional networking site displays a progress bar to encourage members to complete their profile pages and earn a trophy icon. –––––––––––– Scouting America: Perhaps one of the longest running examples of gamification, the scouts have long awarded badges for successfully completing activities. –––––––––––– IBM: Gamification isn’t just for consumers – it can also be useful for employee engagement. IBM implemented a digital badge program, where employees earned badges for completing different courses, and saw a 226 percent increase in course completions. Competition like trivia, quizzes and creating communities are a major part of gamification strategies. Showing players whether they are winning is the key to almost any game. By adding a score-keeping component, customers or employees are encouraged to keep pushing forward. Gamification therefore builds customer loyalty, first and foremost. It also motivates engagement with a product or service. Both the company and customers can receive benefits. For the company, gamification