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What are the various ways industries are applying "gamification" principles to enhance loyalty and increase motivation to change behavior? (e.g. Fitness, in finance, car insurance). Are there common themes that emerge around keys to successful "gamification"?
Hello! Thanks for your question regarding the ways industries are applying gamification principles to enhance loyalty and increase motivation to change behavior. The short answer is that a variety of industries are using gamification in order to make mundane processes more appealing, engaging, and fun in order to fuel motivation and continued usage of these processes. Gamification
is used in industries such as internet, sporting goods, software, fitness, finance, and technology, as well as being employed in marketing, politics, health, interactive systems, and education. The most useful sources for conducting this research were a study on gamfication and motivation, and an article from Cornerstone that explains how five companies applied gamification methods in their business practices. Below you will find a deep dive of our findings.
"GAMIFICATION" IN INDUSTRIES
The types of industries employing gamification are quite varied and include internet, sporting goods, software, fitness, finance, and technology. Gamification is also used in marketing, politics, health, interactive systems, and education. This gamification study lists a numbers of companies and applications that operate on a model based around gamification. They include FourSquare, Nike+, Stack Overflow, Collabio, and Google PowerMeter. Gamification is used for a variety of purposes, including driving user engagement, and keeping sales teams engaged. Jeff Canter, CEO of Uptivity, says "gamifying job functions can be a great way to inspire better employee performance and improve customer satisfaction as well as staff engagement and retention."
"GAMIFICATION" CASE STUDIES
Below are five examples of how top companies have utilized "gamification" techniques to their solve real-world problems.
1) CISCO
-"Challenge: Cisco had invested in a global social media training program for its employees and contractors to build and leverage their social media skill-set. But with over 46 courses as part of the program, it was overwhelming to figure out where to start."
-"Gamified Solution: Cisco introduced three levels of certification for the social media training program: Specialist, Strategist and Master, as well as four sub-certification levels for HR, external communications, sales and internal partner teams. It also mixed in team challenges to incorporate a healthy dose of competition and collaboration into earning social media certifications."
-"Results: Since gamifying its social media training program, more than 650 Cisco employees have been certified with over 13,000 courses taken."
2) DELOITTE
-"Challenge: Deloitte had built a leadership training curriculum for senior executives, but had trouble encouraging executives to start and complete the program."
-"Gamified Solution: Deloitte turned to Badgeville to introduce gamified elements like badges, leaderboards and status symbols that measured how many executives were participating and completing courses."
-"Results: The average time to complete the training curriculum dropped by 50 percent, and the program has seen a 46.6 percent increase in the number of users that return to the site daily."
3) ENGINE YARD
-"Challenge: Cloud app management platform Engine Yard had invested in a Zendesk knowledge base to encourage self-service and community troubleshooting, but employees and customers weren't engaging with the knowledge base as fast as hoped."
-"Gamified Solution: Engine Yard implemented Badgeville's game mechanics into its Zendesk platform that rewarded contributors with Achievements and introduced Missions that users could complete for additional recognition after completing customer surveys or reporting bugs."
-"Results: Once Engine Yard gamified its knowledge base, the company saw a 20 percent drop in customer complaint tickets, a 40 percent uptick in forum engagement and knowledge base searches and a 40 percent improvement in customer support response time."
4) GOOGLE
-"Challenge: Google, like many companies, needed more of its employees to submit travel expense information on a timely and regular schedule."
-"Gamified Solution: When Google employees take a work trip, they receive an allowance for each location. Google gamified the expense process by letting employees who didn't spend their entire allowances choose what happened to the remaining money — getting paid out in their next paycheck, saving funds toward a future trip or donating it to a charity of their choice."
-"Results: Gamifying Google's travel expense system translated into 100 percent compliance within six months of launching the program."
5) MICROSOFT
-"Challenge: Microsoft has myriad language localization needs for its many products, and ensuring that translations were accurate and made sense was a huge challenge for just one team."
-"Gamified Solution: Microsoft built a “Language Quality" game, which involved a very simple Silverlight application that let users view screens to check for language accuracy. Microsoft included intentionally poor translations to make sure its employees were actually paying attention."
-"Results: 4,500 users reviewed 500,000 screens to correct or improve translations based on their native languages. Microsoft Japan actually took a company-wide day off to play the game and ended up winning the leader-board."
"GAMIFICATION" INNOVATION IN FITNESS
Before "app" culture, gamification of fitness emerged in games such as Dance Dance Revolution and the Wii Fit. Games like these were popular because they were both physically interactive and fun to play. Today, "apps and wearable technology" have eliminated the need to be in front of a TV, and allowed users freedom to "exercise outdoors or on-the-go." The use of technology in fitness gamification is innovative, because it has shifted the focus in fitness from "changing behavior, a goal that’s proven difficult to accomplish," towards "turning [fitness and] fitness trackers into action games." Gamification in fitness combines "standard game-play characteristics" (such as "scoring points, defeating monsters, [and] reaping rewards") with fitness activities such as "running or lifting weights". New technologies, such as apps and wearable technology, are "enabling all forms of exercise to be turned into games." Adrian Hon, CEO of fitness app company Six to Start states, "What we're trying to do is make the act of exercise more exciting." Six to Start "developed an app that tracks a person’s running and uses it as an element of the plot in a story. Runners aren’t just getting fit with [the] app—as a character in the story, they’re running for their lives." Gamification in fitness can also be seen in apps that allow users to connect with their friends (i.e. competitors).
APPLICATIONS OF REAL-WORD FITNESS "GAMIFICATION"
1) STOMP FITNESS in Hobart, Tasmania
This company has gaming "built into all of the gym’s classes and equipment – be it a boxing game on the punch bag, a dual between two rowers on the paddling machine, or a class where all participants are on dance pads."
2) VERSUS in Australia
This company has "developed gamified exercise equipment for use in commercial gyms." Versus has "developed technology that tracks multiple people doing a workout in real time," while also giving people "feedback on their exercise technique."
3) AN APP in Sweden, which turned stairs into a giant piano that played notes when users stepped on them, inspired many more people to take the stairs instead of the escalator according to a 2009 study.
COMMON THEMES IDENTIFIED
Based on the total analysis of the research we collected, some common themes which appear repeatedly throughout the information provided are:
-The use of rankings, badges and levels in gamified processes.
-The importance of fostering engagement as it applies to continued motivation.
-The utilization of gamification techniques in order to facilitate company-wide participation and problem-solving.
-The usage of gamification in improving customer service experiences.
-Applying gamification principles in areas and processes which previously lacked excitement for users.
-Focusing on social aspects of gamification in order to "socialize" processes that previously functioned in a solitary manner.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, a variety of industries, such as internet, sporting goods, software, fitness, finance, and technology are using gamification to make mundane processes more appealing, engaging, and fun in order to fuel motivation and continued usage of these processes. Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!