Concept Of Gamification In Different Industries

Gamification

What is gamification.?

The phenomenon of gamification is defined as the process of strengthening the system with potential in sequence to invoke game circumstance into further ways of end results.

‘Or’

“The use of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems.” (Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011)

‘Or’

“The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts.” (Werbach & Hunter, 2012

Overview

[According to Pew Research Centre’s Internet & American Life Project an initiative of the Pew Research Centre]. The word “gamification” has emerged from past many years as a way to describe an interactive online design that plays on people’s competitive instincts and often incorporates the use of rewards to drive action—these include virtual rewards such as points, payments, badges, discounts, and “free” gifts; and status indicators such as friend counts, retweets, leader boards, achievement data, progress bars, and the ability to “level up.” Gamification is not, however, just about status, community building, and marketing. Game-like approaches to education and problem-solving are rolling out in new ways.

From the decades and in the future gamification is having a very fast growth in the market and adopted in various end user industry such as education, finance, health, real estate, insurance and even in IT industry and manufacturing sector.

Analyze the potential of gamification as a business tool in ensuring customer loyalty

• In a call centre a customer support lines can be a horror for both customers and companies. Long wait times in a call and urgent problems can cause call centre’s to be ineffective and unhelpful at this point.

Although, companies will try their best to resolve issues as quickly as possible and with more effectively way, many customers will get frustrated and hang-up before resolving the problem. For company, this is a huge issue because agitated customers are more likely to seek out competing services, or complain in public will affect company directly.

Consequently, companies have begun to realize that the most important part of customer support is the human interaction. Which creates the question again – is there a way to increase the speed and efficiency of customer support while maintaining human service? There is, and it’s called gamification.

• So taking this as an example, call centre company called LiveOps utilised gamification to improve workers’ performance and customer satisfaction by implementing elements such as avatars, leaderboards, points, badges and missions [4].

Following the same trend, the software company SAP has built at least seven game-like applications with different objectives to induce employee participation and sales improvement [18]. The common ground between those applications is the combination of game design elements with enterprise-led objectives. Although those examples could improve employee engagement and other business dynamics units.

• By considering one more example, gamification has a very close relationship to loyalty programs. For example, Frequent Flyer Programs could be considered as gamified loyalty as they usually offer points (or miles) to customers [39].

Loyalty programs started by giving things away for free to consumers, creating an expectation of getting free things all the time [25]. Over time, however, companies started to promote status value and virtual goods, incorporated by Frequent Flyer Programs [25]. In other words, a loyalty program starts to foster a deeper consumer engagement with the brand.

• For example, the huge American coffee brand Starbucks introduced a gamified mobile app, which rewarded consumers each time they purchased a product inside its stores [40]. This shows that rewards usually encourage loyal consumer behaviour [41]

List down the significance of gamification techniques across the potential industries.

• Ford – Efficiency Leaves: In 2013, Ford introduced the so-called Efficiency Leaves. This gamification example motivates users to drive in a particularly efficient and energy-saving way. The Efficiency Leaves are a good example of implicit gamification in the automotive sector. Drivers are motivated to grow their virtual plants with many leaves, and thus learn how to drive particularly efficiently and economically. The display of the leaves is way more intuitive and attractive than a mere numerical score.
• Volkswagen – Speed Camera Lottery: The idea for the Speed Camera Lottery was born as part of the advertising campaign for Volkswagen’s BlueMotion technology in 2011.It is a successful example of gamification in the automotive sector and has gained worldwide recognition. The concept behind the speed camera is to motivate people to drive slower and more consciously, instead of merely imposing fines.

This is how the concept worked: The camera set up in Sweden took a picture of all passing cars – even those that didn’t drive too fast. By driving within the speed limits, drivers automatically put a ticket into a virtual pot. The fine imposed on all those drivers who drove too fast was then raffled off among those who had not been noticed negatively. The camera was equipped with a large display and gave a thumbs up to all passing drivers who kept to the speed limit. This and the virtual raffle did not only make the drivers feel that they were not punished when driving legally, they also felt that they were rewarded. The camera added an additional motivation not to exceed the speed limit, because there was not only something to lose, but also something to win. Passing the speed camera became a game.

The results were outstanding: The average speed of all passing cars could be reduced by 22%. At the same time, Volkswagen sales in Sweden, where the camera was installed, increased significantly. However, it is hard to tell which parts of this increase can be attributed to the camera and the associated marketing effect. In any case, the Speed Camera Lottery is a successful example of gamification in the automotive sector

• Mercedes – Urban Hunt: Mercedes launched a gamification marketing campaign in Zurich to accompany the launch of the all new Mercedes GLC Coupe. The central element of the campaign was a mixed reality app with the title Urban Hunt. Participants in the campaign installed the app on their smartphones and then joined an experience that turned the entire city into their playing field.

Mercedes-Benz models acted as “hunters”, chasing the participants across the city. The players could follow the position of the hunter on their smartphone. There were health packs that could be collected and traps that were designed to make life difficult for other players. The goal of the experience was to survive for a very long time, so that in the end the Hunter – the real Mercedes-Benz vehicle – could be taken home. It was basically a last-man-standing game.

Spectators and players who had already been eliminated were able to watch the event live on screens installed in the city. A virtual map showed where the Hunter was and where the participants were, and who was captured.

A total of several thousand people took part in the activity. It was a great gamification example of how a large-scale marketing campaign can get thousands of people to participate, and how the media attention that the event generated could inform thousands more about the launch of the new model.

• All the about concept of gamification in different industries is reviewed from the internet source.

How the insurance industry is leveraging the concept of gamification to ensure customer engagement.

• Did you know? Games share certain characteristics with insurance, business and our lives! Significant common characteristics include uncertainty, challenge, chance, choices, goal, relevance, reward, rules and terms of agreement.

Today, games are being used to improve non-game business as well. However, gamification is definitely not to turn everything into a game, but to identify the areas which could be enhanced through games. Games can be classified in to 3 types based on its primary objectives: (a) FUN Games (b) KNOWLEDGE Games (c) ACTIVITY / EXERCISE games. The gaming strategy/ ideas normally focuses on any one (1) Increase brand awareness, (2) Improve business, (3) reduce risk occurrence & (4) improve capital. For example, highest faculty in the insurance with highest combined ratio is from worker’s compensation – Gamification can be implemented to reduce the combined ratio.

 Also, games can be leveraged to improve & retain the business through agents in different scenarios. Agri-insurers in remote places of South America and Africa are already leveraging games to educate their target segment consumers & improving their business growth.

Virtual Agents or Digital Avatars are developed to target digital age segment of consumers imbibing games to sell their Home insurance! For some of the treatment of chronic diseases like attention deficit disorder, health insurers are tied up with IT companies to provide mobile games to cure and track the performance. Many more interesting and innovative things in gamification can be expected in the near future.

• According to mindtree company, Insurance has always been an industry which has thrived on human engagement and connects in critical processes. Digitization has tended to change the level of engagement between insurance companies and policyholders. For continued success in the world of IOTs and BOTs, insurers need to find ways of humanizing digital engagements.
• Let us take the buying process in insurance as an example to explain the application of gamification. While customers have a varying degree of success across different lines of business in insurance, one limiting factor has been the awareness about which product to buy. This is a place where agents and brokers come in to help customers determine their risks and which products to consider. So how does gamification help overcome this?
• Consider a situation where customers can compare what risks customers like they are covering for and the loss events their proximate risk segments are exposed to. This is a very credible data-driven insight for customers to compare and buy. Similarly, creating a goal post by letting them know how much of the identified risk is covered for and what is not. Insurance being a business of covering large numbers of people with similar needs, comparisons have a big role to play in creating awareness.

References:

• [4] E. R. Mollick and K. Werbach, ‘Gamification and the enterprise,’ in The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, S. P. Wals and S. Deterding, Eds. MIT Press, 2014, pp. 439-458.
• [18] M. Herger, ‘ENTERPRISE GAMIFICATION: Engaging people by let in them have fun,’ 2011.
• [25] G. Zichermann and C. Cunningham, Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps. ‘O’Reilly Media, Inc.,’ 2011.
• [39] Bunch ball, ‘Gamification 101: An Introduction to Game Dynamics | Bunch ball,’ 2010. [Online]. Available: http://www.bunchball.com/gamification101. [Accessed: 19-May2014].
• [40] M. Hector, ‘Starbucks Uses Gamification to Enhance End-User Loyalty,’ Appear, 2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.appmakr.com/blog/starbucks-app/. [Accessed: 15-Nov2017].
• [41] B. Sharp and A. Sharp, ‘Loyalty programs and their impact on repeat-purchase loyalty patterns,’ Int. J. Res. Mark., vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 473-486, 1997. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8116(97)00022-0