The Nexus of Forces in Action – Use-Case 6: Social Gamification Orchestration
Summary
The ability to affect and reinforce customer and employee behavior across multiple platforms and devices by directing feedback and incentives.
Primary Industry Sectors
Online retail, consumer electronics, gaming
Business Value
Enhanced advertising return, immersive customer experience, brand building, higher customer visits and ARPU, collect customer data insight, crowd-source to solve complex business problems, education, knowledge management, engage more with community behavior, increase stickiness to customers through relevancy improvement of interactions, products and services. (See Lauren Brousell’s article.)
Key Business Functions
Consumer engagement, employee engagement, social loyalty, community management, e-Commerce (multi-channel device), lead generation, education and staff development, collaboration, sales performance, support help deck performance management
Primary Actors
Social network online consumer
Secondary Actors
Product portfolio marketing manager
Machine Actors
Mobile customer app, big data analytics, enterprise messaging bus, BAM, social networks, mobile social apps
Key Technologies
Mobile devices, large projector (teaching/lecture/advertising board) devices, digital content management and delivery, social networks, big data analytics, online advertising feeds and integration, voting systems
Main Scenarios
- User feedback collection
- User rating and rewards systems
- Recommendations systems
- User and crowd feedback collaboration
Key Data
Master Data
Likes and dislikes of customer behavior, legal preference opt in and opt out, subscription preferences
Current Observations Data
Tracking customer visits, tracking social networks
Historical Data
Past rating of products and services
Query Data
Emails/texts to specific customers and/or social network groups, information pushing services; e.g., Twitter
Action Taken Data
Consensus of crowd view/trend, bonus or incentive system for customer (positive reinforcement), promote social network communications to reinforce social/brand loyalty, customized/personalized advertising (targeted advertisement, real-time advertising)
Real Business Examples
Better Performance through Gaming: Nike+
“Effective gamification can help us perform better at activities that we want to do, by providing a framework which gives us immediate feedback about how we're tracking against our goals, and a sense of motivation (encouragement or pain) to help us go the extra distance to achieve them. What's the catch? People have to want to play. And it's this, ‘getting people to want to play’ where brands really come unstuck. One of the reasons brands’ efforts at gamification and engagement often, well … suck, is that these efforts are driven by brand requirements (e.g., selling shoes), not consumer requirements (i.e., feeling motivated to exercise). People don't share photos, or score points for the sake of it, they do it because on a deeper level, it affirms who they want to be.”
“Socialized gamification allows people to create controlled and curated projections of how we want others to see them and to share those with the world. The affirmation that comes from creating those projections and then the Internet accepting and validating them is a powerful, motivating force. In the Nike+ gamification system, Nike has demonstrated a deep understanding of how exercise and fitness are important but difficult parts of people's lives. They know people want to exercise, but the motivation required to get out there coupled with the lack of recognition afterwards, are huge hurdles. To address this, Nike created a framework for gamifying fitness by applying instant feedback, a clear set of rules, milestones, motivation, and voluntary engagement to this otherwise problematic human endeavor.”
“And boy does it work. By assisting people to achieve fitness goals and then providing a social toolset for tracking and sharing these achievements, Nike is an active and engaged partner in helping people define and create sharable, self-projections. Nike is helping their customers become who they want to be.”
(Source: Kent Valentine’s article on gamificationin Huffington Post.)
Facebook “Like” System
The like button is a feature of social networking service Facebook. Participating websites can display a button that enables users to register that they “like” something. Information of who likes what is collated by Facebook and can be available for social or commercial purposes. (See Facebook like System in Wikipedia.)
Bell Media
Bell Media increased customer retention by 33% by incorporating “social loyalty” rewards on its website. (Source: Pete Wolfinger’s article for the Society for Human Resource Management.)
Cisco
Cisco used gaming strategies to enhance its virtual global sales meeting and call center company and reduced call time by 15% and improved sales between 8% and 12%. (Source: Deloitte Review.)
Deloitte Training Programs
Deloitte training programs using gamification took 50% less time to complete and kept more students involved than ever before. (Source: George Bradt’s article in Huffington Post.)
Gamification of Education
Gamification looks likely to be big in the commercial world – and in schools. (See Elizabeth Corcoran’s article in Forbes.)
Companies use Gamification to get Better Business Results
Additional Considerations
Existing Interoperability Standards
Open APIs between social communities; e.g., Facebook (vendor standard)
Comments on Context
There currently are no standards for scoring in gamification. Comparison and feedback is relative to the user and provider and community experience.
Platforms and development of a reinforcement feedback system is required. The Facebook like system is a basic gamification system that creates clustering of “likes” from members of a Facebook community.
Ethics of behavior may affect the type of feedback and voting system used. Some websites also include a dislike button, so the user can either vote in favor, against, or neutrally. Other websites include more complex web content voting systems; e.g., five stars.
Preconditions
- Understanding of the psychology of the consumer and community crowd behavior, the drivers, and what reinforcement incentives will work to direct response to feedback
- Rating and scoring system that enables a consensus and decision mechanism to be developed by the community