September 25, 2012
By Kelly Liyakasa,

Freshdesk Gamifies the Help Desk

Freshdesk has launched Freshdesk Arcade, a gamified help desk designed to turn the agent experience into a venue for friendly competition, leading to what the company claims will be faster ticket resolutions and higher customer satisfaction ratings.

Freshdesk, a cloud customer support software solution, this summer integrated its full-service help desk with Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, allowing sales and support teams to see a history of customer support interactions right from within CRM systems. On the sales side, managers can see which customers have submitted a support query, and, on the support side, agents can see which sales rep closed the deal with a particular customer.

With the introduction of Freshdesk Arcade, every new customer support ticket represents point value. "Fresh points" can be earned for reaching achievements like resolving an issue during the first call or maintaining fast ticket resolutions. Agents that begin as "Support Newbies" can level up with points to become "Help Gurus," which, according to Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham, will "turn customer support into a fun game for everyone—the business, agents, and the end customers."

In addition to the bragging rights agents gain from titles, those who accrue the most points for each achievement can earn badges and trophies, such as "Speed Racer," "Sharpshooter," and "Customer Wow Champ." Top scorers have the opportunity to become "Most Valuable Player" of the month, but in order to keep the game—and support environment—running in an optimal manner, agents can subsequently lose points if they break service-level agreements or a customer rates them poorly.

The concept of gamifying business and customer-facing processes has been gaining traction, although games, in their inherent form, are nothing new. "The fuel for this undoubtedly comes from businesses' burgeoning love affair with gaming dynamics in consumer Web marketing efforts," writes TJ Keitt, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, in a blog post.

For Freshdesk users, Freshdesk Arcade will be available for $49 per agent per month as part of the Freshdesk Estate plan. Freshdesk Garden plan users, designed to support multiproduct businesses, will have access to the arcade without additional cost.