Verint Adds Gamification Infrastructure to Customer Engagement Optimization Portfolio

Contact center solutions provider Verint Systems has updated its Customer Engagement Optimization portfolio with a gamification software designed to motivate employees and improve uniformity in work patterns.  According to Rajeev Venkat, senior director of solutions marketing at Verint, employees who are actively disengaged from their work tasks cost the United States between $450 billion and $550 billion per year. Verint’s solution intends to tackle the problem by maximizing engagement in a way that not only boosts productivity for contact center employees but also increases satisfaction among customers who interact with them.

“For a while, I was a gamification skeptic. I wasn’t sure whether gamification would change employee behaviors or motivate employees. But if you think about it, this is already something that’s very much in place in a business environment. Something like an ‘employee of the month’ recognition is so native to the workplace that we don’t realize it, but it’s a type of gamification,” Venkat says. Verint’s software plays off of a similar concept, he explains.

Verint’s gamification solution is a cloud-based software application, not a toolkit or a platform, Venkat explains. It’s customizable and can incorporate concepts that extend beyond traditional “gamified” features such as badges or leaderboards. For example, the solution offers graphical narratives and themes that can be personalized to a contact center’s specific needs. Contact centers can customize their gamification structure in a geographically relevant context; a contact center in the Philippines, for example, may have a gamification dashboard with a soccer theme, while a center in Ireland may sport one with a rugby motif. Organizations can also add advanced features such as personalized and non-competitive leaderboards, raffles, boosters, ad-hoc competitions, simulations, quizzes, and surveys.

A common workplace challenge is that employees tend to slow down their work pace right before lunch, then try to complete their outstanding tasks quickly at the end of the day, which creates peaks and valleys in performance. Booster activities from Verint’s gamification solution can curb this issue by rewarding employees who work in a more consistent way. “You can set up rules to reward uniformity by setting smaller objectives with dynamic benchmarks that make it easier to work in a regular pattern,” Venkat explains.  

Though the solution is for employees, Venkat predicts it will boost customer satisfaction as well. One global search and display advertising organization that has been beta-testing the solution has already seen a 10 percent improvement in the quality of service it delivers to customers who reach out to the contact center via either phone or email. “It makes sense that employees that are more productive and engaged deliver better service,” Venkat says. “When you have employees that slack off, that is reflected in the kind of experience they deliver,” he adds.

Verint Gamification is built to integrate fully with CRM systems, social collaborative tools, and other customer engagement ecosystems. It’s also available as a community solution, providing a gamification infrastructure for forums where customers interact with each other to offer product or service support. 

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