Justin Darkwah looks at both the customer-facing and internal benefits of gamification.

Gamification – sounds a lot like games. Well, it is! It’s a phrase that’s been buzzing around the marketing arena for a while. In laymen’s terms, it’s all about using the principles of gaming to help customers solve problems and keep them engaged. It borrows features of games and applies them in non-game settings like business. According to M2 Research, vendors claim that gamification can lead to a 100% to 150% increase in engagement. What’s more is that by 2014, Gartner Inc. calculated that 70% of Global 2,000 organisations would have at least one gamified application and 25% of day-to-day business processes will use aspects of gamification.

Here a few points why I believe that gamification can benefit your business:

• Teach customers what your company offers – It allows for better engagement between you and your customers, and builds a better understanding of your company values.
• Increase engagement – It allows you to better engage directly with your customers and influence their behaviour. It also allows for better dialogue and messaging between your business and your customers.
• Entertainment and stimulation for customers – One of the best aspects about gamification is it’s fun. The genius behind this is how it attracts customers, with many not even realising what is going into effect – increased brand engagement, face-to-face sign-ups or brand awareness. Because millennials are a generation that demands to be entertained, gamification is the perfect practice to implement to your business approach. It keeps people entertained through enthusiasm and gratification. If your company is recognised as creative and does business in a way that is enjoyable to customers, this in itself will certainly attract clientele.
• Reward your loyal customers ­– Challenging customers with reward benefits keeps them faithful and creates customer loyalty. Giving rewards to winners for Instagram contests, quizzes or being in the first 100 to 'like' a fan page is what creates a dependable customer – with a satisfying experience, comes a happy customer. An example which incorporates gamification would be to award your customer through a points system where each dollar counts as a point and every time your customer racks up 300P, they receive a 50% discount on the next purchase – this will keep your customers coming back.
• Social connections – Dr. Richard Bartle, a professor at the University of Essex who studies gamification, found that 80% of users take interest in gaming to socialise. Gamification can be incorporated to various platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – if you are targeting a millennial audience, take advantage of brand ambassadors to enrich engagement. People who are then recognised for their accomplishments or the prizes they receive like to show them off to friends because it makes them feel special. They share it with the world and in return, your business gets public attention.
• Employee wellbeing – Success rests on a company’s internal brand. Applying gamification in your business can enhance relationships between employees, which produces a healthier work environment and down the line, a better business for your customers. Creating competition is healthy for a company. By setting up an employee-of-the-month chart, a company blog in which everyone participates, a point system or dashboards that offer support from colleagues and rewards from completing tasks, your company will be closer knit, acting as a whole instead of as little parts.

This article was written by Duncan McCaslin and the team at Kreate. Duncan is the Director at Kreate, an award winning experiential marketing agency. Clients Duncan and his team have worked for include TK Maxx, Coca Cola, Mattel and AB InBev