Companies and customers can create value and wealth together. Fujitsu Innovation on customer service changed the conventional model of help support. They have re-imagined customer service by creating an ecosystem in which call centre representatives work closely with a customer to understand why the problem came up in the first place and find out the best possible way to resolve those problems. They also created special initiatives in which representatives can raise awareness about product features that customers might not be aware of. This has resulted in new product ideas and a higher profit margin. These approaches are expensive in the short run, but in the long run, they create a potential long-term impact on the bottom line.

Companies are using the ServiceNow platform to create IT efficiency; however, the engagement in the IT service desk of an organization is quite low mainly due to repetitive tasks they need to perform. Companies are adding a gamification layer on top of ServiceNow to change the culture of its IT support operations by engaging the staff and rewarding them for their superior performance. Adding playful experiences to ServiceNow can excite people about their job, for example, creating a fun way to compete and collaborate in real-time monitoring tools.

It has to be an appropriate level of competition and focus should be mainly on using play to improve collaboration and enable people to share knowledge. Many companies have already done this correctly and can demonstrate measurable improvement in their IT Service and delivery goals by nudging users to adopt self-service.

Let us take an example of how a simple, playful collaborative experience can be used to bring efficiency in the call centre or service desk environment. When an employee does not have an answer to a customer in the call centre, they run to their manager. Rather than doing this, you can try to shift to a playful environment in which employees can put the question on colorful sticky notes and put it on a board near the manager desk. It can give a chance for other team members to answer these questions and gain a reputation and some financial rewards too.  Depending on the environment, those questions can be posted using Post-It Notes on a virtual board accessible to everyone.

It is essential to realize that individual competition does not work all the time. It is better to create competition among teams located in different geography like Marriott Hotels that launched a digital platform for allowing hotel staff to sign up in groups to compete against other hotels. The results have been quite promising as they could engage 416 hotels with over 870 challenge entries.

Key Takeaways
 Add a gamification layer on top of Service Desk Platforms to change the culture of its IT support operations by engaging the staff and rewarding them for their superior performance.