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5 Minute Briefing
Gamification in Service Management
Gamification is just one subject in this three-part series, which also examines the benefits of social knowledge
management and collaboration. Each of these ingredients adds to a recipe for community success, in terms of
building and sustaining organizational momentum for better service management practices.

Gamification is the application of game mechanics and game design in non-game contexts to solve business
problems. It’s not about turning work into a game. It’s about grafting game mechanics onto your existing operations
to dovetail work and play together, drive staff engagement, increase productivity and achieve very specific business
objectives.
Global communication means we now live in a truly global market. As a result, competition has never been so
intense and the need for engaged employees never so high. Yet engagement is at an all-time low (as few as 13%
of employees feel committed to their roles1 ). This engagement crisis is the root cause of employee apathy, poor
performance, excessive staff churn rates and spiraling recruitment costs. Gamification is a powerful tool for re-
engaging employees, bringing a much needed people-based approach to improving business; and IT Operations is
a perfect use case.

Gamification isn’t new. Sales managers have been using
competition as a motivation tool for decades. What is new is
the application of competition and other game mechanics to
other areas of the business – IT included.
Gamification is behavior hacking. It helps you to adapt
people’s work behaviors simply by being clear about what
you want from them – and how they’ll be rewarded in return.
It works because it’s applied in a positive, mutually beneficial,
non-exploitative way. It’s more about dangling the carrot than
wielding the stick.
Game mechanics play on game dynamics, the basic human
desires of reward, status, achievement, self-expression,
competition and altruism. These desires are universal,
applying to all ages, genders and cultures. By satisfying these
desires, gamification creates a positive and compelling user
experience.
The objective is to pull people together and activate them to
achieve business objectives. In this case, the group is the IT
department and the objectives are (at a high level) to improve
service quality, increase IT agility, reduce costs, and generally
squeeze more business value out of technology.
Through gamification, you can add an element of excitement
to a normally mundane activity. For example, resolving
incidents for end users is repetitive. By dovetailing game
mechanics into existing processes, you add a motivation layer
and make the process rewarding for the service desk analyst.
You can’t do enterprise scale gamification without technology,
but many gamification programs fail because they jump
forward to a toolset implementation before the foundations
are in place. The key to success is to start with the problem
you want to solve, identify the behaviors you need to
encourage, and apply game mechanics to engage and
motivate your staff.

What gamification can do for service management

• Increase adherence to processes and establish greater consistency

• Improve the execution of process stages by encouraging the most effective behaviors

• Drive collaborative working between teams, departments and sites

• Improve the capture and re-use of knowledge

• Encourage end-user adoption of self-logging and self-resolution tools

• Motivate service desk analysts to close more calls within SLAs

• Increase response rates for end user satisfaction surveys

• Support fast-track training programs to ramp up productivity more quickly

1 1
Gallup, October 2013, http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx
5 Minute Briefing: Gamification in Service Management
The Foundations of Gamification
The key to making gamification work is a solid understanding of the tools available and why people respond to them. Challenges
(sometimes called missions), points, badges, trophies, leaderboards, levels and profiles are the key tools of gamification. By
understanding how, where and why they work, you can map business objectives to supporting behaviors - and behaviors to the
mechanisms that will be effective in encouraging them.
Game Mechanics
Game mechanics are the mechanisms, rules, tools, techniques and
currencies of gamification. They are the structures you need to put
in place to motivate users, trigger activity, drive engagement and
change behaviors.
Challenges
Challenges are at the core of gamification. The
challenge-reward relationship establishes a “do
this, get that” deal between the organization
and the employee, offering a specific reward in
exchange for a specific action.
Points
Each action is rewarded with a pre-determined
number of points. A point (or credit) is the game
economy equivalent of a manager saying “Good
job!” – with the added option of cashing in points
for tangible rewards that appeal to the employee.
Badges
Badges are more meaningful than points as they
recognize specific categories of achievement
and act as status symbols. In IT, badges might
be awarded for solving particular categories of
incidents, or making a number of contributions to a
knowledge base.
Levels
Levels are defined by specific points thresholds,
giving points more meaning and status. For
example, earning 5000 points will rank a user as
an “Expert” and 10000 points as a “Guru”. From
the user perspective, levels give them a sense of
progress and achievement – they quantify their
skills and contributions – and are useful metrics for
annual reviews.
Leaderboards
Leaderboards add a relative edge to gamification.
They quantify performance relative to others and,
in doing so, introduce friendly competition. It’s a
performance competition, not a fight to the death,
and the objective is to find out who can be the
best, not destroy the rest; so leaderboards must be
carefully planned to have a positive impact.
Trophies
Trophies should be distinguished from badges:
they are awarded for larger achievements, often
involving a competitive element. For example,
“Service desk analyst of the month”.
2
Game Dynamics
Game dynamics are the reasons why game mechanics work. They
are the intrinsic human needs that game mechanics appeal to.
Different game mechanics trigger a different set of game dynamics.
Reward
Rewards are a fundamental driver for human
activity. People don’t commit to expending energy
unless they are sure the reward will be worth
the effort. By making rewards clear, gamification
promotes repeat behavior helping you to embed
positive habits and cultural change.
Competition
Competition is a deeply engrained trait. It’s
part of our DNA. Research has proven that
higher performance happens in competitive
environments. Leaderboards are the primary game
mechanism for the competition dynamic – a visible
definition of the performance that people need to
aspire to.
Achievement
People are motivated to achieve set objectives
and work towards larger goals. Those that are
motivated by a sense of achievement actively
seek out challenges. The combination of their own
sense of achievement, and recognition for that
achievement is a very powerful motivator.
Status
Most people enjoy the social attention they get
from having achieved something worthwhile.
People crave the respect of their peers and are
willing to work hard to get it, because respect is an
indicator of success. Game mechanisms, such as
badges, trophies and leaderboards, quantify status
and satisfy our inherent desire for social validation.
Self-expression
Autonomy, creativity and originality are all closely
linked to the desire for self-expression: people like
to do new things in their own way. It is a process
of discovery and this is where people are working
in a state of “flow”. The need for self-expression
is critical to people, as it demonstrates their
uniqueness and communicates identity.
Altruism
Research shows that Millennials take the “cause
work” that companies are involved in into
consideration when looking for a job. They want
to know that the company has a heart - and that
there is alignment in the causes that they support.
5 Minute Briefing: Gamification in Service Management

7 Steps to Success
Communication, engagement and education
Gamification programs frequently meet with resistance because people don’t understand them – so it’s vital to be
clear on what gamification is, how it works, and the benefits, before you launch any technology. Understand your
audience. Generation Y and Millennials are familiar with the concepts and language of gamification, but Baby Boomers
and Generation X are usually less familiar and more prone to skepticism. If you can join the dots between business
problems, game mechanics and user rewards, people will understand the broader purpose and, crucially, what’s in it for
them.

Start with the business objectives

One of the most frequently used definitions of gamification is “the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-
game contexts to engage users in solving problems”. Solving problems is the key phrase here. A gamification program
has to begin with a clear purpose. Start with the problems and look at how gamification can help solve them. Be as
specific as possible - this will help you to map problems to the behaviors you need to encourage. For example, if the
service desk is suffering an excessive number of SLA breaches, creating incentives for closing incidents within the SLA
period will create more of a sense of urgency. It’s better to reward good performance than punish poor performance.
Whichever challenges you are facing, it’s important to start small. Attempting a complex gamification program before
users and administrators are ready means it’s likely to collapse under its own weight.

Identify target behaviors

Before you even think about gamification technology you need to understand what good performance looks like; what
behaviors combine to get the results you need. Generally, in the context of the service desk and IT operations these
behaviors fall into two buckets: process adherence and activity performance. To get quality output from people you
need them to follow a quality process. You also need them to execute process steps quickly and efficiently. A systematic
examination of underperforming processes will throw light onto where behaviors need to be improved.

Incentivize behaviors
Having identified your desired behaviors it’s time to map those behaviors to specific game mechanics in a tailored game
model that articulates what users will do, why, and how they will be rewarded. This is what you are going to implement.
There is no off-the-shelf game model, as the challenges of each organization are unique, so building a game model that
will work for your organization is a vital part of the process.

Deploy technology
Now (and only now) are you ready to look at gamification tools. Having defined a game model - including desired
behaviors and the mechanics which will drive those behaviors - you will be in a good position to evaluate tools against
these requirements. Gamification is absolutely core to the user experience, so game mechanics will only work for IT
operations if the gamification engine is a native part of your ITSM solution. Integrating third party gamification engines
into complex ITSM solutions introduces unnecessary implementation, integration, maintenance and usability headaches.

Drive adoption
Gamification is a useful tool for driving the adoption of change - whether that is technology change, or cultural change
(both are founded on behavioral change). The number one factor for adoption is education: do users understand what
it’s for and how it works? Most digital natives (Generation Y and Millennials) are familiar with game mechanics, but older
demographics will need training. Understanding your user audience is the key to designing an effective training and
adoption program. The system itself should be intuitive and frictionless; not adding overheads on top of the work that
people are already doing. Gamification is inherently social and open – people have visibility of each other’s activity – so
the early adopters will help to show everybody else the way.

Measure and iterate

Measuring gamification means measuring three things: engagement levels, activity and results. By measuring
engagement you can pin-point who is or isn’t involved – and devise strategies for extending engagement into those
groups. By monitoring activity you can drive continual improvement in the way you manage your gamification program
(which challenges are people picking up and which are being “left on the shelf”?). Measuring KPIs against activity
helps you to link your gamification program to business performance, proving the case for continued investment in
gamification.

3
5 Minute Briefing: Gamification in Service Management
The Impact of Gamification in Service Management
A major player in the
leisure industry was facing
issues with service desk
performance.
The proportion of issues being
solved at the first line was 1/3 of the
industry benchmark, meaning that the
expensive 2nd and 3rd line resources
were constantly being pulled in to help
solve low level issues.
A closer look at the problem revealed
that staff turnover was very high and
engagement was very low. Due to the
number of repetitive tasks that analysts
were handling, they were bored,
unmotivated and easily tempted by
other organizations. Staff were burning
out soon after they had completed their
extended training.
The knowledge and skills that the
company had invested in was leaking
out of the organization, so the burden
of incident resolution was falling on
the more technical people. Inside the
service desk, a never ending cycle of
recruitment and training meant that
only a small proportion of service
desk analysts were fully trained and
committed at any given time. They were
suffering from an engagement crisis.
The key objectives were to improve
staff retention with better engagement,
drive the capture of knowledge to
reduce the impact of “brain drain”
and promote the re-use of knowledge
within the service desk and end user
communities to improve productivity.
4
With a clear idea of what needed
to happen, the organization began
mapping out the specific actions/
behaviors they wanted to encourage.
To solve the problem of mundane
and repetitive work, they planned out
a game model for the service desk
– introducing points, skills badges
and a leaderboard to incentivize key
behaviors and give analysts instant
feedback and rewards.
By giving incident management a
structure that went beyond simply
picking up the phone again and again,
gamification gave more meaning to
the work that analysts were doing and
created a powerful motivation layer.
Much of this was focused on knowledge
capture - motivating analysts to
categorize and document incident
resolutions properly in order to fuel the
growth of their knowledge base. Within
three months, the knowledge base had
grown exponentially, analysts were
no longer continually reinventing the
wheel, and there was sufficient content
to present resolutions for low-level
incidents to the end user community.
At this stage, having built a solid
foundation within the service desk, the
IT department created a game model
for end users, rewarding them for using
the knowledge that had been built up.
Metrics showed that 15% of incidents
were now being solved by end users
themselves, and the incentives offered
had driven a change in behavior: the
knowledge base was now the first
port of call for many end users when
they encountered minor IT issues.
When end users were fully engaged
and familiar with the mechanisms
and rewards, the game model was
extended to promote peer support.
By deploying a collaboration platform,
integrated with game mechanics, end
users were able to share and re-use
their own knowledge, whilst gaining
points for their effort and badges for
sharing specialist knowledge. The
growth rate of the knowledge base
increased once again, covering not only
support issues, but also application
best practices.
With fewer low-level issues to deal with,
service desk analysts now enjoy a more
varied role, get regular feedback and
rewards, stay longer in the organization
and take operational pressure off
2nd and 3rd line resources – leaving
more time for development projects.
Recruitment costs have dropped,
performance metrics improved, and IT
customer satisfaction ratings have seen
a steady increase.
Axios About the Author Find out more
• 5 Minute Briefing: Making IT
Dr. Nigel Martin Collaboration Work
For more than 25 years, Axios VP of Global Marketing
Systems has been committed • 5 Minute Briefing: Social
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Management, Axios is recognized on organizational strategy and
as a world leader, by the leading holds a doctorate in strategy and
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Nigel can be contacted at
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