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Building Engagement Through Fun and Games

Are your clients having trouble building engagement with and participation in a retirement plan? Is your level of engagement with customers moribund? If so, have you considered what the processes you use are like? Are they…fun?





Speaking at a March 24 general session at the 2015 NAPA 401(k) Summit, Gabe Zichermann, author of The Gamification Revolution, offered his take on how a non-traditional approach can help build engagement with customers and employees. Zichermann argues that game design, loyalty programs and behavioral economics can be used to heighten customer and employee engagement.

 

How non-traditional? Zichermann painted a stark picture. “It used to be that TV was the distraction. Now we need a distraction from the distraction,” he said, referring to the ubiquity of hand-held devices and their habitual use. 





“It used to be that we divided our time. Now it’s required time and optional time,” Zichermann said, noting that the competition now is for people’s attention during optional time. 





And optional time is what some companies target in educating employees. For instance, he noted that Delta educated customer service employees in one year using non-traditional, game-oriented means during employees’ optional time; a program with the same material that had been conducted in a more traditional manner would have taken four years for the employees to complete.





Zichermann argued that the degree to which a program meets the “three Fs” — feedback, friends and fun — will determine the degree to which participants will be engaged in it. Making people care about something rather than just doing it in the fastest or cheapest way better engages them. 





He also said that people have four behavioral limitations that affect engagement. They are: 






  • easily bored;



  • easily distracted;



  • hedonistic; and 



  • bad at predicting the future. 


And these limitations make it especially hard for those in the financial services and retirement industry to engage and build interest, Zichermann noted, since they advocate actions that are geared toward the future and not the present.





The answers? For one, use a game-oriented approach. “It’s the mechanics behind a game that make a game fun,” said Zichermann. Simply put, that means presenting a challenge, and providing an opportunity for achievement and the pleasure that results from that achievement. 





A positive emphasis about retirement saving also is key. “Avoid warning people in a way that makes them feel as if they failed," Zichermann advised. "If they are fatalistic, they’ll give up. Make them feel good about it; give positive reinforcement. Make decisions fun now. Don’t defer their satisfaction.”



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