Ep 5 Mastering Gamification - The Essential Guide and Beyond

In Episode 5 of The ZIZO Effect, join hosts Andrew Reimers and Jimmy Chebat as they delve into the essential do's and don'ts of gamification. Learn the secrets to successfully implementing gamification strategies that can propel your workplace into a more engaging, productive environment. Whether you're new to the concept or looking to refine your existing approach, this episode is your comprehensive guide to getting gamification right.

Transcript

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Intro and Opening Remarks

Andrew Reimers 0:00

Welcome back to the ZIZO Effect podcast , your trusted source into the world of gamification . This episode , we're finally getting into the do's and don'ts of gamification . Why , you may ask ? Because getting gamification done right can transform your workplace , but there's a fine line between success and failure . We've talked about the power of gamification in previous episodes , showcasing its potential to revolutionize engagement and productivity . Now we're hitting the essentials what to adopt and what to avoid as you venture on your gamification journey . Get ready , it's game time . Hello , hello , welcome to the ZIZO Effect Podcast . I am your host , Andrew J Reimers , and I've been in 48 states .

Jimmy Chebat 1:05

Impressive . My name is Jimmy Chebat , your co-host , and I have been in over 20 countries . I'm still doing the count . I don't know if it's 21 or 22 . I got to verify it . But 48 states . Which two have you not been in ? The two most recent , Alaska and Hawaii , correct ? All right .

Andrew Reimers 1:26

that's nice , very impressive , mainly because they just haven't earned it yet . Once they're around a little while longer , really prove themselves as a part of the United States , I'll go visit .

Jimmy Chebat 1:34

It's absolutely not a financial thing at all no no , I mean going to hawaii is like on spirit , it's like 100 bucks . I I probably shouldn't be saying this about a corporate . It's not like they're a sponsor or anything . But yeah , I would rather do a lot more things than ride Spirit to Hawaii .

Andrew Reimers 1:53

Yes , Well , one of my goals in life is to visit more than 20 countries as well , so I will talk offline as they say about some of your favorite places . I know I have some of my favorite places , but here we are again on the ZIZO Effect man . It's going strong . The feedback has been fantastic from our listeners , excited . We love people getting involved , getting engaged , playing the game and , as they know , we like to start out each episode with a little segment we call Name the

Name the Game Segment

Andrew Reimers 2:25

As usual , our wonderful talented producers backstage , Alex and Emma , will be playing us a song and , Jimmy , it's up to us to see who can identify the song first . Now it is from a video game , so we're identifying the game from the song .

Jimmy Chebat 2:41

You're right . Let's clarify that . And what's the score ?

Andrew Reimers 2:46

You won last game and that puts you up . So two , I am two , one in one . Two , one in one so I've really gotta .

Jimmy Chebat 2:53

I can't let you get that . Uh , that lead too far ahead . So I'm excited , I'm ready . Are you ready , born , ready ? It's game time . Let's do it . Jesus Name , that tune in one note . What is it ? Donkey Kong ? Yes , it is , is it ?

Andrew Reimers 3:19

Is it ?

Jimmy Chebat 3:20

Donkey Kong . It is Nice job Wow .

Andrew Reimers 3:23

That was fast how .

Jimmy Chebat 3:28

I'm going to have to see if you're getting some inside knowledge here .

Andrew Reimers 3:30

Maybe a little nothing , I promise , I absolutely promise I trust you , I trust you . We sell trust here you've seen my , uh , my virtual background , uh , when I work from home , sometimes we do have an arcade cabinet . That has over 200 games on it , retro games , donkey kong being one of our absolute favorites . And , uh , I I love the music . That's because that was the title screen music yeah , I would .

Jimmy Chebat 3:51

I would assume it was . And um , donkey kong was probably the second game , I mean , behind the free super mario brothers and duck hunt . I think that was the second game that I ever had or ever played on a nintendo , the nes okay , system yeah , that was a . That was a fun and popular one too .

Andrew Reimers 4:10

It is , it was good , and that was one that I remember my uh bowling alley had , and I would just pump quarters into it , but eventually you got good at it and you could just play it for pretty cheap . So , uh , yeah , that's , uh , that was a great choice . Well done , uh , emma and alex . But now it's time for our audience at home to play . It is round two of Name the Game .

Jimmy Chebat 4:32

Now , in this version , our audience gets a chance , an opportunity to win a prize or play the game to guess the name from the song . And they get to go on our social media platforms or wherever they get their podcast and put us . You know , put your guess in the comments and you'll be entered to win a prize . And Andrew , what is that prize ?

Andrew Reimers 4:58

Some brand new socks . Get ready for the ultimate in foot fashion , introducing the fabulous ZIZO Logo Socks Made from 100% pure cotton . These aren't just socks , they're a cloud for your feet . Emblazoned with the stylish ZIZO logo . Perfect for every occasion . They promise to keep you comfortable and chic . Let's give it up for the prize that steps up your sock game ZIZO logo socks . Who's ready to win ?

Jimmy Chebat 5:29

That was quite out of character for me . I'm not usually the one that what we would call the prize model . So it's . I hope the audience got a kick out of that , almost literally . So we may have , as you said , may have gotten a new audience . Anybody with a foot fetish next time I'll take off the socks . In any case , we're let's get back to the game here . We've got a podcast to shoot and I think we're having too much fun alex emma , why don't you play the second song ?

Jimmy Chebat 6:17

It's a really slow start . So that's two in a row that we've had with slower starts . I'm familiar with it . I have the answer here , okay , so I do recall it , but it's very vague in my memory . What about ? You Can't think of it at the moment .

Jimmy Chebat 6:34

Yeah , I know we're getting diverse here with making sure that we're attracting all audience levels , because we can't always do retro where you know this is the games that we grew up on . But again to our audience . Put a guess in I'm not going to go through that whole thing again , but brand new socks , guys . Let's give some away , and if there's a couple episodes earlier in the season where we gave away this hat , it's not too late . Please put your name in there as well , all right ?

Andrew Reimers 7:01

Jimmy . Well , you know why we are here . We're a gamification podcast and , as promised , today we're going to be talking a little bit about the do's and the don'ts of gamification . You mentioned , on the last episode , gamification done right , and we pause there . So when it comes to gamification , jimmy , every strategy has its pitfalls . What should our listeners steer clear of when first getting into the world of gamification ?

Jimmy Chebat 7:28

You're right Gamification , done right , is where you're going to get quite a bit of benefit . Done wrong , it may turn you off completely from actually incorporating it into your day-to-day and ongoing culture or strategies for engaging and retaining younger staff and all staff for that matter . It is , I believe , age agnostic . It's not bias , it's human psychology . But yeah , let's dive into what are some of the things that we probably shouldn't do when implementing gamification . Maybe , before we get into the don'ts , let's make sure that our audience understand what sort of gamification we're talking about , and I'm going to go back to what industries are primarily gamified .

Jimmy Chebat 8:24

And we talked in our last episode about sales teams . Sales teams have a gamified culture where there's a lot of contests , there's a lot of competition , there's things called spiffs you know where and blitzes , and you know contests short-term , long-term for people to win . So these are your most widely used , widely known form of gamification running a contest or a tournament , and whether it's short-term or long-term , one of the biggest downfalls of running a contest like this is just not having clear and concise rules . Now do you understand what I mean by that , andrew ?

Andrew Reimers 9:05

Yes , there's a metric that needs to be met in order to qualify , in order to win . Now , it could depend on what kind of contest it is , but there needs to be , yes , a clear minimum value , perhaps Something that the frontline worker knows that they have to achieve in order to receive a reward

Gamification Pitfalls

Andrew Reimers 9:22

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Jimmy Chebat 9:22

Yeah , and that's usually . It's usually a single metric . Some people might get a little sophisticated and have multiple metrics , a combination of metrics , but they need to clearly define the rules , because there's always going to be a gray space . There's going to be an area where people are going to game the game I love the power glove .

Jimmy Chebat 9:48

It's so bad and you know people in who's ever managed a contest or a tournament in the past has more than likely experienced . Where you know people kind of like skirt the rules a little bit and find ways to bring numbers into the equation or challenge somebody else's numbers , where if the rules aren't clear and concise it can become counterproductive , where the challenges of trying to get everybody appeased and happy over kind of overshadows the benefit that you're trying to create and the energy levels that you're trying to create . So I would say the first don't in our list of a try to avoid is don't have vague rules . Be clear , concise your date range , your time range , what the rules are for . If it's a metric , what qualifies , what doesn't qualify . The more gray space that you have , gray area that you have in there , the more you're going to get people arguing and disputing what qualifies and what doesn't .

Andrew Reimers 10:54

Exactly , and I would even add onto that , maintaining those rules throughout Correct , not changing it because people are complaining , not changing it because people say it's unfair . But coming up with fair , clear objectives is very important . You know , I would say something that I've seen pretty commonly , both in my own personal work experience and through ZIZO and some of our customers , is running that contest of best in the office wins a prize , however long , whether it's a month long contest , week long contest , it could be a single day contest . But when you do that , you exclude so many people and it becomes demotivating . You know , I'll tell you an experience from my collections time . I was a pretty good collector at a point . I was pretty talented , I had the heart , the ambition , the drive to do it . I was making great money and I loved the office that I lived in or I worked in , lived in .

Jimmy Chebat 11:51 Andrew Reimers 11:52

But I . There was somebody in that office who was a unicorn and I love the guy to death , but he was just better than me and no matter what I did , I tried to learn , I tried to grow , he helped me , he was fantastic . But whenever there was a contest in the office , everybody would just give up because he would always win . So then , how motivating is that , knowing like , well , I don't even stand a chance . You know what is the point ?

Jimmy Chebat 12:17

Yeah .

Andrew Reimers 12:17

So you have to get creative . So what you know and this isn't just because you're sitting here , but you happen to be running the organization at the time what you were able to do was you were . You developed a rank system and people were then put in competitions based on where they were ranked . So if somebody was a pro level , if somebody was an all-star level , if somebody was a superstar level , they would be paired up with somebody else of equal talent and then they would battle it out . So everybody had a chance for a prize . You know , but doing that single whoever's the best wins .

Jimmy Chebat 12:53

Uh , really doesn't help anybody in terms of engagement . Yeah , and and . To try to kind of simplify . So if people are looking for a single line of what don't you do is , I would say this is maybe multiple things . One don't put all your eggs in one basket . If you have an incentive budget , don't use that entire incentive budget for a single contest , because what that does is you're not taking advantage of so many opportunities , you're eliminating other advantages to get everybody involved . It's a single winner and , like you said , it's usually your top performer or one of your top performers that always win .

Jimmy Chebat 13:31

I guess the second don't in that example is don't combine everybody into one group . If you're going to do a contest and maybe the counterpart of the do is try to split up the contest into groupings where skill level or experience levels are competing against one another , and therefore use the same rules . Use the same rule sets for each of the groups , so that way they all feel like they're competing with the entire group . Because if somebody in the rookie level outshines somebody in the superstar level , that is something to be proud of as well , as long as the rules are the same . Again , apples to apples . There's a lot of do's in there that we'll get to when we start to kind of go into the counterpart . But yes , those don'ts are really important .

Andrew Reimers 14:24

Yeah , agreed and another don't . That I would say , and I'd be curious your opinion on . I know you've seen this too and maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on it , but the juice has to be worth the squeeze . I've seen so many people and talked to so many people who run competitions , but the prize isn't worth the effort in the productivity boost that's being asked for or the amount of calls it's being asked for , where , okay , you're expecting me to do 25% above my average productivity and you're going to give me a $5 gift card to Tim Hortons .

Jimmy Chebat 15:01

That's not going to motivate and incentivize your staff is , you know , asking for so much in return for so little . And you know so , depending on your budget and what the contest is about , you know , if you're asking people , hey , if you double your productivity and we're going to give you , you know , a small prize , like a $5 gift card , it's insulting , it's not only not productive , it's very counterproductive . And so people will get insulted and they'll say , you know , they lose trust and confidence in the management or in the ownership . And so you definitely want to weigh what the output is and what the return of the investment is to the organization , what the output is and what the return of the investment is to the organization , and make sure that you match that , uh , that output with some sort of valuable reward , um , to the user , so it makes it worth their time . They feel , you know , that they're being recognized fairly , so definitely don't under incentivize for a large demand on their performance .

Andrew Reimers 16:07

Yeah , and you know , actually though that's not to say that you can't use micro rewards to an advantage , to your advantage . Now that could be something where I guess it would tie into another don't . But don't set unrealistic expectations or goals , because that isn't going to motivate people either . So maybe you do set up , let's say , I'll just . You know , we always go back to the call space center In collections . How do you make money ? You make calls . The more calls you make , the more chance you have , you know , getting somebody on the phone . They pay their debt and it's great .

Andrew Reimers 16:38

Well , if you , let's say , you come to me , jimmy , and you say , hey , you've been averaging about 105 calls a day . We'd love to see that number around 120 . And there's a little something in it for you . Okay , you know what I can do , that I definitely screwed around enough on Facebook where , like , I could have made another 15 calls , no problem , you know . But that's a realistic expectation . So maybe you can talk about some experiences that you've seen . Or you know , maybe you've been a part of , where there are unrealistic expectations that can't be met , that are demotivating .

Jimmy Chebat 17:07

Yeah , and there are a couple of do's in here . I don't know if we want to continue to split these ups into do's and don'ts and focus on it , because there's a lot of great things that you said there . One , micro rewards right it's , and it's very , very challenging if you don't have a system to manage these . If you don't have a system to manage these , I mean you don't want there to be required a full time or maybe even multiple full time positions to administrate these contests , right . And so a system like ZIZO that will allow you to spread your budget across many different types of contests and micro rewards , with one of them being what you just mentioned an individual goal , where you're challenging an individual to hit , maybe , a stretch goal , you know , something above what they're normally capable or able or have been achieving in the past . To say , I know you can do better and if you can , you know I'm going to give you a little something , something for that , and you know that could help you know , again , stretch a person's capability or their bandwidth or capacity .

Jimmy Chebat 18:12

I should say Um , and then set a new benchmark right For what should be expected . Um , but , yes , it's you . You mentioned you mentioned unreasonable expectations , and so this would probably go into the do's is really , do your homework right . Data is going to be one of your best friends to assess what should be expected and what is unreasonable expectations , and so , by getting a history of whether it's a collective average or that individual's average , and putting into some sort of charting where you can see their trends or kind of a reasonable level of expectations , you want something that is achievable but not too easy . Yeah .

Andrew Reimers 19:03

And the good news is , when people are ready for it , there happen to be some platforms out there that can help assist with all this , so absolutely , but I digress . So you know we've talked a lot about don'ts in gamification , anything else that you can think of that you'd like to bring up before we start to get into the good news ?

Key Strategies for Successful Gamification

Jimmy Chebat 19:19

Well , if you're doing things manually , I'm going to warn you you had mentioned , you know there's a lot of trial and error that happens , which I encourage . I encourage you know , operations managers , directors of operations to try , you know what is within your budget , what is within your resources , to get a feel for what works and what doesn't right , try new things . But I'm going to warn you what my experience was and you had mentioned it earlier where you have a contest or multiple contests , and it's the same top performers that prize onto the floor and everybody sees it , they can touch it , they can feel it , and so it's within reach , right , quite , literally , and so they're all energized . And then , you know , one or two days in , those top performers start to pull away . It becomes extremely demotivating for everyone else , and so they're like why even bother , why even try ? Now you're going to go out there and you're going to try something new , and one of the things that we tried was you know what we're going to provide . It's still what we would consider fair and inclusive .

Jimmy Chebat 20:37

Whenever you do something good maybe it's when you reclose a deal , if you're in sales , or if you hit a certain number of phone calls , or whatever it have you , you would earn like a raffle ticket and then you would have a bunch of prizes , and usually they scale from small to very large , and then you can take your raffle tickets , almost like a Chinese auction .

Jimmy Chebat 20:57

Also , dude , chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature Asian American . Please Put your tickets in the bag that you want to for the prizes that you want . And again , the more tickets you have in whatever bag of the prize that you want , or if you want to spread them out , your chances of winning that prize becomes higher or lower depending on the lack of it . But what what happens is if for us , we had a low performer win one of the bigger prizes and that really pissed off the top performers , where they would come back and they would say how is that even fair ? Like that person barely , you know , scratched the surface of what we were able to do , and yet they won the big prize . So , regardless of which way you go , you're going to run into the issue of you can't make everyone happy , and when we get into the do's , I can tell you how you can .

Andrew Reimers 21:51

Speaking of the do's , I think we should jump right into it . Sure , what are some of the key strategies that really make it work ? I know that's a broad question , but let's get into how to make gamification work .

Jimmy Chebat 22:03

Yeah , and I'm going to try to do my best to provide advice for people who don't have systems to manage these games . But a lot of the do's require some form of management , and what we've been able to do at ZIZO and one of the objectives that I had when I set out to build ZIZO was to reduce the amount of administrative requirements for people to have to manage yet another system . We live in a very technological age and there are so many new platforms doing so many different things requiring so much administration , and a lot of them probably get used about 50% of its capabilities , right . So you know you're wasting a lot of money on all of these products and you know in resources managing those products , so it's hard for you know . When we decided to build ZIZO , we wanted it to automate as much of this as possible , and I think we've accomplished . About 90% of the system is fully automated , so that way it requires zero to very little management from the staff .

Jimmy Chebat 23:15

But going into it , I think one of the number one things that you should do and we spoke on it earlier is these micro reward systems . You should have a variety and diverse types of contests and tournaments or ways to earn rewards . You should assign a budget or a portion of the budget where it's an individual versus themselves and you had mentioned it early and there's a lot of excuses , there's a lot of finger pointing , there's a lot of negativity that comes from contests where it's everybody versus everybody , right or team versus team , which I think is a little fair , but depending on how you slice and dice that team . But when you have an individual looking in a mirror and saying the only person I have to blame is myself and it's a little bit , you know , provides a little bit of self-awareness and self-accountability , there is no reason for them to fail . Now I will go into our next do .

Jimmy Chebat 24:19

Not every person is the same . You cannot have the same level of expectations of performance from somebody who's been there for two , three years versus somebody who just started with the organization . There's a different level of skill set , a different level of experience , and those levels should be accounted for . Now , how do you do that ? You can't do it subjectively . You can't trust another human being to do that for you who may not know your staff intimately . So you know , we do it through an algorithm , right , and we have rank levels and if there's a way for you to objectively create a rank system where somebody new coming into the organization and starting operations have a rookie , you can create whatever ranking naming convention that you would like , but rookie is an easy one , right ? Because everybody's familiar with that and you can level that up . You know whether it's a four rank system or a 25 rank level system like ours , it doesn't matter . You just want to be able to segregate your experience levels accordingly .

Andrew Reimers 25:38

You know , it really reminds me of one of my favorite examples of gamification that I've seen and been a part of along those lines is the mentor protege , team versus team style competition , where you take one of your top performers who maybe have been with the company for a while , and you pair them up with somebody who's new , or maybe somebody else who also has been there for a while , but maybe they're just lower performing , and they get that help and they get to be included in the competition and that mentor can help the protege , help that person along , try to win that competition . And even if that person doesn't produce as much as the legend or the unicorn or whatever , that top rank is a top performer . They still get a reward at the end because they did contribute . And I love seeing that because not only are you engaging the staffs individually but you're creating camaraderie amongst the team and you're rewarding people you know for working hard and trying their best , which is ultimately what we want out of them .

Jimmy Chebat 26:34

Yeah , and , and even more so than that , you're leveraging your best resources right and helping a department that's probably deprived of resources given today's attrition rates . You know your training department . I would assume and I would challenge anybody to dispute this that your training department is probably spending the majority , if not 100% of its time onboarding new people , right ? So there's very , very little time dedicated to ongoing development , right , continuous development , continuous training , advanced level training and doing what you're supposed to do . So you're stretched thin in that department . And with the mentor protege team versus team , tandem group versus tandem group of mentor protege , you are leveraging your best people and turning them into trainers and incentivizing them to do so . You know to win and they're with the right people with the right culture . You know they're going to help the protege .

Jimmy Chebat 27:35

You might get a wrong personality . I'm not saying it's a hundred percent foolproof . You get a person like , leave me alone , I don't care about this person . Those are negative people . They exist in this world . We can't ignore that . But if you can find a way to build that camaraderie into your culture and where people are helping each other and they're doing it for an incentive , it's a very powerful tool , and very effective tool , to again create . Compound your value of your staff , your top talent , and use them to help train some people that are just starting or , as you said , maybe not great performers .

Andrew Reimers 28:13

Yeah , yeah , and you mentioned it earlier . I'm going to bring it up again because I believe it's that important not putting all your eggs in one basket , making sure you divvy up your budget , what you want to pay out , instead of having one giant competition spread that across the department . Let everybody be a part of some style of game , some sort of incentive . Of course , the business objective is to make more money and for them to do their job even better , but also it is to make sure that that person is engaged . We talked in the last episode of what engagement really means . It's that loyalty , it's that wanting to work for a company that you feel is invested in you and you want to give back that same uh , the energy that they put into you and , uh , it's just when done correctly , as we keep saying . It's just so incredible to watch .

Jimmy Chebat 29:00

Yeah , and you know you touched on a point there , or at least triggered a thought on my part , that I think is probably one of the most valuable components of what we do A big , do , a big , do-do yeah . No , quite the opposite .

Jimmy Chebat 29:18

It's a very important and critical part of building that engagement and building trust between the employees and the employer , because there's a lot of mistrust in a lot of cultures , between the leadership in operations and their employees , because there is a lot of bias that exists right , or at least perceived bias . So their perception is their reality and that's probably one of the reasons why people quit if they feel like they are not being included . You hear the term inclusive being thrown out a lot . That's because they feel like they're being discriminated against . And I'm not talking about race here , I'm not talking about gender , I'm not talking about age . I'm talking about , literally in terms of community culture . That person hates me .

Andrew Reimers 30:06

That person hates me . They have it out for me .

Jimmy Chebat 30:08

He's . You know . The reason why is because he likes her or they're dating or they're best friends and they're making it . The only reason why I lose is because it's unfair to me . So objectivity is a huge part , or at least , if you can't create true objectivity , try to create as much transparency in the way you set up your contest and your rules , so that way everybody can build a trust into the campaign that you're running .

Jimmy Chebat 30:35

But one of the going back to my point about our product and what we do and what we do so well is everything is algorithmic , right . So expectations are set by rank level , right . And so the more difficult or the higher the rank level , the more difficult the challenge . The more difficult the challenge , the bigger the reward . And so you know when people are earning small rewards and looking across the table and saying why is he or she getting a bigger reward ? Well , it's clear it's because their challenges are more difficult , their goals are higher and you know what . You have the same opportunity to get to their rank level and earn those same rewards . Now , that's a very difficult thing to accomplish manually . It is . It will 100% require a system that is automated , that can measure and track and you know and promote and demote and assign difficulty levels to challenges and reward levels as well , but having that transparency as well .

Jimmy Chebat 31:42

The real-time feedback loop is I would put as 1A , 1b right Objectivity and transparency . And that feedback loop is such a powerful thing and in a future episode we're going to bring in a guest who is an adjunct professor at the University of Buffalo , who's managed the 11th largest bank in the country , richard Gold , and he ran organizational behavioral management within that organization for close to over 30 years . He was part of that organization but he retired uh , he retired recently as president , uh , outgoing president and chief operating officer . So I'm excited for him to bring the psychological uh benefits of real-time feedback loops and and you know they use a term called PIC and NIC positive , immediate , certain or negative , immediate , certain and what we call the feedback loop right , if you do something good we know that we see it in our platform where somebody does something positive from a performance standpoint and immediately they go to the platform , hit the refresh button and are waiting for the next data refresh to see that they complete their challenge .

Jimmy Chebat 33:00

And when they do , they get that recognition , they get that reward , they get that dopamine rush and it helps them want to repeat that behavior . Did they climb in the leaderboard ? Did they get closer to winning a contest ? Did they win a contest ? Did they hit a milestone ? You know , all of these opportunities and availability of these micro rewards is being impacted by their day-to-day tasks . So we're taking repetitive , mundane jobs and we've made them engaging

Leveraging Gamification Data

Jimmy Chebat 33:33

.

Andrew Reimers 33:33

We have a little bit of icing on the cake Again from my experiences working with our customers the amount that they've learned about their employees just by implementing gamification and getting that feedback and realizing where people are struggling , where people are thriving and utilizing their strengths and weaknesses . That just comes as a bonus .

Jimmy Chebat 33:58

Yes , yeah . And another thing , too , is a do , and I can go on this . This episode could literally last hours , because there's so many things that we can talk about and we can address , but you brought up one , one area where , yes , it will identify areas of weakness where they can again focus their attention in training and coaching , uh , or areas of strength where they can make sure that they're recognizing and rewarding . But not every metric is created equal , right ? So , especially if you're in a revenue-driven department , like collections , like sales , anything related to dollars and that's one thing that we are able to do automatically right , we work with our clients to address what we create as a weight score for every metric , and what I mean by this is there's a primary KPI , right , if you're doing sales , it's dollars . Right , that dollars hits the top line , that impacts the bottom line , so the more dollars you bring in , the more profitable the company could be .

Jimmy Chebat 35:00

Now there are behaviors or there are metrics that will help lead to success in that primary KPI . For example , number of phone calls . Now , if you rewarded phone calls equally to the number of dollars , it's a lot easier . You require very little skill to create 20 more phone calls , 20% more phone calls , whatever number that is , for you to earn that reward . Those rewards cannot be equal . You have to create a score , a weight score , and make sure that the reward for the benefit of the business matches the objective of the business , right ? Yes , we want more calls from you because we know the more calls you make will lead to , hopefully , more leads or deals and you can close those deals . But we need quality calls , so I'm not going to reward you highly for those calls . So , yes , creating weight scores and making sure that your rewards are related to the importance of each metric and you're rewarding accordingly is very important . Agreed .

Andrew Reimers 36:03

So what we're going to do is we're going to compile a list of the do's , the things that we discussed here today , because I know that people that are listening are going to be able to relate to a lot of what we've talked about so far today , and I really want to encourage everybody at home to connect with us on socials . We talk about it with the game and , of course , we love to give away prizes , but I'm sure that you have your own stories of gamification hits and misses , jimmy . Why don't you kind of go through a list ? How can they share those with us ?

Jimmy Chebat 36:36

Go on our social media platforms . I'm sure we can put them up on the screen here and make sure everybody sees , or in the . You know where you get your podcasts . We'll also have links to our social media , but we'd love to hear from you guys . Put your stories in the comments , put your questions in the comments . We'd love to know what those challenges are . I hope that we can get enough here . We can create an episode where we can actually talk to our audience and answer those questions .

Andrew Reimers 37:02

I'd love to share a story of gamification that's just horribly gone wrong for me when I worked . I don't know . Anytime I have a chance to drag the United States Postal Service through the mud , I'll do so . It has nothing to do with any of the mail carriers out there . All of you , I love you from the bottom of my heart because you work maybe the most difficult job . I don't think people even understand , but they would track everything . You want to talk about micromanagement every step you took . They knew exactly where you were . They would follow you . They would catch you with your AirPods in . They would find you with the wrong shoes on . They'd catch you not locking your door . All of that . And then if you finally did your route to the best of your ability and you got it done and you got your reward and it was more work to go help somebody who didn't give a shit about their job finish their route and you get to call my wife and son and tell them I won't be home for dinner tonight . That was gamification gone wrong .

Jimmy Chebat 37:56

Yeah , you know what you mentioned those metrics . That excites me . I would love to know that information , but you're using it for the wrong purpose . Yeah , loss there , because if you have access , if you can measure and track those metrics and provide those back and reward good behavior with good outcome you know there's so many opportunities , so much more opportunity , but probably either attract more talent or retain the ones that are there and then for them to change bad behaviors into good behaviors .

Andrew Reimers 38:39

Well , I'm going to get the postmaster general on the phone and we'll set up a demo .

Jimmy Chebat 38:43

I would love that account for sure .

Andrew Reimers 38:45

Okay , you want that one , I want that account . Yeah , you know what ?

Jimmy Chebat 38:49

I take that back . I've done work with the federal government in the past . It's a losing battle . I mean you've got to be in the right place at the right time with the right contract .

Andrew Reimers 38:59

So maybe not , We'll see . We'll see . Maybe down the road that'll be an episode maybe for season four ? Uh , we'll definitely can't expect any sort of sponsorship from

Jimmy Chebat 39:11

Not anymore .

Andrew Reimers 39:12

No , but uh , Jimmy , those were fantastic insights , Uh , great conversation . I think we covered a lot of the do's , a lot of the don'ts , so , uh , really appreciate your insights , uh , love talking to you and I can't wait to do it again

Wrapping Up and Teaser for Next Episode

Andrew Reimers 39:24

.

Jimmy Chebat 39:24

Yeah , me too , and I know that you're going to get into what's coming up next in our next episode , but you know , one of the do's and don'ts that we're going to dive real deep into is incentive budget .

Andrew Reimers 39:34

So I'm excited to talk about that and thank you Did a great job today , today , thanks and that's game time for today's episode on the do's and don'ts of gamification here on The ZIZO Effect . As we've learned today , navigating the fine line between successful gamification and common pitfalls is complex , and it was great to share this with you . Next week , we're going exploring what really motivates us at work . We'll examine the psychology of incentives and reveal strategies for designing reward systems that truly inspire and boost productivity . Get ready , it's game time .