Organizations faced with fast product launch cycles must simultaneously train sales teams, support teams, and customers on the features and benefits. There’s often no “easy button,” however games and gamification are shown to be some of the most effective methods for acquiring new knowledge quickly.
Dr. Karl Kapp, Ed.D has written a two part series on games and gamification for Learning Solutions Magazine. The series focuses on case studies that show the efficacy of games and gamification in business situations. He gathered the case studies while researching his latest book, The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook, which will be available soon.
Part two of Karl’s series is focused exclusively on product knowledge training for sales and support teams. The case study he uses is especially familiar to us: Karl describes how ExactTarget used our own Knowledge Guru game engine to get employees and partners up to speed on their MobileConnect product.
I suggest you read the full article, as it provides a comprehensive overview of how gamification principles can be applied to support a product launch and help people learn facts fast. The business results ExactTarget saw are particularly powerful:
The result for the business was that, of all the launches done in the two years previous to the MobileConnect launch, the sales team built one of the quickest pipelines for this product. The gamification approach improved product knowledge and helped the team build the sales pipeline while simultaneously reducing call-response times.
The hardest part about “selling” a learning game or gamification idea inside your organization is often just getting the initially buy-in. Thankfully, Karl’s upcoming book will feature many case studies, just like this one, to help making the case for a new gaming initiative easier.
So, read the full article to gather new ideas for implement games and gamification in your organization… and on how to use Knowledge Guru to make your own games.
Click the image below to read the full article.
