Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Rajat Paharia, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Gamification Leader Bunchball (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So in this case the gamification application is in the area of training?

Rajat Paharia: Yes, on-boarding, training, teaching somebody a complex process. It is about guiding them through a learning experience in a compelling manner. That is exactly what this did.

SM: Let’s do another use case.

RP: Another one is Ford of Canada. They have 450 dealerships across Canada. Each year they have to train their sales and service representatives on all the new cars, financing plans, technology, etc. They have an online portal called the P2P portal and their goals around putting gamification in that portal is to drive overall traffic to it to combat underutilization of valuable resources. This is something we hear a lot from our customers, that they spend a lot of time and energy creating content for their employees, whether it is videos or text, and people aren’t quite using it. So, they are not getting their ROI on it.

Turning “I have to do this” into “I want to do this” is the fundamental key of everything we are talking about at gamification. It is about motivating people through data. Motivation is the key word. It is not about fun or play – those are abstract concepts and not things that you can change people’s perception of. At the end of the day, what determines my engagement with something is my motivation for it. If I am playing tennis and I am doing it because my parents are forcing me to do it, then I am not engaged or enjoying it. If I am playing it because I am having a good time, then I am enjoying it. At the end it is about the motivation for wanting to do that. It is not about “how do I take tennis and make it more fun?” That is the wrong question to ask. It is about “How do I change the person’s perception of what they are doing so they want to do it instead of that they have to do it?”

That is what was going on with Ford. The kinds of things they are trying to get people to do was to watch more videos, downloading, and consuming product information, taking web courses, and people had their statistics and progress tracked both individually and on a branch by branch level. By doing this, they saw a 417% increase in site usage year over year. In the first three months, they saw the entire traffic value from the previous year. They saw higher sales, better customer satisfaction, the younger audience more engaged and an increase in volunteer learning. Apart from what was required, people were doing courses and training beyond that on a volunteer basis, motivated only by gamification. Then they saw people were getting certified faster than they had in previous years as well. Typically people waited until the last minute because they had to do it. This was something people wanted to do so they did it earlier – much before the deadline.

SM: In either of these cases, can you talk about the incentives?

RP: In the Adobe example, it was the point that you could redeem for a chance to win Adobe products. But like I said, 60% of the people doing it couldn’t use it. The incentive was to learn Photoshop. In the case of Ford, it was all status based. There were no redemption mechanisms in this particular example. It was just about earning status and having a reputation in this community. Often that can be enough. Other customers of ours use incentives, whether it is dollar value goods or other things of meaningful value.

SM: Can you talk about a customer that uses tangible incentives?

RP: USA Network is an example. One of their shows is called “Psych,” and it is a comedy/detective drama. They have a rabid online fan base. It is basically a fan engagement or loyalty program. You earn points by doing activities online like sharing on social networks, consuming videos, playing games, etc. Then you can take those points and redeem them for one of two things, one is virtual goods – to customize your own virtual space – but the other one is dollar value goods. They have sponsors providing dollar value goods, like DVDs, posters, iPad covers, etc. Those are typically in limited quantity and scarce. People save up their points and then go after them.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Rajat Paharia, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Gamification Leader Bunchball
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