T-Mobile Boosts Employee And Customer Engagement All At Once

It is not every day that you hear of a huge company such as T-Mobile seeing an increase of one-thousand percent in employee engagement. That is exactly what the company achieved when it set out to boost the way that employees and customers could engage with one another. It all happened in 2013 through the magic of gamification.

Employees Received Status And Prestige

To help make call center employees more engaged, T-Mobile turned to the idea of making a game of things. Rather than just handing each new employee a manual and scripted lines to read, T-Mobile went about things with a different approach. They wanted their employees to take pride in their work, and that is why they decided to make it fun.

The company created what is known as the T-Community. This is essentially a forum where T-Mobile users can post questions and employees can write back and answer those questions. It means that customers get straightforward and clear answers to their questions more quickly.

Why T-Community Was A Success And How It Can Be Replicated

T-Mobile could have built this community and just hoped that its employees would answer questions, but it didn’t. It offered rewards for them doing so. Employees would set up a profile on the website confirming that they were in fact an employee of the company. After that, the employee would go about trying to earn achievement points and awards for answering questions and getting good feedback from those whom they had helped.

With something tangible to work towards like this, employees responded in force. According to marketwatch.com, the company awarded 187,000 achievement badges in just the first week of the program.

While the success of this particular program is phenomenal, it is not something that could not be reproduced. Companies need to simply consider the rewards plans that they have for getting things done. Employees are more than happy to rise to the challenge if they are offered a reward in return.