Gamification, Social Collaboration, xAPI Technologies, and Sales-Training Success

Moreand more, we are seeing gamification defined in the details of itsimplementation. Its use is also becoming more diverse in order to match specificneeds. Gamification can be very effective as a strategy and has been validated,so it is more than just a catchphrase. As a result, in conversation today, theword does not provide much information when someone simply says, “We usegamification.”

Myteam has seen “gamification” used to mean that some aspect of the learningexperience is made into a contest, as well as meaning that a gaming platformwas integrated directly into the training experience. In government training wehave seen gamification worked into instructor-led training, eLearning, virtualreality, and immersive simulation. In all of these cases, gamification hasbecome a strategy for effectively imparting new skills and development.

InRiptide Software’s business, we work with many different subject matter experts(SMEs) and instructional designers (IDs) in many different training subjectsand use cases. Most today are trying to use some form of what could be called“gamifying” the learning experience. Whether the clients are commercial orgovernment, we collaborate with them through our technology framework andmultimedia design team, while they provide the learning content.

An example

Basedon its use of both gamification and social collaboration, I offer a case study involvingnew technology that may be helpful to you in your own work.

Iwill refer to the client as Company X. This client is in the airlines, aviation,and travel services industry and is based in Europe. It has 29,000 employeesand revenue of over $2.5 billion. Company X has a unique perspective in thatthey enhance the customer service of several airlines worldwide and helpprovide a revenue stream for those airlines. Since the company provides onboard(in-flight) sales services, they also provide sales training. Those trainingservices were largely instructor-led training (ILT), and Company X wanted tolaunch a new technology-based training program to teach their sales techniques.Here’s how they did it.

Start with a pilot program/prototype

Thefirst thing Company X did was to identify the need for a pilot program thatwould prove the principle of distance learning and gamification to theorganization. This pilot program was identified in the RFP (request forproposal).

Asa provider of new technology, I cannot stress enough that a pilot program orproof of principle is the way to go. You can control your costs, secure a winfor new technology, and gain support within your organization for a broaderimplementation. I have seen these pilot programs go viral inside theorganization in a way that generates excitement and action for more progress.

Acrossour organization, we often refer to this as a “crawl, walk, run” strategy. AtRiptide, for 20 years we have adapted to and adopted all the new dominantsoftware technology, and this strategy has worked very well for us. Every timeour engineering team wants to try something new, we prototype and we performdecision analysis; we don’t just jump into something new without testing itfirst. The result of technology’s moving so fast is that many in our industrydecide to do nothing rather than take what feels like a risky step towardsomething new. Technology is moving faster now than ever—don’t do nothing! Aproof of principle, pilot, or prototype is a way for you to do something andhelp your company move toward modernizing their learning technology.

Set clear success criteria

Thenext thing Company X did was set clear success criteria for the pilot program thatthey had to meet before moving forward with the broader new-technologyapproach. The criteria were simple. For Company X, it was an increase of eurosspend per head (SPH) by airline passengers. Once that could be shown from thetraining, and upon the key stakeholders’ approval, the corresponding additionalphases of work could begin. In addition, the learners actually had to givepositive feedback on the training experience.

Thepilot program ran for three months out of Budapest with two different baseregions, Warsaw and Prague. The entire pilot implementation included a learningportal, dashboard, 30 minutes of eLearning that works on any device, a sales-datadashboard, gamification (pointed activities and social collaboration), usersurveys, assessment, and a certificate. The crews in Warsaw typically did worseduring this period, and those in Prague typically did better. The keyperformance indicators (KPI) in this sales program were spend per head (SPH), unitsper transaction (UPT), average transaction value (ATV), and conversion rate(C%). These KPIs focused the airline crew efforts based on the demographics ofthe region.

Company X requirements and challenges

Airlinecrew members are mobile users, so the training had to be engaging, relevant,and mobile. Each airline crew member shared in the success of the crew, so agamification learning environment was a good fit, as there is less of acultural focus on tracking individual sales performance. In the salessituation, one crew member might be showing the product while the other handlespayments. All of the actual sales performance for each flight is dividedequally with each crew member. In addition, the airline crews do not consist ofthe same people on every flight. The way Company X incentivizes the individualis not by giving more sales commissions; the crew-member culture responds verypositively to rewards like trips and other types of gifts.

Theclient wished to provide a blended online program based on its live sales-trainingprogram materials. They wanted to challenge learners to collaborate with one anothervia a social learning component. Crew members have both soft and hard KPIs withmeasurable sales goals that are adjusted or set according to customerdemographics. It was also a requirement that the actual individual salesperformance data and sales goals data must be showing on the learner portal.The Company X sales model requires a configurable learning experience that cantake on the brand of their clients (airlines). Company X provides train-the-trainertraining for the crew members of airlines. Experience API (xAPI) and learningrecord store (LRS) compliance was an early requirement, as was delivery to thesmaller mobile form factor because Company X wanted to leapfrog over thetraining-technology approach of competitors. The client was also looking for astrategy to do away with the printed onboard menus that provide the crew withproduct knowledge.

Solution

Sohow did we define “gamification” for this case? We worked with Company X toprovide a weighted points structure for complex learning activities andbranching scenarios based on real situations and testimonies from onboard salescrew. The learner begins the training knowing that there is a maximum number oftraining points and social points that can be earned. The leaderboard allowsindividuals to see how their top crew-member colleagues are doing in their baseregion. Company X can incentivize the crew-member population with desirablegifts for those at the top of the leaderboard. The learner can also see theearned and maximum training points per activity in the dashboard, so they canrelaunch activities to increase points. A social feed enabled giving points forsharing, commenting on, or liking something that another learner posted aboutcrew sales.

Allof this information was tracked in order to help establish success criteriausing xAPI, an LRS, and Google Analytics. Incidentally, in xAPI there shouldnot be multiple verbs for one meaning. There are some considerations in xAPI activityand verb vocabulary, all documented in Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative(ADL) publications. For this project, we shared and documented our approach inorder to avoid going down the rabbit hole on how to get the training to report inthe form of xAPI statements. At this point in xAPI adoption, it is consideredbest practice to research activities and verb types that already exist and usethem before creating new ones. The xAPI vendors know how to deal with xAPIvocabulary, but it is not very complex if you want to do it yourself.

Thepoint is, the xAPI specification has grown to accommodate social verbs evenbeyond what we did for this pilot. The sales success showed in the learningportal coming from the Company X sales system. The learner portal showedindividual sales goals and actuals, and training points and social points addedtogether to show total training points (Figure 1). A link in the learner-portalmenu showed a leaderboard for the base region of the individual so they couldsee who had the most total training points (Figure 2).

Figure 1:Learner Portal Dashboard showing activity points, training points, socialpoints, sales KPI goals, and sales actuals

Figure 2:Leaderboard view

Collaborationensued to create a concept that would equal a base product for Company X’s airlineclients. A mock airline company was created according to the client’s brandwith an illustration and character style that allowed them to offer clients theoption of branding to their particular airline. These efforts included abranding and styling guide, an “Airlines Style Guide,” that supported theclient’s approved branding standards. Additionally, the program needed to meetthe requirements of an international IT steering committee before pilotrelease.

Outcome

Thepilot program delivered device-agnostic sales-training content to the client’scustomers; a user portal that encourages social interactions; competition andanalytics that provide detailed user experience views (via xAPI); andinformation from other systems integration about post-training individual andgroup sales performance. The effort included creating an interactive “productknowledge” component integrated into the learning portal, which puts the on-boardservice menu and product specials at the fingertips of crew members.

CompanyX gained UK industry recognition and was shortlisted for aneLearning Award for Best Use of Mobile Learning, largely because ofthe learning experience. The pilot case study also won in Innovation for Mobileand Social Collaboration (2016 Communicator Awards). Company X has since gonethrough a complete restructuring, renaming, and rebranding. Since all of thetraining materials are in an HTML5 framework, it is not a major undertaking tomake the needed changes in CSS style sheets.

Thepilot implementation also provided Company X with regular spreadsheets of pilot-usagedata from the LRS and access to engagement metrics on Google Analyticsdashboards. The surveys and feedback from crew members was overwhelminglypositive. At the end of three months, the pilot program was able to prove thatthe crew who took this training improved the spend per head by twice thesuccess criterion. The crews in Warsaw improved their performance over theirusual level, and the crews in Prague did even better.

Thispilot became viral within the client’s business ecosystem. Furthermore, showingthe pilot to other airlines generated presales for it as a training product.Company X was also able to release the pilot program to a second airline as aninterim product. Much of the work done in the pilot or prototype was leveragedinto the follow-on work.