Have you ever tried reading a services guide about over 150 ways a professional services can help clients with audit, tax and advisory services? All I have to say is, good luck!
It’s dry content, but nevertheless critical for client-facing staff in a professional services firm — such as KPMG — to know. Previous attempts with static content were not engaging but cost effective, while road shows by product leaders were engaging but not cost effective.
KPMG has over 230,000 staff in 150 countries, helping clients with their opportunities and challenges with audit, tax and advisory services. Needless to say, the scale is large. We were faced with an engagement and cost challenge, and a global scale of consequence.
The solution
We needed an engaging, cost-effective, scalable solution to help KPMG’s client-facing staff better serve their clients. We piloted a gamified learning solution in Australia which proved the concept was a success before being funded for a global program. KPMG Globerunner was subsequently activated in over 80 countries and has been used by more than 100,000 people.
Top 5 takeaways
Design is the fun part, execution is the hard part. I’ve seen many people over the years get excited about the concept of gamification. While that energy is a great start, the reality is after the vision boards from the design workshops are packed away, the hard part begins. Business cases, financials, branding compliance, IT security, privacy, marketing, sales and other “less exciting” elements all need close attention. Make sure you understand as much of the journey as possible, no matter how difficult.
The balance between “fun’ and ‘lame” is a fine one. You will probably lose sleep over whether the digital experience you are creating is engaging or lame. Expect this! Risk and cultural requirements of your organization may chip away at your creative vision, but the reality is that you need a licence to operate.
Make global assumptions about local conditions at your peril. Accept the high degree of difficulty creating digital experiences that need to be engaging across cultures. For example, users in the U.S. may be very comfortable sharing stories about their experiences and successes, but this may not be the case for Japanese users. Additionally, the way the experience is activated across regions and countries may differ significantly and need to be fully investigated to ensure success.
Sell business results to the business, user benefits to the users. I stopped using the term“gamification” when speaking with the business side, as it distracted our meetings away from the business outcomes I needed to convince them of. Likewise, we focused communications to users about the benefits to making their daily lives easier, rather than how the business would benefit. Tailor communications to your audience.
Fan the enjoyment flames, snuff out unproductive play. It’s incredibly rewarding and energizing hearing from users about how the experience has helped them have more relevant conversations with their clients. However, it can be equally disappointing to learn that some users enjoy the experience so much, they have moved into an unproductive play mode. For example, a user may be playing for an excessive time to climb leaderboards. Identify and limit this activity.
I will be continuing my conversation about gamification in an upcoming episode of “Voices of CLO,” in which I will share more from my experience with this program, and some of the things I learned along the way.
