Gamification For The Last mile — The Perfect Playground
When talking to players within the Last Mile Distribution (LMD) industry — (e.g. distributors of SHS, Clean Cookstoves and so forth) there is always abundant energy and enthusiasm around their impact and how it contributes to improving the lives of millions, and rightly so. And then there is the : “but it’s a tough job.”
Early financing challenges, shipment delays, inflation, tariffs increases, currency fluctuations etc. are some of the difficulties encountered on a daily basis. Added to those, is the constant attention needed towards their agent networks and the need to ensure continued quality customer service. Agents are incentivized through standard commissions structure, however there is space for more robust schemes that consider all types of roles combined with a multitude of parameters and that will ultimately create sustainable behaviors in line with strategic goals.
This is where gamification comes into play.
What is gamification
This story starts in 1896, when S&H Green Stamps used stamps to reward trustworthy customers. More relatable is when American Airlines launched in 1981 the first Mileage program which is now used by all airlines in the world. Today, gamification is a $5.5 billion industry used in education, business, life coaching, apps, and more.
“Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users”
A superb example (probably not known to many) is Orange Theory Fitness, a gym. From the start, Orange Theory used gamification throughout its design to motivate users and change behaviors. In only 8 years of operations, it surpassed $1 billion sales (2018) and by 2020 the chain had over one million members. In an article, Entrepreneur.com explains how Orange Theory’s concept and learnings can be applied to business (read more here). In a nutshell: Orange Theory managed to change behaviors without using a stick, and “not because it is novel and fun; it’s successful because it has been thoughtfully designed with our core behavioral motivators in mind.”
The same is true for Last Mile Distribution, where changing and driving the right behaviors amongst agents and customer service is critical to ensure profitability, sustained growth and brand loyalty.
Last Mile Distribution & Gamification: The Perfect Match
Back in 2018, GOGLA estimated that by today more than 1.3 million full time jobs would be supported by the solar off-grid industry. More recently, a study by Altai Consulting suggested that four Full-Time Employment (FTE) jobs are created in India for every 100 SHS sold. Conversations with players in the LMD space confirm that staff is the main asset of the company and that influencing behaviors is also one of their biggest challenges.
The good news however is that LMD industry, especially of the likes of Solar Home Systems and Clean Cookstoves distributors, holds key characteristics that can make implementing the right gamification strategies particularly powerful and effective. We mention a few of these below.
People based operations, mostly remote:
As already mentioned, whether through agents or customer service, a distributor works with hundreds of people that need to be properly incentivized daily, weekly, monthly to ensure the company meets its strategic goals.
In the case of agents, 90% work remotely in places that are hard to reach and sometimes hard to communicate with; making behavioral change and retention particularly challenging without an effective gamification scheme.
You could for instance reward the referrals of successful sales force candidates with either a percentage of the new agents’ sales or fixed referral rewards once the newcomer has made their first month of sales.
Selling mostly tech products:
Selling a bag of seed in remote areas is one thing, selling a product under warranty, that has a battery and some serialized parts is something else.
The nature of products sold can add huge complexity to sales operations and teams mandated to ensure top-notch customer service, after-sales support and repairs. Selling a Solar Home System with a 2 year warranty through a 24 months PAYGO deal will mean part of the team — agents, collectors or customers service will be sporadically interacting with the end-user for 2 years. The quality of these interactions will ultimately influence your brand.
Many KPIs to play with:
Think of all the ways an agent can be paid for by the customer. On one side the “how”: Mobile Money, Cash or maybe Float; on the other the “for how long”: full upfront, 6 month, 24 months etc. and then also the “down payment %”: 20% down payment or 40% down payment etc. A distributor might offer all of these options considering the wide variety of end-users and products; while having its preference and a strategy to drive some more than others.
In that case, the reward system (or games), per individual agent and/or teams, could be based on those making the most sales, combined with the highest % of Mobile Money transactions recorded and the highest % of down payment while keeping PAYGO terms as short as possible, per individual agent and/or teams.
In 2021, GOGLA introduced the PAYGo PERFORM KPIs, listing a total of 36 KPIs related to the business of distributing solar off-grid products alone. Once prioritized the most important ones should drive the reward system of the company to ensure internal behaviors are aligned with strategic goals.
Now, take all of the above, combine it with the fact that distributors deal with x thousands of customers and you have a very interesting playground.
Getting the right set-up for Gamification
Apart from great ideas, fun events and beautiful trophies (real or digital); implementing a gamification strategy in the Last Mile requires some fundamentals to be put in place.
Automated, constant and precise data collection:
To track a wide variety of gamification schemes a distributor will need reliable data to be updated regularly and accessible easily.
Rewarding staff based on data, at scale, requires insurance that the data is correct and easy to get and find. Whether you talk of money or rewards, incentives and games can get very emotional and mistakes are not allowed.
Taking out human interaction in analyzing the data and calculating rewards etc. is the only way to ensure consistent error-free results. It might take some back and forth, and thorough testing with your IT team or CRM provider, but it is worth the effort.
Being able to track Completion of work performed:
Gamification in business should not just be about sales figures and rewarding the best selling teams. It should also include rewards for work performed.
This is commonly used with Customer Service teams and requires a distributor to have a robust Ticketing system put in place where certain KPIs can be followed and hence rewarded: # of tickets solved per hour or the average resolution time. Similarly, having a system that allows for Tasks to be allocated to individuals or teams will serve the same purpose: “complete training on new promotion” or “pick-up unit from customer” can all be measured and hence incentivized/rewarded.
Creating Teams:
One of the key concepts of the Orange Theory example mentioned before is that they have managed to create tribes, a sense of belonging, the “being in this together” feeling.
A distributor should be able to create from an IT/CRM stand-point the concept of teams to easily implement and track team related games. And a team should not limit itself to a set of agents within a region, but rather it should combine all the participants that are working together towards a great customer experience, E.g. Agent, Finance, Installer, Customer Care and Repair Shop can all play as a team to increase NPS Score (Would the customer recommend us) or CSAT scores (How would they rate services provided).
Flexible and continuously evolving gamification variables and schemes:
LMD is a fast moving, ever changing space that requires constant innovation and agile processes. The tools used to support the space need to carry the same DNA.
Today, a distributor is selling through a direct agent network, but tomorrow it might change to indirect distribution combining rural and peri-urban customers where gamification needs to include shop owners or franchisees. Overnight, the rules of the game have changed.
As we write this, in the last mile, most end-users do not have smart phones and yet PAYGO Smartphone distribution is spiking creating the potential for a future platform for e-commerce where gamification strategies targeting the end-users will become the norm.
How can Upya Technologies help?
Upya Technologies is a flexible CRM platform working across Africa and Asia with Last Mile Distributors of Solar Home Systems, Clean Cookstoves, PAYGO Smartphones, Water Solutions and Productive Use Equipment.
Upya has recently launched a new offering called Upya Challenge. Combined with its Ticketing & Task module, its standard CRM features and multiple KPIs tracking, Upya Challenge allows for Last Mile Distributors to implement a set of gamification schemes targeting agents, customers service representatives and a variety of teams.
Feel free to reach out to the Upya team for more information: info@upya.io
