After reading The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW it really got my mind spinning. So much has been written and said about Zappos that I can’t say the book surprised me but it did allow me to gain a deeper understanding of the internal workings. More so, the book really generated my interest on the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?

Does the customer experience have to mimic the internal company culture? Is that not what Zappos is all about? Reviewing my latest readings and blog post on organizational culture, When Efficiencies and Innovation no longer work, is Customer Centricity the answer?, I would have to say that to be true. So how would you create that fun game type culture? Of course, I turned to Gamification which has been used primarily to focus on marketing and extending the customer experience.

If have to mimic the internal structure to the external, should not Gamification apply internally. I turned to my favorite Gamification resource, Amy Jo Kim and reviewed a recent slide deck of hers that was based on 7 Core Concepts for creating Compelling Products.

1. Know your players: design for their personal & social needs
2. Build fun/pleasure/satisfaction into your core activity loop
3. Design for 3 key stages of your player lifecycle
4. Build a system that’s easy to learn and hard to master
5. Use game mechanics to “light the way” towards mastery
6. As players progress, increase the challenge & complexity
7. Embrace intrinsic motivators like power, autonomy & belonging

Do you think you can get Human Resources in on this? A recent podcast of mine, Games maybe your only chance to attract the best and brightest talent may give you some additional thoughts on this subject. But if you want to create the customer experience, than maybe you need to start designing the employee experience.

Can you think of a few ways this might look and apply at your company?

About Amy Jo Kim: Presentation is from Amy Jo Kim, an adjunct professor of Game Design at USC’s Digital Media school, recently named top US-based game design school. She’s also the author of Community Building on the Web (2000), a design handbook for digital communities that’s used worldwide at game studios & universities.[Email Amy].

Related information:
Is every Boardroom discussing Gamification? Is yours?
In love with your products more than your customers?
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing
Janet R. McColl-Kennedy: Co-creation of Value and S-D logic

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