Using Waves of Emotion to Seal Future Desired Actions

Send Waves of Emotional Reward

How are you ensuring your customers return to your product or service again and again?

The Scaffolding and Endgame phases are the phases where you ensure repeated satisfying experiences. Where you help your customers reach Win States again and again.

In Scaffolding and Endgame, you can send waves of emotion flowing over your customer. In Octalysis design, these waves are known as Feedback Mechanics (which can take the form of rewards), and they help bring the customer back or propel them forward to future Desired Actions.

Let’s first learn what kinds of waves you can send, and then how to implement these waves into your experience. For this we use Gabe Zicherman’s SAPS reward classification. SAPS is a reward classification that stands for Status, Access, Power, Stuff.

 

Status Waves

Consider the role of a customer service agent in a growing worldwide brand. This agent is among the top performers in her cohort, completing 99% of all requests faster than average with a near-perfect customer satisfaction rating. At the end of each day, she feels good about her accomplishment.

But how, as the employer, might you prevent this employee from burning out? (After all, you’ve had similar top performers burn out from too high a work rate.)

Consider using short term boosts in performance by giving  status waves, a boost to the decor, gear, equipment, or other physically or visually noticeable accoutrement in the office (that her peers will notice). So they only get this reward for a limited amount of time, so if the performance discontinues they will lose their perks.

Now, when this top performer is slowing down, losing her status to someone else will keep her motivated with this touch of Black Hat.

In this case, Core Drives 2, 4 and 5 work in tandem with Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance.

Access Waves

Access is another type of wave you can weave into your experience.

The same customer service agent, by meeting daily and weekly Key Performance Metrics, may get the Reward of additional access.

This access can take many forms.

For example, she may get access to beta features in the customer service software, or to an AI assistant in the company’s AI-powered software solution.

In this example, since the Access might actually lead to more efficiency for the agent, her peers may in turn be motivated to reach her level to attain the same Access.

Those peers would be motivated by Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness to attain the access reward (that is dangled via Core Drive 6: Impatience & Scarcity).

For the agent herself, Core Drive 2 and 4 work in tandem with Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance.

Power Waves

Power is another type of wave. As a reward type, it shouldn’t be overlooked.

To stay consistent, let’s think about the customer service agent. How could her manager create feedback mechanics involving Power?

Just one example: The Agent, upon reaching KPIs for daily, weekly, or monthly targets, could be granted enhanced power to weigh in on decision-making. This vote gives the agent more power than her peers. It also helps the company choose the right AI-power solution (especially in a world where AI-powered customer service solutions could change customer service and improve bottom-lines for businesses).

Stuff Waves

You could also reward your employees with stuff. A simple t-shirt can go along way toward creating long-term motivation in the Scaffolding and Endgame. In the case of a t-shirt, gift, or other small stuff reward, a Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity mechanic called The Mystery Box could be used.

Imagine, the agent who performs best in a given week receives a random reward at the end of the week. Once achieved, this reward provides mid-week motivation for an employee performing at the top of her cohort. After all, she won’t know what the reward at the end of the week will be, and she sure won’t want to miss out!

 

At the Octalysis group

 

We help companies identify the effectiveness of their Feedback Mechanics. Are the feedback mechanics successfully driving additional and future Desired Actions as part of a Core Activity Loop?F

or companies advanced in design practice and implementation, this approach manifests as a positive ROI dive on the crucial moments of their already profitable product moments. It is all about understanding your user’s motivation and designing for the phases of that motivation.

Get started today. And let us show you how we use behavior science to create impressive emotional waves for your employees.

Joris@OctalysisGroup.com

 

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