Points

Points, or as we will call them XP points, will be awarded to the user for every action they perform in the system, from editing an Account record, searching for a Contact, or simply logging in. These XP points accumulate as users work toward achieving levels of competence in the system.

Seems simple enough. I do “something” and I get “some” XP points, but how many XP Points should I get, and should I get different XP for performing different actions? To answer this question, we had to look at our goals for point allocation:

• To Reward System Use
• To Reward Best Practices

Other things we needed to consider were that some actions required less manual effort and/or would be performed more regularly.

In the end, we decided that there would need to be some variation in XP point allocations across different actions based on effort and to promote business and system best practices such as closing a deal or converting a lead. We were mindful, however, of maintaining consistency, preventing users from “breaking the game” and ensuring fair reward for the day to day graft of using the system.

Example point allocation

Leveling

There are 2 types of leveling in Zurmo: General Leveling and Category Leveling. We will discuss Category leveling later.

Users accumulate XP points through actions performed in the system; this accumulation of points is their “Total XP”. A user’s total XP is an indicator of their experience in the system, but having an experience level of 3922 XP doesn’t really work for us humans. Instead we use a leveling system both as an indicator of experience and to provide achievable goals that users can work toward.

To begin achieving level-ups requires little effort, becoming increasingly difficult the higher you go. We wanted to give players a positive introduction to the game experience and then encourage those at higher levels to explore badges, category level ups, and custom challenges to gain the bonus points they offer.

In our first gamification release, users will receive an alert in their notifications feed congratulating them on achieving a new level. They will also be able to track their progress to the next level with a progress bar on their User Profile page.

In later releases we expect to include these notifications on a user social feed portlet and offer some kind of “prize” for achieving each new level. We are not sure what that “prize” will be yet so why not let us know what you would like to see…… Red Ferrari, X-Ray specs, Zurmo key ring?  Leave us a comment with your ideas?

Keep an eye out for the second part of this blog where we look at Category Levels. That is where things really get fun!!

We have received an encouraging response so far from the press, with journalists largely inquiring about Zurmo’s gamification techniques and CRM capabilities.

Of course we don’t promote addiction. I worry what admitting an addiction to my company’s CRM would do for my office cred, but I think we would all agree it would be nice if we “wanted” to use the CRM more.

Why Gamify CRM?

Most of us agree that CRM would be a really great tool if we all just used it more. We know long-term it makes sense documenting the notes from all of those meetings. So why don’t we do it?  Fact is that short term incentives for logging in and performing these menial tasks is somewhere close to zero. CRM is a chore and no one is handing out prizes for using it!

Zurmo’s Game engine tackles that head on by offering the user that short term gain for these repetitive tasks. But how will this work?  Those of you already familiar with the theme of gamification will be familiar with the idea of rewarding points, reaching levels, and achieving badges for performing otherwise undesirable actions.  Zurmo includes all of those concepts, but we didn’t want to stop there; we wanted to innovate and do something new. These are some of the things you can expect from this release.

Gamification Features

• Point allocation
• General Leveling
• Category Leveling
• Progressive Badges
• Game Achievement Alerts
• Leader boards – weekly, monthly and overall
• New User Profile Page

“Who am I?”

We are bringing 2 new concepts into the CRM gamification mix:

1. Category Leveling
2. Progressive Badges

Both of these concepts have us really excited.  Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Who am I?”  You could spend your whole life mulling that one over.  Now don’t get excited, Zurmo’s game engine will not answer that for you, but maybe it can help you some of the way.

Imagine you are in your CRM and have now achieved Level 20. “That’s awesome,” you say to yourself, but what does that mean? How did you get to level 20? Where did you earn those points?  What are your strengths?  How can you improve in order to get to level 30 or maybe you just care about leapfrogging Gary on the company Leaderboard?

“More than a game”

Category leveling and Progressive badges combine on the new User Profile page to answer these questions for both you and anyone else looking at your profile.  When you score points in Zurmo these don’t just go to your total experience points (XP), they also count toward categories which level up independently.
It’s possible to have multiple users that have achieved a general level of 20 just like you, but you would likely all arrive at this point in a different way.  You may have excelled in the categories of New Business and Time Management, while your colleague Gary gathered most of his points in Communication and Customer Care categories.

Suddenly, this all becomes a little more than just a game, it’s showing me what I am good at and what I can do better in.  Thanks to bonuses built into Category Level-ups and Badge achievement, users will gain extra rewards by improving in a category that they might be neglecting and see themselves move up the company Leaderboard.

In later blogs I will discuss each of the bullet points I listed above in more detail, but I hope this has whet your appetite already. There are lots more we want to include and here are some of the things we are thinking about:

Ideas for later releases

• Community rewards from your colleagues
• “Rainmaker” awards for achieving set amounts of revenue from sales
• Customized challenges for individuals
• Team Challenges
• Team Leaderboards

The foundations have been set and we want to build on those so please get involved. Leave us some comments and let us know your thoughts and what else you would like to see.  The Zurmo Gamification Engine is included in release 0.6.5 available May 15th, GAME ON!

With the new UI in place, Zurmo will offer a uniquely innovative user experience from a navigation and usability standpoint.  Here is a view of the new UI, inspected in the new Firefox 3D Inspector.  Enjoy!

New features available in 0.6.2 include:

• Outbound Email (SMTP)
• Email Notifications

DotBlock has seen the growth of Zurmo and included the application as part of their service offering. For those that would like to run Zurmo in a hosted environment and without needing to install everything themselves, DotBlock is a solid option for getting the application up and running quickly:

Pricing and options:
https://billing.dotb…der/stack/zurmo

memcache, that not using memcache might produce a negative impression of Zurmo.  Without memcache the application runs slower.  So everyone use memcache!