SYMPLY the best - fostering service culture within the company

The starting point

The health insurance industry is quite competitive. That’s why insurance companies are so focused on customer retention and reducing customer churn. A key success factor is customer orientation throughout the company. With this in mind, the health insurance company Sympany set itself the organizational strategy in early 2020, to establish a shared and consistent understanding of customer-oriented thinking and embed customer-oriented behavior into the day-to-day work routine.

Our assignment

In order to meet our client’s goal of a unified customer oriented culture, it became clear that we would need to take a low-key approach in training employees to convey customer orientation and simultaneously foster more interdepartmental cooperation. It was also important to empower employees to take on individual initiative in customer-oriented behavior. bruhnpartner took on the task of developing and introducing a gamified training program for the organization.

Grafik: Reifegrade der Servicetransformation
Kundenorientierungsmodell als "Lerninhalt" für das Spiel

Implementation

Game Development Canvas and Customer Orientation Model

Even a gamified approach must be based on clearly structured ramifications. We designed our game systematically using Canvas Game Development, while simultaneously creating a customer orientation model. This model included all essential drivers of customer orientation at Sympany and served as a guideline for employee behavior in customer interactions.

In order to engage employees, we employed a co-creation process. Instead of tasking a small team of experts to develop the game, employees from different departments were brought on board to actively participate in the process.

SYMPLY THE BEST

The final result was a board game «SYMPLY THE BEST – Make customers happy!» The game story is taken directly from employees’ day-to-day work experiences, in which they are confronted with a variety of customer concerns. The goal is to be the first to resolve three typical Sympany customer issues successfully. In order to appeal to a variety of distinct gaming personalities, different incentive mechanisms of were taken into consideration in developing the game. As a result, a variety of challenges and gameplay components were used to help teach a customer orientation mindset. The game was conceived for small groups of three or four players in a flexible setting for no more than 45-60 minutes, to ensure a more manageable organizational effort for game-playing sessions.

Game-Playing Sessions and Game Ambassadors

Kick-off events were a key feature of the game rollout. So-called “Gamebassadors” played a central role at these events. Their responsibilities included promotion of the customer orientation model and game within their own departments as well as assisting first-time players and coaching them on ways to improve the customer experience and paths to pursue throughout the game.

To integrate and anchor these new processes, playing the game “SYMPLY THE BEST – Make customers happy!” was integrated into the rituals of recurring events such as the onboarding of new employees.

Drivers of success in this Project

  • Using the Game Development Canvas to ensure a systematic structure
  • Integrating company cultural markers, drivers of customer orientation, as well as specific steps to take – all in one model
  • Co-creation approach with employees from several different departments
  • Appealing to an individual’s sense of responsibility through focus on an employee’s "Circle of Influence"
  • Consciously opting for an analog board game to foster personal interaction

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