On many occasions, having a team member advocacy program can make team member engagement seem lukewarm. Traditional advocacy needs to work on participation. The good news is that, by using emerging technologies, you can supercharge advocacy and get employees excited about representing your brand. How? Artificial intelligence and gamification are two approaches that can help overcome common challenges and elevate team member advocacy to new heights.

What is Employee Advocacy?

Before exploring solutions, let’s cover some basics. Team member advocacy Team member advocacy refers to employees voluntarily promoting and endorsing their company through organic shares on social media. When done right, it builds credibility through word-of-mouth marketing and leads to increased traffic, leads, and sales. However, employees may hesitate if they don’t see personal value or are overwhelmed with repetitious content.

Many advocacy programs fall short due to a lack of engagement and difficult measurements. Programs fail to cater to individual employees, inundating them with “one-size-fits-all” content. Meanwhile, intangible results make it challenging to prove the impact of advocacy efforts on stakeholders. To keep advocacy efforts alive, companies need innovative ways to spark enthusiasm and quantify outcomes.

How AI-powered Gamification Can Enhance Employee Advocacy

Spark Competition and Camaraderie

Nothing motivates quite like friendly competition. Gamification platforms integrated with AI can analyze team member interactions and automatically form leaderboards or teams. Workers can then challenge each other to determine who can generate the most engagement on social posts, recruit the most new followers, or answer customer questions. AI tracks real-time progress and surfaces friendly rivalries that keep the action exciting. This fosters a spirit of camaraderie while stoking natural competitive urges.

Provide Targeted Training

Effective advocacy requires ongoing learning. AI pinpoints individual strengths and weaknesses, such as an analyst who slacks on posting frequency or a salesperson struggling with messaging. It then delivers hyper-personalized training through dynamic quests and challenges, like tasks to practice crafting compelling social updates. Gamified micro-learning makes training feel less like a chore and more like an immersive game. AI ensures each team member levels up their skills at their own pace.

Incentivize Innovation

Gamification encourages new ideas by rewarding exploration. AI watches for unusual or experimental actions, such as sharing content in untapped social networks, participating in unconventional hashtag campaigns, or testing new graphic designs. It issues points and exclusive rewards to employees exhibiting such innovative tendencies.

Over time, this nurtures a culture where advocates feel empowered to think outside the box as they seek new achievements. Showcasing the creativity and forward-thinking nature of the employees will boost your brand’s credibility with its target audience.

Provide Immediate Feedback

Traditional methods need more engagement. AI evaluates each advocacy task and issues points or virtual rewards on the spot through the gamification platform. It also surfaces kudos like “motivational message of the day” awards to recognize a top comment, question answer, or social post. This constant acknowledgement strengthens intrinsic motivation by satisfying our basic human need for validation and status.

Personalize the Experience

A “one-size-fits-all” approach to gamification falls flat. AI understands each team member as an individual, learning their unique strengths, goals, and motivators. It then tailors the experience by giving an extroverted team member extra points for client meetups while an analytical personality earns bonuses for research tasks. Personalized levels, quests, and rewards unlock the full potential of gamification to spark a passion for advocacy in every worker on their terms.

Solutions to Problems That May Arise From Employee Interest and Authenticity

Gamification for team member advocacy should always be approached thoughtfully, respecting individual preferences and the customer experience. But what if employees are not interested in gamification? What can you do? How about when authenticity issues arise?

Non-interest

Regarding team member interests, it’s true that only some workers will be intrinsically motivated by game-like structures. However, a well-designed gamified system will focus on satisfying these core human motivations in a variety that appeals to diverse learning and working styles. This boosts intrinsic motivation versus a one-size-fits-all approach. Over time, exposure to an energized culture of learning and impact may spark new interests in those less engaged initially.

Authenticity

Issues may also arise regarding how companies can keep advocacy authentic rather than pushy sales. The way to go about it is to understand that authenticity is a very effective form of advocacy. Customers see through inauthentic or sales messaging quickly. AI can help ensure gamified systems avoid these pitfalls in critical ways.
First, recognize and reward advocates for demonstrating a deep understanding of customer needs based on first-hand experiences. Second, analyze qualitative feedback to surface the most genuinely helpful interactions versus just the quantity of engagements.

Compliance policies are another safeguard to prevent advocacy from crossing into unwanted sales pitches. AI provides real-time feedback if a team member’s tone or message frequency starts to seem rude or self-promotional rather than focused on customer value.

The goal is to cultivate advocates who authentically believe in and appreciate their company’s offerings. Through a human-centred approach, gamification can enhance advocacy while respecting individual preferences and the customer experience.

Ultimately, AI-powered gamification can transform advocacy from a checkbox activity into an immersive game that employees want to play. Satisfying our basic psychological cravings for achievement, status, purpose, and fun can significantly boost engagement with brand messages across online and offline channels.

A well-designed system that leverages AI ensures the experience continuously adapts to the needs of every individual, keeping advocates motivated to achieve new performance heights. When advocacy is engaging, the entire organization wins.

Pauline Cruz is a dedicated writer with a passion for crafting engaging content within the realm of technology. From exploring technological advancements to delving into topics related to digital innovation, she is committed to sharing insightful perspectives. Eager to contribute to various tech blogs, Pauline aims to deliver valuable content that enriches the diverse facets of the tech industry.