Formulation
Type Matters, developed by Bottom-Line Performance, Inc.
(BLP) for Dow AgroSciences, was named a
finalist in the 2013 Serious Game Showcase and Challenge in the Business
Category, one of the seven award categories of the SGS&C, at I/ITSEC 2013.
Sales reps needed to understand the effect that
formulation type has on product performance in order to make appropriate
product recommendations, address product challenges, and answer customer
questions.
BLP answer for Dow AgroSciences was through
a Serious Game that mirrored the real-world context of their jobs: achieving
sales goals. Formulation Type Matters mirrors their work
environment, provides constant feedback in terms of sales gained or lost, and
rising or falling customer satisfaction rates.
The challenges the game poses are real, and the
game format made it fun: sales reps don’t need to memorize information, but
they need to ask the right questions, recognize when to look up information,
and appropriately tap into company expertise.
The story in the game is that a predecessor
decimated sales in your newly-assigned territory. Your job is to regain
customer satisfaction and sales by successfully resolving a variety of issues
related to formulation type. When players enter their territory, they discover
five customers, each with a different issue. Players had to find/locate the
appropriate information to resolve each of the issues.
Behaviors the game aims at cultivating in players include
asking relevant questions to clarify the problem and to understand customer’s
needs and past behavior; seeking out relevant expertise within the player’s
real organization; reviewing past issues in an effort to understand what might
have occurred in the past that is driving current customer behavior; responding
appropriately to the customer the first time.
Game’s feedback and scoring mechanisms include territory
sales, which can go up or down based on player’s decisions in the game; customer
satisfaction, which can rise or fall based on player’s actions; rewarding
people with potential sales for accessing resources; a significant negative
impact for selecting an incorrect response to the customer issue. This scoring
choice helps reinforce the real-world need to give accurate information to customers
or risk loss of customer satisfaction and loss of future sales.