We all love game
In the ’80s and ’90s, calling someone a “Gamer” insinuated that they had boundary issues and poor personal hygiene, but today it just refers to someone who likes games. And that pretty much covers everybody. If you play casual games on your phone, or enjoy a bit of Wordle, you are technically a gamer. Today, 55% of adults in the United States play video games on a smartphone or tablet at least once per week. For Gen-Z, that number goes up to 86%, with women playing longer than men.
Games are ridiculously popular because they connect with us emotionally, making life fun as well as satisfying fundamental needs we all have to make progress, have an impact, win and grow. When companies connect with customers’ emotions, the payoff can be huge. After a major bank introduced a credit card for Millennials that was designed to inspire emotional connection, use among the segment increased by 70% and new account growth rose by 40%.
Research at Harvard across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories shows that it’s possible to rigorously measure and strategically target the feelings that drive customers’ behaviour. These “emotional motivators” provide a better gauge of customers’ future value than any other metric, including brand awareness and customer satisfaction, and can be an important new source of growth and profitability. Like many commentators, the authors believe that NPS has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced with an emotional connection score, in a similar way that Moroku has promoted an Engagement Score.
The article “The New Science of Customer Emotions” discusses how companies can drive growth and profitability by connecting with customers on an emotional level. The authors introduce a framework of nearly 300 “emotional motivators” and explain how big data analytics can link these motivators to profitable customer behaviours.
In banking, the desire to “feel secure” is a critical motivator when attracting and retaining customers early on. When cross-selling products later, the wish to “succeed in life” becomes more important. To maximise results, companies must align their emotional-connection strategies to where the customer is on their journey with money. By combining internal data with Open Banking data, to capture an holistic view of the customer and placing it on a player map, banks are well placed to understand how connect with customers emotionally, based on where they are at with their money and providing them with the right support and encouragement to grow and win with their money, do that at scale and compete .
When we use game principles to design digital user experiences, we drive emotional intelligence and c onnection and get a fabulous map within which to place the data , measure it, learn and win:
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Emotional Engagement: Game design principles focus on creating engaging and emotionally rewarding experiences by understanding the emotional motivators. Elements like challenges, rewards, and storytelling in games can evoke strong emotional responses, similar to how companies aim to connect with customers’ desires for freedom, security, and success.
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Personalizsation: Game design tailors experiences to individual players, starting with game archetypes that become increasingly granular, enhancing emotional connection. By understanding and leveraging specific emotional motivators, digital experiences can be personalised within the game designed journeys to resonate more deeply with users, fostering loyalty and satisfaction.
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Motivation and Rewards: Game mechanics such as points, badges, powerups and rewards tap into intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. These principles can be applied alongised emotional motivators to digital user experiences to encourage desired behaviors, to drive meaningful and profitable actions.
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Community and Social Interaction: Game design frequently embeds notions of community and encourage social interaction, to fostyer a sense of belonging and emotional connection. Digital experiences that incorporate social elements can similarly enhance emotional engagement and build stronger customer relationships.
By integrating these game design principles, companies can create digital experiences that not only meet functional needs but also forge strong emotional connections with users, leading to increased engagement and loyalty.
Moroku’s proprietary user journey design methodology, On-Ramp, coupled with Odyssey, Moroku’s game driven servcie engine, facilitates such orchestration. Employed globally in the finance sector, we are prepared to present numerous successful case studies that you can explore further.