Comparison of 15 Leading Gamification Software Systems

Gamification is a great way to improve employee performance or customer engagement. It also increases motivation and enhances productivity. However, the speed at which you achieve these results boils down to how effective the gamification software is. Ideally, the gamification platform should have a functioning reward system, social sharing capabilities, and detailed behavior analytics. Most importantly, the gamification software should offer a decent level of customization and be easy to use. This way, you can address the corporate learning gap and still upskill employees in spite of pandemic-related restrictions.

In this post, we’ll discuss the 15 leading gamification software systems. We’ll evaluate their key features, customization, and integration to give you a good comparison of these platforms. Our goal is to help you find a gamification solution that ticks all the boxes. Ultimately, by reading this guide you’ll have the insights to pick a platform that can increase employee and customer engagement.

Gamification is one way for companies to motivate employees and engage with customers. In the case of employees, data from the 2019 LMS Gamification at Work Survey reveals that gamification makes workers feel more productive and happier. Gamification at work can be accomplished in many ways, from badges to apps to leaderboards. However, 33% of employees want gamification in training software outranking other apps such as communication software, contact software, document software, and collaboration and project management software.

To be successful, your gamification strategy must include users of all ages. For instance, to make gamification work for baby boomers, trainers need to present the activity as something enjoyable. This is because this generation has had a long tenure in the workplace and thus feels that such kind of training is unnecessary. Other strategies include pre-training introductory sessions, formulating games in familiar formats, and encouraging them to play with others.

Aside from employee training and onboarding, gamification can also be used to drive sales, fight disinformation, and provide personalized results. As you consider your options, also take note of the latest gamification trends that can influence your buying decision.

1. Tremendous

Tremendous takes the top spot with its convenient rewards management system and the expansive range of rewards that can be given. The comprehensive gamification platform not only allows you to distribute gift cards and cash incentives but also lets you facilitate disbursements through its bank and Paypal integrations. You can even perform direct bank deposits through the software. As such, the entire rewards management process is streamlined.

One of the most remarkable Tremendous features is its internationalization. Supporting the currencies of over 80 countries, the platform lets you distribute rewards to recipients no matter where they are in the world. It also has a centralized dashboard where you can monitor incentives and other transactions. Through the dashboard, you can check the transaction history, procure rewards by bulk, and set recipient restrictions. Moreover, its range of functionalities allows it to scale with your business.

2. Xoxoday Plum

Next on our list is Xoxoday Plum, a customer experience management platform that allows you to manage rewards, benefits, and incentive programs. It is a scalable solution that lets you distribute various kinds of rewards and run points programs.

With the platform, you can manage distribution programs and gift card fulfillment for your customers, employees, channel partners, and more. It also allows you to send out digital Xoxo points or codes via email or SMS, and participants can redeem them on your Xoxoday storefront.

Moreover, Xoxoday Plum features allow you to send out physical gift boxes that contain Plum vouchers, unique redemption codes, and a personalized message fit for the occasion.

3. Tango Card

Think of this gamification software as an all-in-one rewards platform that you can use internally and externally. It can deliver your incentives to employees, customers, and even partners or suppliers. That is one of Tango Card benefits, and, admittedly, its weakness, too. That’s because employees and customers have disparate motivations for an incentive; a company with little experience in developing rewards programs may mix its target audiences using a single platform.

On the other hand, if you have clear and well-planned rewards for different audiences with different goals, the software is very useful. It has a huge catalog where you can store various reward formats, such as e-gift cards, donations, and prepaid items. Recipients can choose their rewards, while you get to deliver a variety of options. Likewise, the catalog lets you scale the rewards in a staggered fashion to lead customers or employees to higher incentives that correspond to a higher ROI for you whether in terms of sales or productivity.

4. Influitive

Influitive is a customer-oriented incentive solution that has been included in our comparison of gamification software because it rewards participating loyal customers. One of the Influitive benefits is that the system adds another layer of lead sources to your sales funnel. The concept is simple: identify your repeat customers and engage them with a rewards program. The vendor positions the software as a better alternative to social media ad campaigns and email promotions, but we believe customer rewards programs are complementary and not a replacement for other promotions. This in mind, you expand, not limit, your lead generation reach.

Influitive allows you to build an online community of loyal customers, a portal where they can share their product experiences, tips, or discuss related issues. This community can be a wellspring of testimonials or a pool of brand ambassadors for your campaigns. What we like best about this software is that it is easy for loyal customers to link to your rewards program via social, on-site, e-mail, the CRM you’re using or even through paid channels. The software does solve the problem of finding your best customers so you can focus more on fine-tuning a loyalty incentive program.

5. Badgeville

Badgeville also mixes employee incentive and customer loyalty program, but via a co-op structure. The channels for employee gamification is separate from customer loyalty rewards. You can run a sales performance or customer support leaderboard-based gamification to improve best practices. Meanwhile, another of Badgeville benefits is that you can have a parallel social media-based rewards program that tracks customer engagement and award incentives to brand ambassadors.

As an employee incentive platform, Badgeville uses multiple point systems to track performance. For customers, the software goes beyond badges and offers special discounts, freebies, trophies, or coupons. Badgeville can further monitor customer engagement, including video streaming, site visits, and shopping cart activities. Moreover, the software is easily linked to Twitter or Facebook, lending to your customer rewards programs a wider reach and a more engaging platform. Participating customers can view a contextual leaderboard in their social media feed, where they can gauge their performance against other customers.

6. Hoopla

The name rings fun and excitement and that’s exactly what we felt tinkering with this software. It seems one of the Hoopla benefits is mimicking a live sports event that can spruce up burnt-out employees who deal with repetitive but critical tasks like customer support and telemarketing.

You can quickly create contests based on CRM metrics and launch them using leaderboards. Then broadcast the results daily using video and streaming the results via web, internal TV channel (if you have one), or directly to mobile devices of employees. We find Hoopla really a dynamic way to run the gamification campaign from start to end. It is most ideal for companies with full staff customer support or sales teams, to keep them motivated daily in spite of facing repetitive tasks. In the same vein, the software may not be applicable elsewhere out of this scenario, specifically if you’re targeting customers.

7. Rise

Rise is marketed at online publishers that want to attract their target audience. The app is an auto ranking blogging tool that showcases the top social influencers who engage your digital channels. The app links to Klout.com to measure social influence.

One of the Rise benefits is that it can improve your site’s online reputation and improve its SEO authority by involving visitors with high social influence. A group of Twitter users can be invited to participate in your weekly “Power 100 list of influencers,” wherein they’ll be ranked in a leaderboard based on their social media traction. The ranking is then embedded as a widget in your site with real-time updates and conversations. The app is built on an open API to help you fine-tune your gamification idea. Rise’ concept is novel, so it can be a little hazy for the first-time user. But the steps are straightforward: create a board, join a board, then follow aboard.

8. LevelEleven

If your business is highly dependent on frequent sales made by your teams, LevelEleven can help motivate your reps. It has a CRM tool that helps your staff spot leads and follows a clear path to turn prospects into conversions. But the true value of the software is the incentivization of the sales pipeline. Sales reps can view their daily, weekly, and monthly results and match each other’s performances.

Although many of its tools are standard gamification features, one of the notable LevelEleven benefits is its major investor backup: Salesforce. That means we can expect the same reliable security and uptime as are the apps in the Salesforce suite. Furthermore, integration with other apps in the Salesforce AppExchange is native, so the software’s capabilities can be greatly expanded.

9. Bunchball Nitro

Bunchball Nitro is a gamification app focused on improving learning curves. The software, using funnel incentives, can introduce new customers to your product’s strengths, uses, and FAQs. On the other hand, you can use Bunchball Nitro for onboarding new employees. You can set an achievement goal at every level until the newbies are ready to be deployed live.

Another of Bunchball Nitro benefits is that challenge-based goals can be fielded online across your websites, social media channels, and via mobile devices and enterprise tools. Standard gamification features include leaderboards, goal setting, and a rewards platform. The app uses a standard rewards program process, so you can introduce a variety of incentive packages to sustain the excitement. Other notable benefits from using this app include: boosting staff collaboration; reinforcing employee training; and increasing the rate of repeat customers.

10. Centrical

The one difference we noted about the Centrical gamification app (formerly GamEffective)  is its ability to help the manager identify specific KPI of an employee and benchmark it against actual employee performance. One of the Centrical benefits is the clear gamified focus that lets you improve on key employee skills. The result is better productivity at less than the normal time it takes through traditional training programs.

The employee can see his or her improvement by comparing past performance with the current one and setting this up with a score. Likewise, the app is collaborative where both employees and managers can work on quizzes, simulations, and other micro-learning segments. It’s primarily an employee training app, but Centrical is also applicable to sales. It uses analytics to plot the employee’s real-time progress and allows you to send immediate feedback. The app can help you arrest the day’s sales slump or ride on a sales momentum.

11. PlayVox

PlayVox is ideal for companies serving tons of customer support. This gamification app can enhance, not just the agent’s, but overall team performance. The one feature that we like about the app is that it allows you to view the performance of both agents and team leaders in a single location. This makes it easy to pinpoint weaknesses or patterns, if any, whether the issue is limited to an agent or a matter of leadership.

In fact, this is a handy tactical tool for short-term sales boosts or quick resolution of issues. One of the PlayVox benefits is that you can evaluate agent-customer interactions at once on myriad channels, such as live chat, email, social media, and phone calls. With this app, creating a QA monitoring program is easy. You can quickly distribute quizzes or courses in minutes and keep the staff updated with the latest content. Similarly, delivering rewards is convenient by using digital gift cards for such big brands as Nike, Amazon, and Starbucks.

12. Hooptap

Hooptap deserves a place in our list for its neat focus on building communities of empowered customers. The app is best applied to create a pool of loyal customers, who can turn to brand ambassadors over time. If you have a huge database of inactive customers or passive site visitors, Hooptap is worth your investment. Transforming even just 5% of these customer types can deliver a big return.

At the core of Hooptap benefits is community building. It can link to legacy systems like CRM, web tools, and other front-end apps and use their data to help you create meaningful content for the community. For instance, we’re able to extract customers who made multiple purchases of various dresses in our ecommerce site. We could have easily created a fashion forum for this community, offering tips and relevant content. Using the app’s Fundbound proprietary tool, we could have incentivized active members with deals down the funnel as they make more purchases.

13. MySalesGame

The gamification software is part of the CallidusCloud suite of apps for sales and service performance. It has an established brand behind it, which somehow made us feel confident about its tech support. MySalesGame The platform is built on three fundamentals that help people take their desired action: competition, recognition, and mastery. In fact, all the MySalesGame benefits stem from the effectiveness of these core pillars. This makes the app useful for employee training and improving customer support.

A noticeable characteristic is its ease of use. It has single sign-on including for other CallidusCloud solutions. It also has a native integration feel within this cloud suite. Likewise, it comes with out-of-the-box badge icons and the leaderboard and activity stream keep you in the loop of the employee’s progress. No matter how complex the training is, MySalesGame can help break this down to achievable milestones and keep participants interested throughout the training.

14. Zurmo CRM

Zurmo CRM is particularly useful to push your employees to adopt CRM principles. It gamifies the learning process in adopting a new CRM software, a task that can be otherwise cumbersome for employees. We look at this app as just a component of an entire solution, but the key Zurmo CRM benefits transcend the adoption of productivity solutions. Zurmo, thus, is a good addition to a new application you’re introducing, whether project management software, marketing automation, or sales software.

Other key benefits to be derived from this app include: improve internal communication; improve campaigns by building on past metrics; identify demographics and market segments; and track key performance indicators. We also like these key features: API for deep customization; mobile access for flexibility; and lead management to increase conversion rate.

15. Growth Engineering

Growth Engineering is actually a learning management system (LMS) with a gamification component. We included it in our list for companies that require a ‘fun’ way to implement an LMS-based training program. Businesses with online or remote staff can greatly leverage Growth Engineering benefits.

As a standard LMS solution, the app has calendar management tools, attendance sheets, and real-time assessment. Integrated to these tools is a gamified module that lets users track their progress, even creating a competitive atmosphere within a closed group. This, we think, can fast-track learning. The app is useful for new software adoption or onboarding new employees. We can see that Growth Engineering is adaptive to myriad user types whether by company size, sector, or expertise level. Likewise, its API ensures this software can be integrated into your current HR solutions, a practical feature if you have older systems already in place.

What is the Best Gamification Software for Your Business?

There you have it, a comparison of the top gamification software. The list includes apps that focus on either front-end or backend users, or in some cases both. As you have noticed, some apps are standalone gamification tools, while others comprise a suite, which can often be considered as a CRM system. Whatever kind of solution you choose, these tools will provide learning and entertainment in an enjoyable way to help combat anxiety caused by the pandemic.

It’s quite possible that you cherry-picked solutions that you believe have what it takes to drive results in your business. If this is the case, the ball is in your court now. Time is ripe for you to make the big decision and pick one gamification software system for your business.

If the decision proves to be a hard nut to crack, worry not. Our experts recommend using Tremendous, a reliable customer experience solution that allows you to send digital and physical rewards.

You can easily keep up with the rest of the corporate organizations that use game-based learning solutions. Additionally, be sure to check the key trends in the industry to learn more about how these other companies are leveraging this technology.

By Christopher Robinson

Christopher Robinson is a senior productivity research analyst who specializes in optimizing online collaboration and project management using Scrum and agile approaches. In his work, he always emphasizes the need for distributed work training and the formation of efficient work habits. His work was mentioned in various business publications, including Entrepreneur and InfoQ. He’s a strong proponent of the GTD model. He has been cooperating with the FinancesOnline team for 5 years now, and his publications always focus on practical aspects of productivity tools that can have an actual, transformative impact on a company.