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Gamification – Good For the Blend?
Paul Westlake - Solutions Consultant
November 25th, 2014

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What is a ‘Game’
“an activity that one engages in
for amusement”
“a form of competitive activity played according to rules”
“A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for
enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool”

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What Components Does a Game Need?
Goals
• Something you are trying to achieve, the anticipated
outcome
Rules
• A method you should follow – a guideline
Challenge
• A bid to overcome something, to achieve something ‘better’
Interaction
• An action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect
upon one another

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Who Are McDonald's?
The world’s largest restaurant chain – more than 34,000 restaurants
across 119 countries
In the UK employ 91,000 staff across 1230 restaurants, serving 2.5 million
customers on a daily basis

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Why Look at Gaming?
The challenge
Provide training to over 91,000 employees on a new till system
as quickly and efficiently and for it to be as engaging and
effective as possible. Retain high customer satisfaction.
The solution
For the first time ever McDonald’s opted for a game based
approach, as part of a blended solution to get their staff up to
speed
The results
On another level…

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The
Challenge

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Setting the Scene
Highly competitive market
• Operating within a low margin/high volume,
maintaining and increasing market share is vital
• Need to enable restaurants to enhance customer
experience and maximise sales
• No honeymoon period to practice in
Utilising latest technology
In 2011 McDonald’s introduced a new till system into
the UK restaurants called NP6 with two key
objectives:
• Improved order accuracy
• Reduced service times

Challenge
Training
• The key challenge faced was how to train 91,000 UK crew members as quickly
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and effectively as possible
• Training must not to impact customer service and reputation
• Till training – technical and dry – how can it be brought alive, made exciting?
Options
• Shoulder-to-shoulder training - too slow, expensive, would impact the business
and customer service
• Elearning was a possibility, but that only delivered the theory - McDonald’s
wanted something more than that and something different
The solution
• Very short initial elearning module – covering why the change and basic till
function
• Online game

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Embedded in BAU
Introduction PDF
Elearning and Game
On floor practice
Verification
Feedback with coach

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Why Choose a Gaming Approach?
• Key objective was to provide learning that people want to do
• Fun, engaging, memorable, tap into people’s competitive nature
• Employees predominantly from the ‘Net Generation’ (85% under 29 years old)
• Provides a safe practice environment – multiple attempts encouraged
• Allows a realistic, scenario based approach

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The
Solution

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Objectives and Measurement Metrics
Business Objectives:
• Increase speed of service
• Improve order accuracy
• Enhance customer experience
• Increase order spend
• Increase employee engagement
• Reduce cost of existing training
Success Metrics:
• Reduced average service times
• Reduced customer complaints
• Improved mystery shopper scores
• Increased average cheque
• Significant completions
• Positive employee feedback
• Reduced training costs

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Game Components
Main aim
Crew member to enter as many customer orders as accurately as possible into the new system within 20 mins
Levels
4 levels each with 5 customers – orders get increasingly more complex
Scoring
Based upon speed and accuracy – each user gets a completely unique score
Life lines
Users can choose to use throughout the game to help them complete orders
Bonuses
Users can win throughout the game if they meet certain game criteria
Customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction thermometer and facial expressions of customers, spot check challenge screens
Audio effects
Customer giving order, slurping noises, booing/cheering crowd

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Game Interface

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Game Interface

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Life lines and Bonuses

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Learning From Mistakes

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Hospitality Spot Checks

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Customer Satisfaction and Audio Effects

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Score Updates

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Going to the Next Level
Final Score
Overall unique score is calculated using:
• how long it has taken them to complete all orders
• accuracy of entering the orders
• their customer service responses
• life lines used
• bonuses awarded
Keep them coming back
At the end of all four levels they are encourage to try again to improve their score and
beat their colleagues

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Competitive Spirit

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McDonald's Till Game Components
Goals
• Serve 20 customers within the time limit
Rules
• Work within hospitality guidelines, entering order in the optimum
way to reduce service times
Challenge
• Customers changing orders, adding in times, becoming
frustrated
Interaction
• Feedback from customers based on how you are greeting them,
and how efficiently you are taking their order

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The Results

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Caught by Surprise
“This tool was placed quietly on our crew website
with no advertising or direction to the restaurants.
The crew found it, played it, re-played it and shared
it. Its power was in the fact that it challenged people
to try-out and experiment to succeed and improve,
which is what the most effective learning is all
about”
Mark Reilly
Corporate Training Manager
and the project sponsor

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Business Highlights
1,300 daily hits
since launch in June 2012
205,216 hits
by June 2014
24,000 hours of training
equivalent delivery via the game
80%
Said it helped them understand
new till system and to perform
£23.4M
Increase in cheque across UK
restaurants, £18K av. per
restaurant
£125,000+
savings in direct
training costs
“The learning was really fun – it felt more like a gamethan
actual learning”

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Longer Term Impact
“As a business, we have seen significant
improvements in customer service, sales and profit
results. The success of the project has led to a
wider cascade of the till game across European
markets, and to the development of further game-based
learning to support the introduction of new
Mark Reilly
Corporate Training Manager
and the project sponsor
initiatives across the business.”

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In Summary, Game Success …
• McDonald’s needed quick and efficient way to let staff practice
on a new till system
• Online game approach taken
• Little shoulder-to-shoulder training been needed
• Most successful online tool McDonald’s UK have ever
launched despite no marketing or launch campaign
• Excellent results been achieved for business and game
continues to be big hit

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Improving performance through
learning and technology