What is CX Gamification? 4 Ways Waze Gamifies Their Product

Gamification, according to gamify.com, is “the addition of game elements to non-game activities.” Think back to when you were a student; your favorite teachers likely incorporated some form of gamification into the classroom. Maybe it was a group incentive, like a pizza party if the class read one hundred books. Maybe it was a point-badge system: every time you answered a question correctly you got a sticker, and every ten stickers earned you a prize. Or maybe it was student against student; whoever correctly answered the most multiplication questions in a minute won!

Gamification is a phenomenon as old as time, but incorporating it into the consumer experience with technology is a recent reality. Social media sites like Reddit and Foursquare find success by compiling digital awards, badges, and special titles on their pages. Nike+ Run Club and Strava allow runners to compete with themselves (past Personal Records, getting enough milage to progress to the next level) and their friends, sharing their running and cycling updates directly on the app. In recent years, youth education tools like Education.Roblox and LeapFrog have incorporated gamification into their model to make learning interactive and enjoyable for young and adolescent children.

The incorporation of technical gamification has been undoubtedly helpful for this diverse range of companies, but it can be hard to know where to start with your own product. While there is no one way to incorporate gamification into your consumer experience, there is a leader in this space that can teach us many lessons: Waze.

Sitting in traffic is one of the worst shared experiences of the modern era. In this situation, there are dozens, sometimes hundreds or thousands, of passengers trapped in their vehicles on the same strip of the road. They sit there, not moving, watching their GPS consistently report later and later estimated arrival times. It’s the equivalent of being trapped on a plane that is delayed for takeoff except, this time, you’re painfully aware of the harmful chemicals each vehicle is releasing into the air because, if you crack a window, you can smell it.

Waze took terrible car experiences like this and made them fun. How? Gamification.

The Top 4 Gamification Lessons by Waze

1. Getting to your destination with the fastest possible route is a game

Getting to one’s destination faster than they thought they would get there gives Wazers a thrill—one that keeps them using the app. By using back roads and less traveled routes, Waze trims minutes off travel time and saves users the frustration of sitting in traffic.

Waze in no way encourages drivers to get to their destination quicker by speeding, however. In fact, when users go above the posted speed limit, the app will notify them of the maximum speed in a luminescent red box in the top right corner of the screen. In the game of getting there faster, speeding is akin to cheating.

Lesson #1: Make the process a competition without risking safety

2. Fellow Wazers on the road become Teammates

A few years ago, I was in the car with my dad, stuck in traffic on the infamous Throgs Neck Bridge. The car was at a complete standstill. My dad was behind the steering wheel and I fumed in the passenger seat, wondering if the Whitestone Bridge was this backed up. My dad leaned over and began tapping on the screen of his Waze navigation, trying to find the end of the terrible red line of traffic presented to us. Without warning, he jumped up in his seat and shouted, “Oh my gosh! It’s John!” He clicked one of the little Waze profiles and was able to send a message without opening his phone. “Hi, John Hannigan!” it read.

As luck would have it, my dad and one of his friends were stuck in traffic on the same bridge at the same time. Traffic did not suddenly start moving faster. Cars did not clear a way for us to drive through without obstruction. Nothing happened to make the trip shorter or quicker. What did happen, though, was that the traffic became fun. In the game against traffic, there was an unexpected teammate there to cheer my dad along. Suddenly, this was a novel, shared experience between two middle-aged men, friends for decades, who were excited to tell this story for years to come.

Lesson #2: Make the journey interactive and social.

3. Users win points for reporting incidents and rectifying them if they are “Not there”

Whether it is human nature or something groomed into our psyche from a young age, humans love being right. We love getting trivia questions correct, winning board games, and proving other people wrong. Leveraging this, Waze gives drivers and passengers the opportunity to correct others’ mistakes at every turn—all the while improving the app.

Wazers can put in alerts for other drivers: police stationed ahead, road blocked, construction, a car stopped on side of the road—the possibilities are endless. When faced with these alerts from fellow travelers, users are shown a question: Not there? If the obstruction is there, the driver will ignore this question or hit a simple “check” mark. If it is not, however, the Wazer gets the instant gratification of clicking the “Not there” button within a few seconds of it appearing, receiving a simple “Thanks” in return. Something so minor hardly seems like a major step in gamification, but customers affirm how satisfying it is to be “right” and help reduce driving times for themselves and fellow Wazers.

Lesson #3: Leverage the instant gratification of being “right” to improve your business’ performance and user-generated content.  

4. The more points you rack up, the cooler your avatar is.

It’s no secret that personalization is key to customer satisfaction. Waze’s idea of personalization feels more like a Reddit profile than a travel-mapping service. When Wazers start out, their avatar is a Waze Baby. As you rack up points by taking trips, notifying others of road obstructions, and correcting alert mistakes, your Waze matures to a Waze Grown-Up. If you reach the top 10% of high scorers in your region, you become a Waze Warrior. Top 4%: Waze Knight. Top 1% is Waze Royalty. To keep these elusive titles, Wazers must maintain their point status and continue competing with others in their regions.

Waze points do not have monetary value, so Waze does not endure any cost for giving out points to users. The mere idea of gamifying and incentivizing regular Waze activity, however, is enough to encourage users to access and contribute to the app whenever they travel – even for short, familiar trips in which they do not actually need directions.  They want to interact with the map more and actively contribute more content. In this way, Waze’s popularity and success is not just tied to how good the map is—it is dependent on how fun the point system is.

Lesson #4: Use point and ranking systems to engage (and re-engage) a higher number of users.

Waze is among the top navigation services used across the United States. There is much to appreciate about the app: its simple design, its seamless service, and its reliable mapping. What keeps people coming back repeatedly, however, is the game Waze lets users play. Gamification can be used in almost any business. Take a lesson from Waze and engage more customers with your product—all the while having some fun!

Header Photo: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash  

Inline Photo 1: Photo by Thibault Penin on Unsplash  

Inline Photo 2: Photo by aiden patrissi on Unsplash