Customer Aquisition and Retention by Gamifying User Experience : Gamifying the team messaging app Briteback

Abstract: Studies have shown that many problems office workers face today arise from digital communication and collaboration, with information overload being the biggest obstacle to being effective and productive. Briteback is a new messaging app for teams, which was launched in November 2015, and which aims to solve these problems by providing users with a platform where they can manage all their work-related communication, in an attempt to structure office workers’ communication and to relieve communication related stress. As the app is a new competitor on the market, Briteback is evaluating the possibility of using different marketing strategies to position itself against competition, and to deepen their customer’s engagement and loyalty. According to several studies, gamification is a promising marketing strategy which can be applied to all kind of contexts. Given this background, this study examines what elements a gamification concept could include to assist Briteback with its marketing strategy to acquire new customers, as well as to deepen customer engagement and loyalty. The gamification concept resulted in an achievement based model, where users of the app can collect badges and learn more about the app and its features, as well as how to use these most effectively. Users can compete against each other for a leaderboard position and earn a VIP club membership to gain early access to new features. Usability tests at the end of the design process showed that study participants rated the overall usability of the gamification concept with a score of 75.6. It is concluded that the developed gamification elements have great potential of assisting Briteback with its marketing goals.