If you want your people on the front line to have that competitive edge, then they need to know their stuff. It's when they know their stuff that they have the power to perform.

Keeping staff on top of their product knowledge can be a real challenge. Too often, learning about products is tedious and boring. With the pace of change these days, the problem never goes away either.

It's important too. Your staff's product knowledge can be the difference between giving good customer service or not, and the difference between getting the sale or not.

When staff really do know their stuff, they can transform the performance of a business.

So how do you make product knowledge learning more effective and enjoyable?

As Game Designers, we approach things a bit differently. If you can turn learning into a game, then maybe your staff (or even your customers’ staff) will enjoy it more. If they enjoy it more, then they'll probably do more and most importantly, they'll do it because they want to. They'll be engaged.

PFIZER CONSUMER HEALTHCARE HAD THIS CHALLENGE

Pharmacy Assistants are busy people. It's hard for them to find time to learn about Pfizer products.

Pharmacy Assistants are who we seek advice from when we go into a chemist and as such they can determine which product we buy. Pfizer knew that by helping them to become champions of their product range, they could increase sales.

We worked with Pfizer to create My Pharmacy Rules. For Pharmacy Assistants, this is an app that lets them compete as a team with other pharmacies to prove which team has the greatest product knowledge. The app has a really fun quiz as well as learning modules for those that want to study first. Of course most people just dive in and play and they learn that way. The app has proved to be so popular that the peek engagement time is 8:00pm in the evenings. Yes, that's right, these people are doing their product knowledge learning in their own time on their own devices!

As well as building the app, we also built an admin system that allowed Pfizer to create and run monthly competitions, award prizes, send notifications and newsletters and more. Pfizer can create new quizzes on the platform and of course see how well everyone is doing with a rich reporting system. The app is in year 2 with plans to take it even further next year well under way. It's won a number of industry awards.

It's a real win win.

• Pharmacy Assistants love it because they are learning whilst having fun. They can also see how good they are compared to their peers.

• Pfizer loves it because it is getting their products front of mind in a really engaging way. What's more they see how each product performs with Pharmacy Assistants.

Product knowledge learning is a perfect candidate for Gamification, or Game Design Thinking. It's something that front line staff know they need to do more of, but it so often gets put off.

By making it fun and engaging and measurable, everyone really wins and the right people have the power to perform.