Read about employee engagement, goals, training, gamification and more.

Arcade Customers


Long & Foster Property Services is the rapidly growing insurance and property management arm of Long & Foster Companies, a Berkshire Hathaway, Home Services of America company. What started as a team of 40 has grown to 200+ high-performing sales and service teams spreading across the country.
 
Similar to most companies during the COVID-19 crisis, Long & Foster has started working remotely since mid-March 2020. Though they’re physically apart during this time, leadership at Long & Foster remain committed to cultivating a cohesive company culture and vision. The whole team strives to deliver a balanced service offering of high-tech and high-touch services with great customer service to over 70,000 customers.

^^^^^^

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Long & Foster team was already technology enabled to work 100% remotely. Although the team was prepared to react quickly, they faced the unique challenges of **communication**, **motivation** and **accountability** while sheltering in place across their 7-state service area. The business didn’t slow down – quite the contrary – so the new challenges were compounded by the team’s growing workload. Traditional engagement strategies became less of an option as bandwidth narrowed and focus on the “urgent” began to crowd out the “important”.

<br /><br />

One of Karen’s key roles is to foster her team’s creative ideas toward the future, not only for each rep but for the company as a whole. This can be a fine balance, nudging salespeople in the right direction without seeming to doubt their ability to sell. Lacking the opportunity to build the collective language and energy that a traditional “bullpen” call center naturally cultivates, she took a unique approach. 

^^^^^^

## The Solution

### Familiar Fun 
 
Arcade’s constant reward model quickly found its stride among Long & Foster’s spread-out workforce, motivating and boosting performance. “Arcade levels the playing field with our entire team because proximity to each other and proximity to the leadership team have become somewhat irrelevant very quickly as we have been forced to figure out how to stay connected and drive the business. Age and experience have become more neutral factors because of how our team engages, challenges and supports each other socially on the Arcade app. Though many older workers were the furthest thing from “gamers,” the imagery surrounding video games has been rooted in our culture for decades, and the concepts of collecting coins and leveling up were quick and easy to understand.” Karen’s team was eager to jump on board because the culture supported it.

<ImageGallery
  imagePath="/images/pages/customers/longandfoster/"
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### Communication Through Gamification 
 
Arcade isn’t just about making work fun with collectable rewards for individuals. It’s also about creating engagement among the team, sparking collaboration, communication and friendly rivalry. “Arcade has been a game-changer (pun intended) because It has proven to be a powerful tool to get our team talking and connecting in a way that our entire team recognizes – they really see it as their own, internal team social media channel.” Working remote for such a long period now while also being shut down economically has focused the team but it has also taken a toll on everyone. “We didn’t have a remote working policy prior to the COVID-19 crisis except for extreme weather disruption. We realized rather quickly that the novelty of working remotely wore off with our team faster than we anticipated, but we maintained that “bullpen” collaborative spirit, excitement and intensity around our customers. Everyone in our organization uses Arcade to encourage, challenge and coach each other and share knowledge that positively impacts our customers every day. Anyone on the team who is having a rough day, or a rough week quickly gets picked up by the team and gets “coached up” to a more positive direction. That’s the payoff for our company – our culture can thrive inside of Arcade.” 
 
### Harnessing the Phone Impulse 
 
People will automatically pick up their smartphones many times an hour to text a friend or check social media. Why not harness that impulse? With Arcade, the phone becomes a game success meter. Repetitive tasks, like the phone calls that generate most of Long & Foster’s business, become opportunities for a rep to hit goals, all tracked in real time. So not only does he work toward real rewards for performance, he gets the instant gratification of pocketing those virtual coins with every call. Karen’s team has responded with enthusiasm. “They’re just small steps to success, doing what they should’ve been doing anyway, but its reinforced with a reward instead of some of the negative alternatives that are often used with salespeople.”


^^^^^^

## The Results

### Arcade catalyzed a substantial boost in Long & Foster’s bottom line. 
 
When Safeco, one of Long & Foster’s insurance product suppliers, launched new training content, Karen saw this as an opportunity to motivate participation by gamifying the content within Arcade. “Safeco numbers weren’t moving before this started,” she says. Within 60 days of gamification, they saw a 20% increase in Safeco sales. Now other suppliers are talking about running incentives through Arcade as well.

“Our president, Patrick Bain wasn’t sure if Arcade would be a fit with our business or our team but was willing to try it with 1/2 of our team by testing it. After just a few experiences and watching how the dynamics of the team were changing he quickly realized how the Arcade platform changes behaviors, impacts the results and supports our culture. It was an easy decision to use Arcade across our entire enterprise to begin driving the sales behaviors we want to emphasize and the customer experience service activities that matter most to our customers.”  


Long & Foster

Learn how the property management team boosted sales by over 20% and build an excellent remote-first culture.

Create a new dynamic rewards system to motivate staff.

Reduce employee turnover to cut back on hiring costs.

Increase employee engagement with their work.

How Arcade is transforming old school call-center energy to Long & Foster’s distanced insurance reps and property managers — with a measured impact.

Bringing a Distanced Team Together 

Karen Reifert

This is our opportunity to do what our competitors aren’t doing. We should be out in front, reaching out, connecting with our customers, seeing how they are doing and what they may need. It seems simple enough, but, to motivate salespeople to do the right thing when everything around them is saying to do something else – can be a huge a challenge to overcome. Arcade ensures these day-to-day tasks remain ‘fresh’ and fun for our team.

SVP of Field Operations & Business Development

Culture is important to our company – and not because we say it’s important – it’s in our DNA. It’s how we keep our team engaged so that they feel like they are part of something. Keeping the team consistently rallied is difficult. Arcade helps our leadership team show them how to grow with the team and still support our culture without them feeling that we are challenging their ability to sell and succeed.

We’re making work fun. With Arcade, we’re able to drive the behavior that moves the needle for the team. Fundamentally, it’s a person-to-person business. It’s all about motivating our team to connect with each other and our customers – we value both equally.

Long & Foster | Arcade Success Stories


PCS Partners was the first and original MetroPCS retailer. The business has since expanded to over 60 locations across Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. The team consists of around 250 sales representatives, managers, and a small cohort of support staff.

Tye Stahly is the Head of Store Operations at PCS Partners. Along with owner Jim Pack, Jr., the two are building a community of engaged and motivated employees equipped to provide industry-leading customer experiences in a highly competitive vertical.

^^^^^^

Customers in wireless retail are notoriously price sensitive and won’t hesitate to switch providers for a better deal unless they’re given a compelling reason to stay. Tye and Jim knew that competing on price alone was not a sustainable strategy given the razor-thin margins in this space.

Instead, superior customer experiences would be the key to increasing customer loyalty, retention and referral sales. The management team knew that this effort to provide industry-leading customer experiences would require sales associates to reach a new baseline level of performance.

^^^^^^

## Success Measures

### Boost Customer Retention

Tye and Jim needed to motivate employees to give their best in every single customer interaction, from better attending to the needs of customers, to increasing the amount of accessories and additional services purchased. This is critical for driving new customer sign ups, referrals, and repeat business in a highly competitive industry.

### Keep Employee Satisfaction High

Keeping great employees long-term has been a key focus for PCS Partners and a large component of their success.
When employees leave they don’t just take their knowledge with them—they often leave with their entire customer base!

In order to keep employee retention high, Tye has placed a large emphasis on experience-based rewards over cash incentives. This approach is backed up by the evidence. A [recent study](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cash-isnt-king-new-incentive-marketing-association-study-examines-award-preferences-dispels-widespread-myths-300148252.html) conducted by the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) shows that 80% of employees prefer experience-based rewards over cash. However, it was immensely challenging and time consuming to effectively manage the distribution and fulfilment of these rewards across multiple geographical locations. Not only was it extremely costly for Tye and his store-managers, it was frequently frustrating for employees - the very people they were trying to keep motivated!

### Create a Cohesive Company Culture

Tye is opening new stores at a rapid pace. With a growing community of over 250 sales staff, maintaining a healthy, happy and consistent company culture is a challenge during a period of rapid growth. It’s essential that every employee embodies the values of the business. This is only possible when employees feel connected to each other, and to the organization as a whole.

## Arcade’s Impact

After reviewing a number of solutions Tye decided that Arcade offered the best tools to address these core challenges.

Arcade’s built-in system of micro-incentives, automated rewards and **sales contests kept employees motivated and engaged** at a high level every day, not just during bonus periods. These micro-incentives and sales contests are tied to behaviours that create the best possible experience for customers.

Arcade **improved retention** by creating strong links between micro-goals for individual employees and high-level organizational KPIs. Employees check Arcade every day for new goals, contests and incentives, all of which incentivize critical behaviours.

The Arcade platform connected employees across teams and locations through a streamlined chat tool, making it incredibly easy for district managers to communicate across stores, and for staff to share knowledge and learnings across the organization. This **gave employees a stronger sense of purpose and connection** to the organization, which are essential ingredients for employee retention.

![Associates at PCS Partners](/images/uploads/pcs-partners-customer.jpg)
*It's all smiles at MetroPCS.*

Finally, a shared, company-wide platform focused on positive interactions and rewarding high performance helped to **build a strong, consistent, and performance-focused company culture** across multiple distributed teams and store locations.

The Arcade team worked closely with Tye to rapidly onboard the company’s employees. A dedicated account manager worked on all aspects of getting PCS Partners started with Arcade, leaving Tye free to focus on the many day-to-day tasks involved with being the Head of Store Operations at a thriving wireless retail business.

Tye’s Arcade account manager was also on-hand at all times to answer questions, give advice, and help with every aspect of motivating and engaging employees using Arcade.

^^^^^^

## Final Results

Tye reports that employees at PCS Partners love Arcade and use the platform daily, participating in goal-based games, working toward micro incentives and sharing customer insights between store locations.

PCS Partners had previously been using GroupMe for communication between staff. “It was very bland, very boring,” says Tye. Arcade replaced GroupMe’s basic communications functionality with a fully developed social-media style experience. Employees rapidly adopted the new platform. “They got excited about posting, they got excited about sending messages, and excited about using it, so the interactivity and the participation rate that we’ve had has really gone up,” says Tye.

> “Since deploying Arcade, we’ve been able to save 10% on the cost of managing our previous reward system and our overall value-add sales has increased 25%. Sales revenue has also been more consistent due to a noticeable lift in the baseline level of our customer experience scores.”

The company attributes these result to Arcade’s overall impact on staff performance and engagement, which has helped drive an industry-leading level of customer experience across its 50+ store locations. Arcade empowered PCS Partners to thrive in an extremely competitive industry by unlocking the full potential of its workforce.

MetroPCS

Learn how this national retailer empowered sales associates to provide better customer experiences.

Boost customer retention by providing the next level of customer service.

Improve employee retention to preserve knowledge and avoid unnecessary hiring expenses.

Maintain a cohesive company culture during a period of explosive growth.

Building a community of engaged and motivated employees helped to lift value-add sales across all stores by 25%.

Inspiring Better Customer Experiences

Tye Stahly

Arcade is very engaging for retail employees. It’s fun, interactive and makes it easy for employees to be recognized and rewarded for extra effort. We’ve seen outstanding results and lifted productivity in our stores. Looking at the time alone that it saves us, it’s paid for itself.

Head of Store Operations, PCS Partners

MetroPCS | Arcade Success Stories


Daniel, the VP of Stores at a publicly traded, multi-billion dollar retailer (so well-known that we cannot name them) wanted to use an innovative strategy called **gamification** to drive sales at one of the company’s newest retail brands.

Gamification involves transforming the achievement of daily tasks into ‘games’ that employees find incredibly engaging, motivating them to go above and beyond. This strategy is particularly effective for engaging millennial employees who are motivated by game-like experiences more than any other demographic.

^^^^^^

Though gamification theory has been around for a decade, retailers have been waiting for the technology necessary to introduce gamification into their day-to-day operations. This technology has finally arrived. 

Daniel wanted to use gamification to help his millennial-heavy workforce feel highly motivated every day, not just in peaks and valleys. His ultimate goal: motivating his employees to perform at the highest level.

^^^^^^

## Success Measures

### Connect Employees Across 30+ Stores

Daniel needed a way to scale communications as new stores opened at a rapid pace. Communication barriers meant that staff at newly opened stores were struggling to access guidance and information from staff at more established locations. Daniel wanted to break-down these knowledge silos while ensuring that all communication remained professional and secure.

### Measurably Lift Store Performance

The retailer’s stores were staffed by a primarily millennial demographic. Millennials are notoriously challenging to motivate using traditional methods like cash bonuses. Instead, Daniel wanted to generate a sense of friendly competition between staff, and between brand locations. He wanted to achieve this by introducing game-like elements into the workday, including sales leaderboards, micro-incentives, races to reach sales targets, prizes, and tokens which could be traded for meaningful rewards. However, he needed to do this at scale without increasing the amount of time spent on administration and fulfillment of rewards.

These games also needed to be closely tied to activities that would add value to the store, like providing great customer experiences, making high-ticket sales, or encouraging repeat business.

### Cultivate a Consistent Culture Across Stores

A rapidly expanding network of stores meant lots of new hires entering the company. These circumstances made it particularly challenging to build a strong and unified culture, as culture is created by the norms and values of tenured employees. Daniel needed a way to incentivize new employees to integrate seamlessly into a strong, focused company culture based around consistent performance, encouragement, recognition, and a high expected level of product and customer understanding. This included new stores, where recent hires may not have the opportunity to learn these values from tenured employees.

## Arcade's Impact

Daniel selected Arcade as the best tool to bring gamification to this $10bn retailer.

Arcade replaced impractical and fragmented communication methods with a **consolidated, modern and simple chat platform**. Store leaders and employees used the platform to keep each other updated on relevant events, communicate inventory numbers, create consistent product displays across stores, and spread best-practices and learnings laterally. Information was able to flow freely between established stores and new stores, greatly decreasing ramp-up times for new employees.

Exciting sales games helped to **significantly increase sales staff performance using gamification**. Arcade enabled managers to award stores with prizes based on meeting and achieving their daily goals for net revenue and other conversion metrics. Employees were constantly involved in compelling sales competitions, such as the ‘Arcade Power Hour’, which randomly rewarded employees for sales made in a 60 minute period. These events helped to focus and engage employees throughout the day.

Arcade also helped to **build relationships and foster a culture of gratitude, respect and a customer-first mentality among employees**. Employees were empowered to award each-other at the peer level, with awards linked to random prizes for recipients. This peer recognition was highly scalable, requiring no intervention or admin from managers. Employees frequently awarded their colleagues for culture-building behaviours, such as a tenured employee helping a less experienced employee provide the best possible customer experience.

The Arcade team worked closely with Daniel to rapidly onboard the company’s employees and ensure the company was effectively utilizing the platform. Arcade’s user interface is logical and easy to use, achieving high adoption among employees within just four weeks. The company’s Arcade account manager was also on-hand at all times to answer questions, give advice, and help with every aspect of motivating and engaging employees using Arcade.

^^^^^^

## Final Results

Arcade was rigorously tested by a third party to monitor its effects on employee engagement and store performance across three key performance indicators: same store sales, units sold and gross margin. During this test, the results conclusively showed substantial uplift in all three key indicators.

Same store sales increased by 8.4%, units sold increased by 5.5%, and gross margin increased by 7.8%. The third party auditor attributed these increases directly to Arcade rather than to natural variation.

$10 Billion Retailer

Learn how one of the U.S.A’s premier retailers substantially increased same-store sales by motivating staff with gamification.

Provide an enterprise level communication platform for employees.

Use sales gamification to measurably lift store performance.

Cultivate a consistent store culture at national scale.

Learn how a premier retailer used gamification to elevate staff performance and lift same-store sales by 8.4%.

Increasing Sales with Gamification

Daniel

Arcade brought the greatest lift in sales to our stores that we’ve seen from any single technology.

VP of Stores, $10bn Retailer

$10 Billion Retailer | Arcade Success Stories


Family-owned ASAP Movers in San Luis Obispo, California serves their customers with moving operations of every size, from a single college dorm room a few towns away to a full mansion's belongings across the country. 

Their 40-strong workforce is managed by Shandie Fox, who handles many aspects of management, logistics, and HR; and her brother, Kasey Fox, company owner. Kasey has always championed the importance of building positive employee culture as the foundation for overall company success.

^^^^^^

ASAP performs interstate moves, so it’s rare for all 40 employees to gather at once, making traditional recognition a struggle. “It was a lot of tallying up points on a white board in the break room. And when we got busy, it just didn’t happen,” says Shandie. Often, by the time crews got back to HQ to physically check the board, it was out of date. 

Shandie researched motivations within the company and found that money wasn’t as big a factor as she’d expected. “Across the board, the answer was, ‘I like being the best, number one.’” The natural team competitiveness is a major energy source.

^^^^^^

## The Solution

### Software was the clear answer.

Shandie shopped around for apps that could update recognition in real time, but ran into a problem. “Nearly all recognition software is geared toward sales numbers. We had to find one we could adapt to behaviors and have a team who would be willing to work with us on it.” ASAP’s movers are not salesmen. Their success isn’t driven by conversions on-site, but by excellent customer service, so encouraging good behavioral patterns is essential.

![Images shared by the ASAP Team](/images/pages/customers/asapmovers/inline-image.png)

### Shaping a Solution

From the beginning, Arcade has always been about more than just sales. Our goal is to help people of every field find motivation and happiness at work. We even use Arcade internally with our IT development team. We worked with Shandie and ASAP to set up their Arcade platform to reinforce good customer service habits.

### Fighting Turnover with Fun

Turnover is an expensive problem within the greater moving industry, and Kasey has always striven to reduce it with a strong, supportive company culture. Recognition is a key element of that culture, and Arcade has provided a fun avenue for employees to recognize and digitally high-five each other. When one mover is awarded within Arcade, the whole team sees it instantly and comments within the app— often from several states away. This welds the company together while encouraging that competitive spirit within the team and between individual crews

^^^^^^

### Genuine, Arcade-driven social media content has strengthened ASAP’s online presence.

ASAP needed realistic, interesting photographs for their social media channels, and decided to gamify the effort, awarding tokens to any employee who submitted photos of interesting items moved or landmarks seen on their travels. The result was explosive, fueling a unique, viral voice for ASAP’s social outlets and doubling their audience engagement. “A lot of our guys have photo skills we didn’t even know they had, and now they have a place to be recognized for it.” This pragmatic team of moving men found an avenue for a creative contribution— and it benefited the whole company. Since launching this campaign in Arcade, we’ve substantially increased the amount of photo shares from our team and been able to use this to literally double our company’s online social engagement and marketing impact.


ASAP Movers

Learn how this moving team boosted social engagement by using Arcade.

Improve competition while being distributed.

ASAP Movers discovered that Arcade is about more than just sales games when social media presence doubled.

Strengthening the Culture of Service

Shandie Fox

The number one benefit with Arcade has been that we can get recognition out in a timely manner. Especially peer recognition.

Manager of Operations

We came to Arcade already having a great culture, but we needed to streamline it.

Are guys showing up and having a good attitude? Are they being safe drivers? The more bought-in they are to the company, all of this falls into line. We can train it, preach it, talk about it, but it doesn’t happen until they’ve bought into our core values. We found that buy-in through recognizing those positive behaviors. No one wants to be preached at. Most people want to feel like they’re making a difference at work and that they’re valued, more than just getting paid. We love that Arcade is working with us and helping us grow.

ASAP Movers | Arcade Success Stories


[Cathey’s](https://www.catheys.com/) started as a small family business in 1954. Since that time it has expanded to four bustling store and service-center locations across Tucson and South Arizona, and has grown to a headcount of 37 employees. The business now specializes in service and sales for sewing machines, vacuums, and home theater, with sewing machines making up the bulk of sales. The business is also transitioning to a ‘brick and click’ model, with eCommerce supplementing in-store sales.

Matthew Crandell is the Operations Manager at Cathey’s, part of the 3rd generation of family members working in the business. “Even as we’ve grown larger we’ve tried to keep the same culture and attitude,” he says.

^^^^^^

While proud of its culture, Matthew had been challenged to solve a growing problem in the business: the time taken to manage its rewards program. In particular, admin and fulfilment tasks related to bonuses had become a major drain on Matthew’s productivity, consuming hours of valuable time each week. He needed a way to eliminate this time sink without reducing the effectiveness of rewards.

In addition to this, Matthew faced another challenge. This time-consuming, manual system of rewards wasn’t succeeding in its aim: to motivate a higher level of performance. Bonuses were the same each month, and therefore, they had become expected. Employees tended to think of these regular cash bonuses as an extension of their salary, giving them no more power to motivate than a regular paycheck.

^^^^^^

## Success Measures

### Significantly Reduce Time Spent on Rewards Admin

Matthew was spending several hours each week on the administration and fulfilment of cash rewards and bonuses. This highly sensitive task could not be delegated, even though it took time away from more valuable tasks like hiring talented sales associates, a constant need in the business as it grew. Matthew knew that automating as much of the rewards process as possible was the only workable solution to a growing problem.

### Give Employees Visibility Over Progress

Employees couldn’t visualize their progress toward goals without making an enquiry. This had a negative impact on two fronts. First, it meant that the link between positive actions (such as sales) and rewards was weakened, because employees couldn’t see how their positive actions helped them progress toward their goals. [A Chicago Booth Business School study](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research/kf_jpsp08.pdf) demonstrated that being able to visualize progress toward a goal, as well as the remaining work required, increases commitment and motivation. The current system didn’t allow this. Secondly, employees couldn’t gain insight into their progress without taking up more of Matthew’s limited time.

### Replace Boring Bonuses

In a recent [study of over 1,000 employees](https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/288/Cash-Bonuses-And-Employee-Motivation/), 62% said they had used their bonuses to pay bills, or couldn’t even remember how they had spent their bonus money. This is because employees feel obliged to spend cash bonuses on ‘needs’ rather than ‘wants’. The employees rated gift cards as much more motivating than bonuses, simply because they could not be spent on basic expenses, alleviating employee guilt about treating themselves to something truly rewarding. Matthew needed a way to replace aspects of the company’s familiar cash bonuses system with rewards that employees would actually get excited about winning.

![Arcade Gift Cards](/images/uploads/rewards.jpg)
*Some of the many rewards offered in Arcade.*

## Arcade’s Impact

Matthew decided to roll out Arcade across his stores. Since adopting the platform, Matthew has been able to **reduce the time spent managing rewards by 20x**. “I used to dedicate hours every week to tracking rewards, figuring out totals, and updating people,” he says. “Now it’s maybe 5 minutes a week.”

Matthew no longer needs to field enquiries about where sales associates are tracking in relation to their sales goals. Instead, **sales associates can get live updates on their progress via the Arcade app**. They have instant visibility on what they’ve achieved and what still needs to be done, motivating them to perform at a higher level to unlock their next reward.

> “Arcade has sewn an atmosphere of competition and camaraderie within our company, and has given us the ability to recognize each other in ways we may not have otherwise done. All in all, a valuable tool for the entire team here at Cathey's.”

> — Shane Miller, Store Manager at Cathey’s.

With Arcade, Cathey’s has significantly reduced its reliance on expected bonuses. Instead, the company has shifted its focus toward offering powerful **dynamic rewards**. With Arcade, employees can see how many ‘tokens’ they’ve earned (the rewards currency in Arcade) and redeem tokens for their choice of reward. Rewards can include gift cards for their favourite store, restaurant, or theme park. These meaningful rewards create long-lasting memories that have significantly lifted motivation.

Matthew says he’s impressed with the level of support he’s received from the Arcade team. “Everything has been really good,” he says. Arcade’s support team has driven the onboarding process for Cathey’s stores, allowing Matthew to focus on growing the business. Since launch, a dedicated account manager has been on-hand at all times to give suggestions and advice, and to assist with every aspect of automating rewards using Arcade. Matthew’s account manager ensures he and his staff are always getting the most from the platform and its features.

^^^^^^

## Final Results

Matthew has saved enormous amounts of time by automating reward fulfillment and administration with Arcade. He says that his staff are more motivated than ever before and love having increased visibility on their progress. He’s noticed an uptick in performance among sales associates using Arcade.

In short, Arcade has improved motivation while reducing the amount of time and effort spent on rewards by 20x.


Cathey's

See how this appliance retailer reduced time spent administering bonuses and rewards by 20x, all while improving results.

Drastically reduce the time spent on manual administration of rewards.

Improve employees' visibility over their progress.

Replace boring bonuses with dynamic rewards.

This appliance retailer replaced expected, predictable bonuses with dynamic rewards, motivating employees to perform at a higher level.

A Rewards Program That Works

Matthew Crandell

If they sell more, they can earn more. But now it doesn’t take me hours each month to figure it all out.

Operations Manager, Cathey's

Cathey's | Arcade Success Stories


Elite Wireless operates 33 exclusive Cricket stores throughout Florida. The company has grown rapidly since it launched 5 years ago and now employs over 150 staff statewide.

David Rengifo is the Owner and President at Elite Wireless - voted the best Cricket Wireless franchise of 2017. In order to gain an edge in the competitive wireless industry, David turned his focus on increasing the retention of his employees in order to keep hard-won skills and knowledge in the business and maintain a consistent customer experience across his stores.

^^^^^^

To achieve David's goal of improved retention in a sustainable way, David knew he would need to give employees deeper reasons (than simply financial) to stay with the company long-term. Throwing money at the problem wasn't the answer.


Improved employee retention would also help David avoid the significant costs required to screen, train and onboard replacement employees, which according to a study by Employee Benefit News, comes with a price-tag of up to $8,000 per person.

^^^^^^

## Success Measures

### Turn Employee Retention Into a Competitive Advantage

David knew that the quality of customer experience depends on one thing: the quality of the sales associate. Sales associates become better over time, developing deep experience with your products, offerings, and customer base. By improving employee retention, Elite Wireless would be able to provide a leading level of customer experience through a tenured, experienced, and motivated workforce.

### Sustainably Motivate Sales Associates

Commissions, bonuses and salaries are the most common motivators in the wireless industry. Their biggest weakness? If staff are only motivated by money, a competitor can entice them away by offering slightly bigger financial incentives. This is one reason why the industry suffers from high turnover rates. David was determined to give sales associates a much stronger reason to stay with the company, a reason built on a foundation of loyalty, engagement, fun, camaraderie, reward for effort, and purpose at work.

David knew that employees motivated for these reasons would stay with the business for the long-term, becoming exponentially more effective and productive as they gained experience.

### Save Thousands on Hiring Costs

Nothing slows down a rapidly growing business like the need to find, screen, interview, train, and onboard sales associates to replace those who’ve left to work for a competitor. Hiring replacement staff also pulls store managers away from high-impact projects that add value to the business.

This is a double-negative, as it poses a major risk that customers who are loyal to the departing employee will also leave for the competitor. When a replacement is hired it can take many months for the new sales associate to match the productivity of the person who left. David knew that less time spent on this would save the business time, money, and energy that could be much better spent elsewhere.

## Arcade’s Impact

David believed that Arcade offered the right tools to help him significantly improve employee retention and build a more motivated, loyal, and empowered workforce. He decided to roll out Arcade in his stores.

Arcade **succeeded in improving retention** by making work more fun and meaningful. Employees looked forward to coming to work, where they could take part in daily goals, sales contests, and pursue micro-incentives offered on the Arcade platform. These incentives connected the employees’ role to the overall aims of the business, giving employees a stronger sense of purpose at work.

Arcade’s automated fulfillment of rewards **significantly decreased the lead time on delivering rewards**, as well as the amount of administration involved for managers. Sales associates loved the much faster turnaround time on reward delivery.

By allowing employees to visualize and achieve their goals, as well as providing a platform for positive interaction and appreciation between staff, **employees gained a stronger sense of their contribution and importance in the workplace**. In today’s purpose-driven work culture this has been a key ingredient in improving employee retention.

David says he’s impressed with the level of support he’s received from the Arcade team. “The support has been A1. I’ve been very, very happy with that,” he says. Arcade’s support team has driven the onboarding process for David’s stores, allowing David to focus on growing his business.

Since launch, a dedicated account manager has been on-hand at all times to give suggestions and advice, and to assist with every aspect of building an engaged workforce using Arcade. David’s account manager ensures he and his staff are always getting full value from the platform and its features.

^^^^^^

## Final Results

“Arcade has worked very well for us," David says.

Employee retention has measurably improved. A more engaged and motivated workforce has led to a 10% increase in same-store sales revenue since the rollout of Arcade.

Cricket Wireless

Learn how this acclaimed franchise retail owner lifted employee retention in an industry with a notoriously high staff turnover rate.

Beat industry average employee retention rates to gain a competitive advantage.

Build a workforce of experienced staff who are motivated and capable of building strong customer loyalty.

Save tens of thousands of dollars each year on hiring costs.

This acclaimed franchise retail owner increased employee loyalty and motivation, generating a 10% increase in same-store sales.

Lifting Employee Retention

David Rengifo

Arcade has helped out with being able to run contests that are a lot more streamlined. It’s allowed us to reward staff through the internal token system and payouts in the store are a lot faster. That alone has helped increase sales and, overall, our culture has seen a lift.

President, Elite Wireless Group

Cricket Wireless | Arcade Success Stories


[Digital Strike](https://www.digitalstrike.com/) was founded a decade ago by its current President, Chris Westmeyer. What started out as a side project has grown into a thriving 13 person digital marketing agency based out of St. Louis.

Chris had been providing employees with a small cash bonus each time they beat their numbers from the same time last year. However, staff almost always hit their targets. The bonus soon became an expected addition to employees' base salary, rather than a special reward.

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Chris was also dealing with another challenge. He wanted a way to reward employees for doing things that were hard to quantify, but that were necessary for a thriving company culture. This included things like earning additional certifications, giving talks, attending industry events, and spreading the word about the company on social media.

None of these things were part of anyone's job description, but they were all 'intangibles' that go into creating a great company. Chris needed a way to make it fun for employees to participate in extra activities that contributed to Digital Strike’s culture and brand.

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## Success Measures

### Offer Rewards That Work

Chris tells a brief story that highlights why he needed to replace the company’s cash bonus program. He was travelling between employees at their desks, delivering their monthly bonus in the form of a crisp $100 bill, as he did nearly every month.

> “99 percent of the time everyone hit their bonus numbers. They’d take the $100 and shove it in their wallet, and I’d see there were other $100 bills in there, untouched since the last time.”

When Chris saw this, he realized that his bonus program was not having the intended impact. Instead of having fun with their rewards, employees treated them like a part of their salary, delivered as cash. They spent their bonuses on the same things they spent their salary on: mortgage payments, utility bills, and groceries, or saved it for a rainy day.

“I wanted them to get that $100 and not spent it on a car repair bill,” Chris says. “I wanted them to do something fun for themselves, and have a better memory of getting that reward.”

### Make Rewards Fun and Exciting

Chris needed a system where employees had no choice but to spoil themselves and have fun with their rewards. Chris also wanted his employees to reward and recognize each other for things that happened when he wasn't around to see them. “I want my employees to feel like they can get credit for being a good team member,” Chris says.

### Incentivize Culture Building Behaviours

Chris was struggling to motivate staff to participate in culture and brand building activities that fell outside their job description, including things like posting about the company on social media, and attending industry events. “Most of the team didn’t bother to share anything on social media. Most people would only attend an event after-hours if I begged them to go,” Chris says. He needed a way to reward these activities that would make staff excited to participate in them.

## Arcade’s Impact

Chris decided to introduce the Arcade platform at Digital Strike. Here are the results:

Chris has been able to **completely replace the company’s ineffective cash bonus system with Arcade’s dynamic rewards**. In Arcade, staff earn reward ‘tokens’ which can be used to purchase rewards of their choice from a huge range of fun and varied options like gift cards and charity donations.

This change **brought excitement and fun back to Digital Strike’s reward system**. Chris says that allowing staff to choose their own gift card rewards has made the company’s rewards program much more impactful. Staff choose rewards that make memories and build positive associations, rather than diverting cash bonuses into bills and expenses. The difference is simple, but powerful. “They have more fun with these rewards. It gives them something to look forward to,” Chris says.

Arcade has also given Chris an **effective way to incentivize culture-building activities by making them fun**. By tying these activities to micro-incentives in Arcade, staff can make progress toward earning rewards by posting on social media about the company, giving internal presentations to their colleagues, or by attending industry events outside of hours. These activities are customizable, and new activities can be tied to rewards as company priorities change.

Chris says he has seen a noticeable lift in these kinds of activities and no longer has to beg staff to participate. “Employees are doing the extra things we want them to do, and they’re having fun doing them,” he says. Chris believes it’s only a matter of time before this extra activity on social media helps the company to land a new client.

> "Arcade has given me the chance to stop what I'm doing and really think about what each of my teammates has done during the week and reward them accordingly. This not only allows me to congratulate those who have had exceptional weeks, but also gives me time to take stock of how much the company as a whole is achieving."
> — Hailey Yeakle

Chris says that his Arcade account manager did the bulk of the heavy lifting during the onboarding process, freeing him up to be relatively hands-off during the setup of the platform. With Chris’s busy schedule, this freedom was essential. He says that he would not have had time to integrate the platform on his own without the excellent support and assistance he received from the Arcade team, who managed the process end-to-end.

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## Final Results

Chris has replaced a cash bonus program that wasn’t working with a dynamic rewards program that is proving incredibly engaging to staff. Staff are empowered to recognize and reward each other through the platform.

> "I think Arcade is a great system for companies that have been split between offices and locations. It allows remote teams and larger companies to really demonstrate how well their teams are doing."
> — Seanna Tucker

Culture has also seen a lift, with staff participating in culture and brand building activities that had previously been difficult to incentivize.

“Overall, we love Arcade,” Chris says.


Digital Strike

See how this digital marketing agency strengthened its culture by incentivizing positive behaviours.

Dramatically increase the impact and effectiveness of Digital Strike’s rewards program.

Give staff rewards that they would use to treat themselves.

Incentivize culture-building behaviours that are traditionally hard to quantify.

This digital marketing agency motivated employees by replacing a monthly cash bonus with meaningful, memorable rewards.

Strengthening Culture

Chris Westmeyer

Employees have more fun with these rewards. It gives them something to look forward to. As a result, employees are doing the extra things we want them to do, and they’re having fun doing them.

President, Digital Strike

Digital Strike | Arcade Success Stories


eXp Realty was founded in 2002 as a cloud-based residential real estate brokerage. It operates in 47 U.S. states and parts of Canada, with over 315 different multiple listing service (MLS) market areas. It is one of the fastest growing real estate brands in North America, with a recorded [171% TTM agent growth in 2017](http://cdn.expworldholdings.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2257/2018/04/EXPI-Investor-Presentation-April-2018.pdf).

Ryan Ruehle is one of these agents, and leads a team of 18 fellow real estate agents. His main endeavors include recruiting and training other agents and creating and maintaining workplace culture.

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Working in sales is like going to the gym - you can't expect to see results in a week. It requires day-to-day consistency to see meaningful results in the long-term. However, the challenge lies in the daily tasks required for success; these responsibilities are often tedious and tiresome to keep track of.

In Ryan's case, only 20 to 30 percent of reps were accurately tracking sales activities on a constant basis, making it incredibly difficult for Ryan to detect opportunities for optimization and most importantly, employee development.

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## Success Measures

### Incentivizing The Right Behaviors

Only a small number of agents were consistently tracking their progress and metrics through cumbersome and menial procedures. These were mainly performed for administrative and executive staff to glance over, and quickly became a chore for the majority of the team. However, Ryan understood the importance of tracking progression - a critical component of employee development. He needed a new practical system that simplified these mundane tasks into palpable benefits his team could appreciate.

### Creating Dynamic Reward Systems

Ryan's team were accustomed to bland monthly paycheck rewards, being a team based on sales commission. While this system was adequate, Ryan sought to establish a new and inspiring reward system that sparked genuine excitement for his team to work towards.    

### Fostering A Beneficial Workplace Culture

Above all things, Ryan wanted one thing for his team: a **fun environment that lasted**. It was vital for his team to band together during a down period, and to celebrate the windfalls of success together as a tightly-knit unit. It was essential for this new culture to be beneficial, approachable, and accessible around the clock, allowing any team member to participate whenever they wanted.

## Arcade's Impact

Ryan decided to roll out Arcade amongst his team. The participation rate was staggering - all 18 of his team began to use the application, immediately logging their work progress because of gamification. Weekly games set up by an Arcade Specialist helped create friendly competition between teammates, encouraging them to one-up each other. The reception was positively overwhelming. "That was the biggest change for us," Ryan says. "Having some fun, different games to play throughout the week gives us a variety of different rewards we can implement."

Ryan's agents now share status updates, metrics, pictures, and more through the Arcade app, allowing them to be transparent with both their numbers and activity. Through Arcade, Ryan is able to keep tabs on how well each team member is doing, and is certain that Arcade is a step forward for the team to bond together as a whole - today, and for the days yet to come.

"Obviously, for us at the end of the day it's all about numbers. But I wanted something more that could help keep building the culture the way that we want. Arcade helped everyone buy in, and helped build that culture we wanted. Teammates can call each other out; in a fun way, not to tear them down. Being able to see those communications happen throughout the whole team and holding their own conversations has been great," he says.

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## Final Results

Since introducing Arcade, 100% of reps are now accurately tracking their day-day sales activities and workplace culture has seen a substantial lift. Ryan has said goodbye to tedious spreadsheets and processes, instead turning them into exciting games and competitions that have led to higher engagement and participation. Ryan is extremely pleased with how Arcade's smooth rollout managed to quickly engage his entire team, now allowing him to better understand his sales organization and assist with meaningful employee development.

"Arcade's been a great tool for us and the biggest difference for us was the culture improvement that it brought. We're not a huge team, so having something that acts like glue for us really helps."



eXp Realty

See how a top real estate team combined work and play by introducing Arcade to their company.

Provide a multifunctional communication platform for employees.

Use sales gamification to track metrics and increase participation.

Cultivate a consistent team culture for the entire company.

See how a real estate team created a positive work culture in and out of the office and motivated consistency in sales.

Fostering positive culture with Arcade

Ryan Ruehle

Arcade's been a great tool for us and the biggest difference for us was the culture improvement that it brought.

eXp Realty Team Leader

Sales can be a very high pressure environment. It can be sink or swim sometimes for our agents, as it's all commission-based. Hitting the phones every day can be a little monotonous sometimes. Some days the phone weighs 200 pounds and you really don't want to be on it. We try to make sure the support is there for them; that we do a lot of things outside of work, just to keep the culture there and keep things fun.

eXp Realty | Arcade Success Stories


Snooze is a leading furniture retailer, operating over 80 premium store locations nationwide. A portion of Snooze’s stores are owned and operated by the company, while other stores are run by franchisee owners.

Mal Wade is the National Company Owned Store Manager at Snooze. Since the company’s founding in 1979, franchisee owned stores have consistently outperformed company stores. Mal knew this difference was solely due to the unmatched levels of buy-in and passion demonstrated by owner-operators.

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When Mal came into his role at Snooze he was determined to lift the level of ownership, engagement and buy-in at the company’s suite of corporate-owned stores. This would help company owned stores to reach their full potential.

If this ambitious effort was successful it would enable company owned stores to match the performance of franchisee owned stores for the first time in the company’s 39 year history.

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## Success Measures

### Lift engagement at company owned stores

Mal needed to motivate managers and sales associates at company owned stores to behave like owner-operators. This would mean going the extra mile for customers, spearheading innovations and process improvements, and developing deep product knowledge. To achieve this, employees would need to feel deeply connected to their role and to the success of their store.

### Serve the customer at the highest level

Snooze was determined to craft world-class customer experiences in-store. In doing so, they expect to increase units per transaction and average ticket value as well as repeat business and customer referrals - all vital to the company’s future growth. This would require their sales associates to be well equipped with strong product knowledge and the willingness to serve customers at the highest level. This was a challenge in an environment with a large showroom and little community and connection between stores located far apart.

### Build a strong company culture across a network of stores

Communication between stores was fragmented across multiple channels, leading employees to mostly avoid communicating outside their own stores. This risked creating knowledge silos that stopped learnings at individual stores and the spread of best-practices, especially as it pertained to consistency of product displays which are a vital component to the customer experience. Snooze needed to reduce friction for employees to share knowledge and insights, and seek support and advice from other stores.

## Arcade’s Impact

Mal had already seen the positive impact of Arcade in his previous role at a national consumer electronics retailer. Upon taking up a new role Snooze, Mal shared his passion for the Arcade platform with his new employer. Snooze decided to trial Arcade at its company owned stores. At the conclusion of the trial Snooze decided to adopt Arcade for the long-term, making it a part of every employees’ daily workflow.

Arcade **significantly increased the level of buy-in and ownership demonstrated by managers and sales associates at company owned stores**. It achieved this with its system of micro-incentives, automated rewards and sales contests closely tied to store-wide success. Store managers and sales associates alike began to act more like owner-operators, going the extra mile when serving customers and co-workers.

> “Arcade makes a big company feel like a family.” - Catherine, Armadale

The platform **enabled employees to offer world-class customer experiences by making it fun to serve the customer**. Positive customer interactions and high ticket-value sales were connected to rewards, recognition and games offered within the Arcade platform.

Organized, instantaneous communication between stores helped to **break down barriers to knowledge-sharing and innovation in the business**. Passionate employees used the platform to share learnings and best practices on product displays, which were then adopted at other stores in the Snooze network. This allowed Snooze’s best employees to magnify their positive impact on the company, greatly benefiting the customer experience.

> “To be able to have access to staff all around the country at the touch of a button is by far the best tool for success within the company.” - Wayne, Noarlunga

Arcade used micro-incentives to encourage employees to publicly recognize and appreciate one another for great work, helping to **build a strong, unified and resilient company culture across a disparate network of store locations**.

> “The visual of seeing where other company stores are sitting on the leaderboard is an incentive for a healthy competition between stores.” - Fiona, Claremont

The Arcade team worked closely with Mal to rapidly onboard the company’s employees. A dedicated account manager piloted every aspect of getting Snooze setup with Arcade, leaving Mal free to focus on the many day-to-day tasks involved with running a large network of stores.

Their dedicated Arcade Account Manager was on-hand at all times to answer questions, give advice, and help with every aspect of motivating and engaging employees. Mal says he has loved the stress-free experience of introducing Arcade at his stores.

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## Final Results

“I have seen first hand just how powerful the Arcade platform is,” Mal says.

Mal reports that the increased buy-in and ownership generated by Arcade led company owned stores to significantly outperform franchisee owned stores **for the first time in company history**.

Stores using Arcade increased sales revenue by an average of 12.7%.

Snooze

Learn how this national retailer used Arcade to help corporate owned stores outperform franchise stores for the first time.

Lift engagement of managers and sales associates at company-owned stores.

Empower employees to provide outstanding customer experiences.

Create a strong, unified and resilient company culture across a widely distributed network of stores.

Snooze lifted sales revenue 12.7% by maximizing employee engagement in its corporate-run stores.

Increasing Team Buy-in For Better Results

Mal Wade

Arcade is a game-changer and has brought the fun back to the retail teams I work with every day. I believe there is no other product on the market that even comes close to competing with Arcade in engaging, motivating, entertaining, rewarding and driving a sales team to achieve more than they have ever achieved before.

National Company Owned Store Manager, Snooze

Snooze | Arcade Success Stories


Utility Tri-State was established in 1973 as an authorized dealer for Utility Trailer Manufacturing Company. They offer one of the largest inventories of new and used reefers, vans and flatbed trailers. Since then it has expanded to six locations, including Oklahoma City, Fort Smith and more. 

Darryl Dillingham is the Corporate General Manager of Utility Tri-State Oklahoma, and oversees both Tulsa and Oklahoma City facilities. While an existing quarterly reward system was in place, Darryl wanted to introduce a new method to better accurately reward his employees in the parts department. "In the parts side it isn't so easy - they have sales numbers, but everybody is a salesperson. Everyone is taking orders, answering the phones, shipping, receiving and delivering," he says.

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When it comes to selling parts and merchandise, competition with other warehouses and companies is rife. Darryl wanted to boost his sales numbers while incentivising his staff with a monthly bonus. 

Additionally, Darryl sought to improve both Tulsa and Oklahoma City's staff retention rate. He needed to find a way to boost his employees' workplace engagement while reducing Utility Tri-State's turnover rate.

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## Success Measures

#### Creating Impactful Reward Systems

Rewards at Utility Tri-State previously consisted of a quarterly bonus derived from both Servicing and Parts departments. While the servicing department had easily measurable statistics, it was difficult to assess the parts department with the same metrics. Darryl needed a reward system that had a significant improvement over his existing reward programs. It was vital that this new system reflected his employees' quantifiable efforts in the parts department.

#### Increasing Employee Retention Rate

In the United States alone, [3 million employees quit their job every month in search of greener pastures](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm). Over the past few years, employee turnover was starting to become a factor at Utility Tri-State. While unsure of the exact reasons why, Darryl knew he needed to find a genuine connection between his employees and their work. Darryl had to foster a workplace culture that would encourage his staff to stay for the long term.

#### Build An Effective Communications Network

Being a corporate general manager, Darryl needed to be able to keep tabs on two facilities in separate locations. While a company-wide instant messaging service existed, employees hardly touched the application. He sought a method to manage his employees on the go while still being easily available to contact. 

## Arcade's Impact

Arcade was able to **multiply sales profit by implementing an impactful reward system**. Employees were presented achievable goals set up by an Arcade Specialist, and started to show more initiative - which was then reflected in their sales numbers.

"An Arcade Specialist set up a new game to help drive sales at the begining of the month, which resulted in our team achieving a company sales record within the first five days!"

In just a few months, Arcade not only accomplished all of his goals, but even surpassed his expectations. Darryl was so impressed with the results that he replaced one of their old month-end sales contests with the same game. If his employees manage to accomplish both goals, the Tulsa facility will have almost doubled their monthly profit.

Arcade's integrated chat and newsfeed system **greatly simplified and streamlined communication between staff members**. Employees and managers were able to instantly chat with each other, comment on each other's activity, and share photos and stories. Workplace engagement was at an all-time high. Darryl was awestruck at the results.

"If you take all the rewards and tokens out of the picture, the biggest thing that tickles me is to see these guys patting each other on the back - whether it's someone from the same store, or two counter staff - just the camaraderie that was building with a simple internet tool. Some of the people that make posts - I would have never thought that they would even engage."

Following Arcade's successful implementation, Darryl plans to introduce gamification to his fellow managers in hopes of bonding every Utility Tri-State facility together.

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## Final Results

Through Arcade, Darryl was able to breathe new life into Utility Tri-State's rewards systems with swift results. In just a few months with Arcade, the parts department of Utility Tri-State Tulsa was able to achieve one of their best sales periods ever, breaking a company record in just five days. Workplace engagement remains at a perpetual high, with sales numbers following suit. Darryl is adamant that Arcade will remain a permanent part of Utility Tri-State, even during a down-cycle. 

"I would still use it to help keep the stores bonding together. If times are good it's good, if times are bad you have to stick together and plough through it. I don't see us not using it."



Utility Tri-State

Discover how this trailer dealership smashed their sales goals with Arcade and hit a company sales record in just five days.

This semi-trailer dealership multiplied sales profit by implementing gamification into their workplace.

Maximising Workforce Efficiency

Darryl Dillingham

...The biggest thing that tickles me is to see these guys patting each other on the back - whether it's someone from the same store, or two counter staff - just the camaraderie that was building with a simple internet tool.