What Tools Does an Effective Gaming Company Need?

Gaming companies are complex organizations with a variety of different metrics to track. Between setting up a virtual private server (VPS) and working with contact center software, there’s a lot for an entrepreneur to consider. On top of this, you need to have ways to verify your progress towards your chosen metrics and key results, all of which can help you out moving forward.

So, what tools can give a gaming company an edge in a competitive market? There are a handful of critical tools that you need to consider integrating into your business plan. If you want to stand out in a crowded field, here’s what you need to know about effective gaming company tools and best practices.

Start with smarter goal-setting.

Any successful business is only as good as the goals that define it. Many top businesses in the gaming industry incorporate OKRs into their goal-setting efforts. OKRs (“objective key result“) are a framework for setting and monitoring goals and goal progress. An effective OKR can help keep your team in alignment, benefit your support team, and assist ongoing business functions. Unlike key performance indicators, known as KPIs (which are also valuable), OKRs are more conceptual. In contrast, KPIs are more data-driven. While you’ll still need to use KPIs for metrics tracking and team alignment, you also need to ensure you have the bandwidth for key results tracking.

OKR integration is also fairly straightforward, In many instances, you’ll likely want to invest in OKR software. An OKR software platform can assist with the automation of some goal-setting processes. Some OKR software also incorporates key best practices in the API to ensure that you have full control of your achievement tracking and overall engagement. If you allocate dedicated resources to ongoing goal-setting, the OKR process can benefit your entire organization. If you haven’t already developed a smarter goal-setting framework, you should make it a top priority.

OKRs allow you to set goals on an individual level as well as business goals for your entire company. Perhaps one OKR can be to integrate a CRM by the start of the next quarter. Another OKR stretch goal could be to improve your brand’s ROI by 15% over the next few months. OKRs also provide for additional analytics. For a small business, you need to keep a close eye on your high-level objectives and use OKRs to tweak these company objectives at the end of the quarter.

Consider your customer service needs.

These days, your contact center needs to be operating at peak performance. Of course, it’s not enough to track contact center KPIs as this won’t give you enough insight into the customer experience. If you’re still running a traditional call center, you may want to rethink your needs. These days, contact centers are more advanced than you might think. Whereas a traditional call center may still resemble a phone bank in many ways, a modern call center or contact center software platform comes with a wide variety of additional features that can benefit both your brand and the customer experience.

In particular, modern call center software incorporates interactive voice response (IVR), CRM integrations, customer interaction tracking, and call routing. Your call center solution can help you boost customer satisfaction by avoiding call downtime and transferring callers to the right agent as needed. A call center solution or contact center solution can also aid your customer service team and their workflow by streamlining outbound calls, assisting with customer support needs, handling inbound calls and call recording, and adding live chat and social media integrations. If you’re not currently using call center software with IVR features and other benefits, it could be harming your overall customer experience efforts.

In many cases, it’s time to ditch your outdated phone system which inhibits callers with outdated voicemail prompts and doesn’t afford for routing and data backups. Since any quality gaming company is dependent upon robust customer support and open communication channels, you need the right company strategy to benefit your sales team, service team, and high performers and team members.

When you’re choosing a call center software platform, you need to ensure it has mobile app capabilities, a streamlined setup process, and omnichannel routing. If you’re worried about making a commitment or you want to test out new features, look for a call center software solution that offers a free trial. The best call center software should benefit your help desk, not hinder it. Whether you’re applying your CRM or you’re adding a connection to your data center, you need to leverage intelligent routing and find the best call center software for your specific needs.

Invest in proper server hosting.

Whether you’re working with a VPS or you need to allocate space for a physical server, you need to have the right hosting environment for your gaming company to succeed. Too much downtime can drastically impact your brand’s reputation and harm how you’re perceived. Many members of the gaming community can be quite fickle when it comes to first impressions so you need to ensure that you have the bandwidth to accommodate your target audience. You’ll need to invest in a dedicated server that’s compatible with your operating system of choice. However, if you investing in a virtual server, VPS, or virtual machine, you need to consider server management. An unmanaged VPS can lead to a poor virtual environment that requires constant adjustments.

When it comes time to invest in server hosting, you need to make some smart choices. There are a variety of vendors offering VPS solutions but not every vendor operates on the same terms. The right VPS solutions should work alongside your on-premise solutions and offer a high degree of reliability. You’ll also want to see if your VPS provider can offer you an uptime guarantee. While some VPS brands won’t offer an uptime guarantee, it’s clear why uptime might be so important for your needs. Your audience will rely heavily on uptime and server crashes and general unreliability can harm your reputation significantly.

VPS platforms and workforce optimization should go hand-in-hand. Even if you don’t have large amounts of technical knowledge where VPS services are concerned, you need to look for advanced features and key performance metrics. This is especially important for smaller teams though organizations of all sizes can benefit. Your VPS or server hosting choice is a key part of your business strategy and the right decision can lead to an exceptional customer experience. Ensure that you’re choosing a VPS at the right time and that it provides real-time status updates and quick loading times. Once you’re able to see the measurable results of your server choices, you’ll be able to take the next step in developing your gaming business.

Incorporate multiple solutions.

From technical support products to a cloud contact center, there are several services and platforms you should consider for your business. Whether you’re trying to boost workforce engagement at the individual level through the OKR methodology or you’re trying to develop a great customer experience strategy through workforce management, collaboration solutions, and a cloud contact center, it’s important that you find the best way for your gaming business to succeed. Businesses of all sizes need to track specific metrics, remedy customer issues, and implement the right growth methodology to hit measurable goals. By doing this, you stand a real shot at developing a lasting brand.