The organization is the sector association of circa 9,000 businesses in mobility: from private cars, corporate vehicles and trucks to two-wheelers, caravans, trailers, engine overhauls, car hire, car washing/detailing, traffic courses, repair shops and petrol stations. The brand is also a quality mark: the members ensure that their customers can enjoy their mobility with peace of mind.

The sector association wants to be of added value of its members’ primary process. She wants to do this by helping her members to develop into future-proof retailers. The complexity however is the limited capacity to change amongst her members. It’s challenging for members to move (along), despite the support available. This while there are tangible improvement opportunities and innovation has become essential for a sustainable return. Therefore, together with House of Performance the sector association developed the Craftsman Game. A mobile application with game mechanics applied to accomplish easily accessible improvements at the workplace and at the same time increase commitments to change.

In general the sector in mobility is in disruptive times. New types of mobility rise, customers are emancipating and there is a shift to online sales. The competition is increasing, margins are under pressure, costs increase and manufacturers are looking for a more dominant role in the retail distribution chain.

From all categories in mobility, the bicycle industry is most mature and is facing increased urgency for change. Therefore the sector association was first looking to  make concrete impact in this sector and to make her bike-shops future-proof. This means supporting her members in optimising their sales processes and moving towards different business models to increase profitability. As well they wanted to boost capacity and commitment to change, fun at the workplace and collaboration between shops and employees.

With the Craftsman Game the sector association in mobility has access to an exclusive and powerful game, perfectly resonated to her end users, the local bike shops. Upfront there was a general fear amongst the bike-shop owners the app would distract the employees from their daily operations, but the opposite was true as the assignments in the game were strongly interwoven with real life. They were for example challenged to define new sales targets and execute sales strategies; apply a shift from selling hours to selling fixed prices, sell products with better margins and combine services to increase total sales. Also they were asked to perform a quiz on customer types and to apply the customer journey insights in sales dialogues. Last but not least there was a tough competition on “who is the fastest tire changer in Holland”. Gamification happened to be an easily accessible and effective tool to implement a new way of working in the interest of performance improvements. And it was very well responding to the power of networking: employees enjoyed sharing best practices and learning from each other.

96% Of all participating bike shops confirmed the game had contributed to improved team performance and would recommend the game to colleague bike shops. 91% of the members experienced more fun and 85% experienced better collaboration. Above all the customer experience had also improved; customers gave a positive response to the fixed pricing and valued the transparency of the new business model. Overall the sales results ended 47% above sales target.

The game is currently adopted by 52 bike shops with in total more than 250 players. The sector association in mobility is now reviewing whether to also launch a game format for other industries in her mobility platform. And the record of fastest tire changer in The Netherlands? This currently stands at just 24.3 seconds; quite an achievement!