How to create a fun and engaging customer experience as a shared mobility operator through Gamification

Today, mobility users may navigate 5-10 apps before booking a trip. As an operator, you want to win market share and pave your path to profitability. To do so, you must have a sound customer loyalty strategy, and gamification can play a significant role in being successful with it.

What is gamification

Gamification is not about designing a game. But using the same elements that make games fun and motivating to play to trigger end-user customer behavior. It’s about creating a playful experience around riding a bike or renting a scooter with challenges, levels, and milestones and rewarding customers on their achievements with points, virtual currency, badges, or free-riding minutes. In this sense, the shared mobility business model is perfect for gamification.

The benefits of gamification in shared mobility

1. Improving balancing

Rebalancing is critical for effective fleet management in order to offset the inevitable imbalance of vehicle supply and travel demand. However, this still remains an operational challenge for many mobility applications. One way to tackle it is to introduce gamification elements to the user experience. For example, users can be challenged to leave their vehicles at better checkpoints along the way and be rewarded for their positive behavior with in-app currencies or free-riding minutes.

2. Incentivize customers to use your shared mobility service more often

Gamification is perfect to incentivize customers to book more trips. For example, through challenges and the achievement of milestones, customers are motivated to use the service more often. On top, receiving rewards based on distance, kilometers, or minutes driven makes a lot of sense in shared mobility.

3. Engage customers inside your app

Instead of offering random rewards on an external platform, you can use gamification to create a brand narrative inside your mobility application. For example, users can be rewarded with an in-app currency in line with your brand message when they rent a vehicle. Then, inside the app, they could track their progress towards completing a challenge and see the impact of their actions - such as traveling in a more sustainable way.

4. Attract the younger generations

Today’s young people differ from yesterday’s. They have different motivations and behaviors. When it comes to, Gen Z, they value uniqueness, inclusivity and fun. So for this age group, gamification is a winning engagement strategy. For example, you can create a playful experience around booking a trip by introducing a leveling system with fun names and linking it to miles driven. Or introduce an in-app currency that shows them the impact of their actions by traveling more sustainably. The possibilities are endless.

How to bring gamification to your shared mobility app - Wunder Mobility & StriveCloud

The benefits of introducing gamification in shared mobility are clear: better balancing, more trips, improved customer loyalty, and a fun and engaging experience around the mobility service that appeals to the young generations. But how can you introduce gamification to your shared mobility platform? The answer is with the right gamification partner.

StriveCloud is the preferred gamification partner of Wunder Mobility. This means if you run your mobility application through Wunder Mobility, it’s possible to use StriveCloud to add additional in-app loyalty & gamification features to it.

But what exactly do we do at StriveCloud? We’re experts in gamification. We combine technology and expertise to enable shared mobility operators to create a fun and engaging experience around riding a bike, a scooter, or driving a car.

We do this in 3 steps. First, we help our customers identify the best solution for their business challenges and target audience. Second, based on the needs discovered, we create a gamification design plan. This includes expert recommendations for additional in-app loyalty & gamification features. Finally, we set up our software to integrate the new features straight into the mobility application. The best part is, that the experience can be easily changed by the customer from a simple control panel, live into the app.

PERSONALLY, I REALLY LIKE THE CONTROL PANEL OF STRIVECLOUD, AND I THINK IT IS EASY-TO-USE. I CAN INSTANTLY IMPLEMENT CHANGES WITHOUT HAVING TO WAIT 24 HOURS OR MORE TO DEPLOY.

Michael Stewarts, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at Forest

Human Forest is a British shared mobility company that uses StriveCloud to stimulate ecological behavior in its users. They use an in-app currency, ‘tree coins’, to reward users when they rent a bike instead of taking other polluting transportation. They use challenges to keep users motivated in ecological behavior. And with the lottery feature, users can win prizes that support safe and sustainable travel.

WHAT’S REALLY UNIQUE ABOUT STRIVECLOUD COMPARED TO A REGULAR LOYALTY PROGRAM OR CUSTOMER MARKETING, IS THAT YOUR USER EXPERIENCES IT INSIDE THE APP, AT THE MOMENT THEY’RE USING IT. THEY LITERALLY GET TO SEE THE AMOUNT OF CO2 THEY SAVED, AND HOW MUCH TREES THAT REPRESENTS!

Michael Stewart, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at Forest

Are you looking to incentivize your customers to use your vehicles more often while promoting your brand in a playful way just like Forest? Then we definitely have a thing or two to talk about. Don’t hesitate to reach out!