Fred Skoler is an award-winning digital innovator, product manager and user experience executive who thrives at the intersection of business results and fun, and I really think this conversation is going to be fun. Since founding MGM Interactive in 1994, Fred has produced hit video games, designed simulations for the US Department of Defense, consulted on user-facing UX for digital advertising, wellness, health insurance, and delivered social games for social good.
In this episode, Fred discusses what he did at Sears in terms of gamification, why you need to have empathy for your customers, how he transitioned from a career in performing arts to what he does now, the main tool he uses to help his potential clients see the need for his services, the importance of setting varied goals, doing smaller tests, and getting feedback along the way, how to determine when to set feedback aside, how gamification helps companies meet their customers where they’re at, and so much more!
Mentioned in this episode:
- Fred Skoler on LinkedIn
- Email Fred Skoler | fkoler@digisnax.com
- Digital Customer Experience Summit
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Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, we have Fred Skoler with us. He is an award-winning digital innovator, product manager and user experience executive who thrives at the intersection of business results and fun, and I really think this conversation is going to be fun. Since founding MGM Interactive in 1994, Fred has produced hit video games designed simulations for the US Department of Defense, consulted on user-facing UX for digital advertising, wellness, health insurance, and delivered social games for social good.
Andrea: I’m so excited to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast, Fred.
Fred Skoler: Hey, hey, I’m Fred. Hey, I know, I’m very excited to be here too. Thank you for inviting me.
Andrea: Fred, let’s start with what did you do with Sears, because I think that might give us an idea of what exactly you do with gamification?
Fred Skoler: OK, sounds great. I think a lot of people wondered when I was at Sears, what I did for Sears. I think there’s a lot of head-scratching like, “OK, well what is that guy doing?” And then ultimately the results spoke for themselves because there were a lot of leaders who didn’t really follow it.
The great news is I worked in collaboration with the chairman to execute the vision for the gamification of kind of the loyalty program called Shop Your Way. And that involved leveraging all of the resources of this, at the time, very large company with multiple marketing groups, 13 business units, a lot of excitement, a lot of engagement around e-commerce, but a deep need to better understand our customers. So, I was brought on to start to work out some of the gamification of the experience. So, if you are earning points for activities, if you are playing games with your friends, if you’re interacting with product and you are sharing your joy, your love, and your happiness around whatever it is that you bought, all of those things kind of played into the role. And it was my job to kind of take that soup and focus it in ways where we would see the results that the business was looking for. And my initial projects were under a group called Integrated Retail Labs and I worked with them to develop something called Sweeps, which was the gamification of the Shop Your Way e-commerce website. I created 50 behavioral kind of little modules that you could combine in groups and have people do these things so that they could be entered into sweepstakes. And sweepstakes, as we may know is a federally regulated thing. It’s not just something you can just run out there and do. So, there are all kinds of elements to that that have to be tuned and assured that they are compliant with what’s going on in the environment that you’re serving. So, I put that together and the tools to drive the engagement. And in the first year, you know, we had 10,000 different sweepstakes that came out. This came, you know, prior. It was costing them like 30,000 sweepstakes and they could do five or six of them a year, 10,000. That was what we got out there. We had 33 million users. We did our job and that was really exciting.
Andrea: Wow, that’s amazing! So is that kind of what you’re doing now with DigiSnax?
Fred Skoler: You know what, in DigiSnax, I’m the chief product officer. So, I work with clients to help them find more value from their customer interactions by leveraging different types of digital experiences. And digital in this context can be apps, web, smart devices, sensors, and things like that and combining that with physical space to feed data models to produce the business results. And the area where I excel is in finding ways to assure that we don’t lose the empathy for our customers in their journey and that we respect them as much as we gain from having them interact with us.
Andrea: OK, so what does that mean to have empathy for the customer in their experience when you’re talking about a digital experience? How do you have empathy? How do you put yourself in their place or what do you mean by that?
Fred Skoler: That’s a great question. You know, a long time ago, I worked with a company called Whatif Productions and the reason for that company was to let someone walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. And that was a totally digital experience. Today, now, you know, 20 years later, we actually have the tools with augmented reality, virtual reality to give someone an experience that isn’t only screen in front of their eyes, but something that’s entirely immersive. But even in that experience where I’m walking and I’m holding on to my phone, there are lots of things that we need to think about. If my primary user is someone who is a woman who has a baby, then I’ve got to consider she’s holding that phone with one hand she need, because she might have the baby in her other arm or a caregiver. Let’s say I’m a father, I’m going to focus on a female user because of some of the size differentiation, of some of the newer phones and where you might need to put buttons depending on the actions that you want her to accomplish. So, the empathy there is understanding that she is hurried or she is dealing with a million things at once. She doesn’t want a lot of noise and she also wants to be respected. She doesn’t want to feel like you’re using her to get something. She wants to feel like it is a symbiotic relationship. So the way that you do design the user interaction, the way that you create that digital experience needs to take these things into account. And my background is in the arts. I come from performing, writing, and directing and that stuff really matters to me and I think it really matters to our customers. And that’s why we see a lot of, well, you know, we get good results when we put good things out there in front of our customers and we truly listen.
Andrea: Hmm. So, how does your background with the arts, writing, directing, performing have a connection with what you’re doing now? I love it. I come from some of a performing background as well. So, I’m really curious to hear about some of that experience or how did you get into this? How did you get here from there?
Fred Skoler: Oh, that’s a good one. You know, it’s interesting because I started off talking about context. I think context is really everything. I was living in LA and I was working sometimes as an actor, but mostly I was working in, actually, digital engagement. I was a founder of MGM Interactive and that came to me because of the work I’ve done with a group called Synapse Technologies where I was their director of operations, but then became a kind of a producer of little digital experiences. And in talking with their strategy and development lead at MGM, there’s a real opportunity to take the licenses, the movies, and turn them into things that people could relate to in an interactive environment. And that was the primary focus there. So, we started making video games based on movie licenses, things like Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 and other things. And for me, the moment of truth was I was there. We had a little talk earlier, I had some kids and I was actually in the delivery room when a script came to me for an audition the next day for a major movie with a director I really admired. And it was a moment of reckoning, you know, it was your big break and it was. It was the breakthrough for me where I realized I had to prepare and focus on my family. And it also made kind of that, “How do you bridge the gap between digital and human?” You know, that connection with me, my daughter, my wife and my family and OK, now I’m going to double down on how do we do that. And I started to work with a company where our objective was to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. You know, what might it feel like to, gosh, I have a diabetes and I have colorblindness associated with that or losing some feeling on your legs or whatever it might be, giving someone that opportunity to have that experience so that they could create for themselves a different context rather than judging, understanding. And so from that perspective, I think the arts are critical. I think the idea of having empathy for the user is critical to being able to drive true experience and something where people just aren’t doing it. They’re doing something because they actually want to because they see value in it and then they see more value in your brand and your services.
Andrea: Do you find that it is difficult for companies to really take that perspective to really empathize to be able to really imagine the other person, that sort of thing? I know that we have to be seeking out big business results. But at the same time, it sounds like you’re saying we have to meet the customer where they are and communicate with them in a way that is going to be helpful for them and possible for them to really interact seamlessly. But yet, is it difficult for companies to really bridge that gap in their own way of thinking?
Fred Skoler: I think that you point out something really powerful. I would say yes, but no, because right now that’s kind of murky. The reality is that there may not be the talent that understands this side of human behavior and action and interaction. There’s a lot of data, but there needs to be context for that data. And because companies are starting to realize and truly understand that they need to know their customers, they’re starting to see the value in this. And I think this is where a really exceptional product manager comes in, and it’s part of what makes a great product manager is being able to be the advocate of all these sides. So, being able to share in terms that leadership understands that value and benefit of doing these things is kind of the bigger role, I think of people like me. I can say, “Look, I got a 47 percent increase in sales from people who are playing these silly games.” “Why is that?” “Well, because I had them in the palm of my hand. I knew exactly what they wanted.” I figured out ways to innovate on basic concepts like sweepstakes in such a way so that we could tune the experience to tell us exactly what someone wanted. Not just, “Hey, here’s something really shiny and cool, do you want it?” “What do you want?” “And if you win that’s what you’re gonna get.” And then take that information and use it in context to then help someone through their journey.
Andrea: So, when you’re having these conversations with the executives or the companies who are wanting this, but they’re having a hard time actually getting there or maybe they’re not sure what they want or they’re not sure how, you know, why it’s important, that sort of thing, what kinds of things do you call upon to help them to understand? So, statistics, you just shared statistics, I mean, in terms of your voice of influence with a company and helping people them to understand it, what kind of things do you employ to do that?
Fred Skoler: One of the big tools that I use is agile, and the agile framework and a lot of different approaches to driving kind of creative discovery, business discovery, and of course production and product management, all can be driven through some of these similar tools. These tools provide a framework by which you can truly focus teams on what’s most important. Because the reality is, you know, if you don’t know what you want and why you want it and what the outcome specific you’re looking for, it’s going to be quite difficult to hone in on what it is that I’m delivering. But those tools help focus these clients so that they know what they’re looking for. And then we have something that’s measurable. So, we have those statistics. We can drive those measurements. We can assure that they’re being tallied from the beginning and we can also do this in an iterative way. We don’t come in and say, “Boom, we got to blow this.” You know, we can do all kinds of little tests.
Andrea: So, iterative changes, not taking on the whole big thing all at once and trying to say that this is the answer, but to have these little tests and say, OK, this one works, this didn’t and that sort of thing, right? Is that what you mean by that?
Fred Skoler: That is, you know, with a lot of experience in road mapping development, you can have goals that are years out. You can have aspirational goals and you can have near term, what are the pieces that you need. One of the ways I like to look at it is, you know, if you’re going to get in a car, you need a few things. Meaning, I need a steer. I need the wheels and I need to be able to sit in this thing, probably I need a motor unless where I’m going is, you know, gravity is going to pull me down that kind of thing. But if it’s four things that I need then I work on those four things first and make sure that those are the things that are going to lead to the outcome that I’m looking for. So, you do a lot of prototyping. You use different types of tools to assure that everyone understands what it is that we’re doing and then you’re able to test it and iterate. I think that whole idea of getting stuff done, sometimes we change stuff to the expletive. You know, that GSD, being able to know what it is that you want and move forward on it rather than trying to do the perfect everything. Get some feedback, get it out there, do it in certain iterative ways and have a genuine discussion with your community at the same time so that you’re not only working from your feedback on what you’re saying, you’re starting to get feedback from real people who really use your product.
Andrea: Hmm. How do you know when the feedback that you’re getting is going to be helpful for the spectrum of folks or if it’s feedback that needs to be kind of put to the side? Or do you ever say, “OK, this particular piece of feedback doesn’t seem to be helpful for where we’re headed.” How do you know when to pay attention to it and when to set it aside?
Fred Skoler: That’s another great one. I think a lot of this comes from experience, but it’s driven by kind of a ruthless prioritization. You know, always looking toward what is it that we really need and going back to, you know, why and some of those specifics. And what we do in product development is we create these user stories. Tell the specifics of what it is we’re trying to do and what the outcome that is expected and what it might be. And so what we do is we leverage that piece of data and we go back to it again and again, “Hey, are we hitting that or is this something new?” And it’s a management challenge as well. But that’s part of why I guess that product manager role is such an important one and that the product manager has the skill set to be able to drive the product forward and make sure that it’s communicated correctly among all of the stakeholders.
Andrea: Hmm. And it sounds like keeping the focus where you want the focus to be, because it’s so easy to get distracted by other things. But if you keep coming back to what you originally set out as what you want and what you’re trying to accomplish, you know, all that clarity that you gained at the beginning. I’m thinking about the entire Voice of Influence audience here who may not necessarily into like gamification but they might be thinking about some of this stuff. And I’m thinking that, you know, it’s easy to get distracted. It’s easy to get distracted by the things, but if you keep coming back to where you started and keep coming back to what you’ve set out to do and accomplish at the beginning, I mean, you have to almost be ruthless with that.
Fred Skoler: You do, you do. And that’s providing the context for what we’re doing. We have to know. And if we don’t know then we haven’t done enough homework, and to jump in without done that homework is inefficient. It wastes, you know, everybody’s time and money, and that’s like the gem. So, coming back to leadership, you say, “Look, do you really want me to waste your time and money on that or do you want to do what you set out to do?” And if they want it in the weeds and you know, micromanaging then they can but they need to know and you need to have the answers as to “Look, this is gonna add number of days to your project.” And in so doing, we are going to be removing these resources that would, otherwise, be working on what you really want and it’s going to be much further down the line or we’re going to add more people to the team and it’s going to cost so much more. But those are kind of logical responses to what sometimes are kind of emotional needs, you know, “Oh, we saw this and we really want that.” “Why do you want that?” “Because we saw it and it looks really cool.” “Well, will it drive your initial need?” “We don’t even have a car yet. We don’t have four wheels. We don’t have a steering wheel.” OK, what we’ll do is we’ll put that on our list of wishes and then we’ll assess it as far as the value it provides to meet our goals, as far as how many resources we need to achieve that goal. And then we’ll look at that in that context and determine whether or not it’s something we want to put effort into, because it may be that the way to achieve that is by doing 10 little things, and each of those things has a cost, but there may be something else that brings more value that only has one or two steps that we can achieve very quickly with the resources we have on board right now. That seems to be from my perspective where we would want to focus. What do you think leadership?
Andrea: That is so helpful and applicable to anybody? I want to get back now before we close this conversation; I want to go back to gamification. What are some reasons why people or companies should use gamification? I know that you care about connecting with a customer? You care about that empathy and actually meeting them where they’re at that sort of thing. How do games do that?
Fred Skoler: Well, I think a lot of it is our understanding of what games are. Marketing is games. It is at its core. It’s finding the triggers that drive your customer forward. Now, if that trigger is an overt activity that has an outcome that is understood then maybe we go, “OK, that’s a little game.” But there are other ways of using these tactics without it being a game. Meaning, as you are going through certain types of content, if I highlight elements in that content, let’s say in a website, so that your eye goes to it and those are the most important features of my product that I want you to know about. I’m leading you. I am using the context of your experience to drive you forward. Now, if I do things there that you start to learn that when you do that, like if you were to click on one of those things, you always get a coupon or you always get a piece of additional insight that I’m teaching you that by clicking on the stuff that I put in front of you, there’s value in it. And by doing that often enough, you’ll start clicking on this stuff that I put in front of you because you know you’re getting value from it, and that’s gamification. This is my perspective because there are gamification platforms that have, you know, ribbons and badges and all sorts of things. There are a limited number of customers who are going to be driven by those pieces. There is value in that and the reality is there’s a very high percentage of us who are considered gamers because of the amount of time that we might touch a game in our day, so many more than we probably thought. My mom was a hardcore gamer. All she did was, you know, she played spider solitaire, but when she had some downtime, that’s what she would do. She was probably playing an hour a day. And some of those factors are part of what we call a hardcore gamer. She’s not the, you know, 70, 80-year-old woman. It might not be what we think of immediately when we think hardcore gamer. But the reason she did that wasn’t because she’s like “Oh, I gotta play a game.” She’s just like, “Oh, I could do better.” In that game there were some very clever tactics, including the sound which would drive activity and the need almost this compulsion to want to come back. Now, those same principles can be used in pretty much any customer journey, whether it’d be delightful colors, whether it be a loading screen, whether it be the way that something sounds or feels. These moments of delight if used to reward at the right time is what I would call gamification. The specific use of games to drive data, which could then be leveraged to kind of increased sales, that sort of thing that’s clear and strong and good stuff. That’s the big part of what I implemented at Sear’s Holdings, but these more subtle elements that we may call, you know, marketing that’s a use of gamification as well.
Andrea: I love the definition that you used or even the phrase that you used, moments of delight. Offering those is what helps people to know to take the next step, to want to take the next step, which does seem very empathetic. At the same time I wonder, could you also help us to know when do we take that too far? When does it become manipulation? How do you navigate that desire to offer something beautiful, delightful, or gratifying? And how can that go too far? Have you seen it go too far?
Fred Skoler: Well, I think it has to do with your customer and your brand identity. So, it would be wrapped up in kind of that and even using technologies like machine learning to drive certain types of information. Some of it, if it’s overused may seem creepy. Some of it may seem fun. That is more about that empathy. That is more about bringing people to the team who has this unique insight because it’s not necessarily something that’s teachable. So, one of the teams that I’ve been on in a large company, they ran a survey and they were basically talking about the archetypes on a team, and one of the things that was missing through their executive team consistently was empathy. And without that, you can’t be driving, in my opinion, a customer focused experience. You can talk the talk, but unless you feel what it’s like, you don’t know. And you know, you can research your butt off, but at the same time, you do need to truly kind of consume yourself with that experience. In my background, that’s what I used to do. You know, that’s part of what it is in comedy and doing improvisational comedy, coming up with characters quickly that sort of thing, that’s the activity. And leveraging that rich experience and bringing it to something that could be seen as just, you know, ones and zeros is what for me is really joyful and why I really liked doing what I do.
Andrea: Love it. I love that so much. I’m glad that you’re out there doing it. I’m glad that somebody with empathy is able to go out there and help companies do this well and bring with you integrity and a desire to truly help the customer. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for your voice of influence. Fred, so you are going to be speaking at the Digital Experience Summit for the Strategy Institute in Chicago in September. We’ll link to that in the show notes. I’m also speaking there. What are you going to be talking about?
Fred Skoler: Oh, I’ll be talking about gamification kind of integrating the seamless digital and physical experiences for your customers, why that experience has been kind of a game changer for companies like Sears, where the rich data and that rich intent truly knowing what someone wants has become, you know, super meaningful. And part of, you know, what it really takes to do something to create that loyalty program, something that’s really going to work today. I start going and wanted to talk about it. It’s exciting stuff for me and so I’m talking about those sorts of things.
Andrea: It’ll be great. So, if you are in Chicago, if you’re headed to Chicago, if you’re interested in that conference, it’s going to be a really, really good one. You can come to our show notes and check it out at voiceofinfluence.net. Fred, how can people get in touch with you if they’re interested in working with you or what do you do with other companies?
Fred Skoler: Well, I’ve been working in a word of mouth capacity in my consulting and I’m very happy to engage with the listeners in any way that might be helpful. I’m always happy to lend a hand where I can. You know, you can find me on LinkedIn. Right now, I think I’m using my full name Frederick Skoler, but you can call me Fred with an f, not a ph. And there’s supposed to be a laugh there.
Andrea: I was holding it back. I’m not going to lie. I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or not but that was funny.
Fred Skoler: You know, it’s a very quiet room and you can hear the crickets, right? So if you’re interested in bringing a little more fun and joy to your products and if you are looking for someone who can help you do that from a very pragmatic standpoint and someone who understands the kind of the business side in building teams, I’m your guy. You can reach me at fskoler, so F as in Fred, byte-size pieces, got it? Byte size, this is a digital goodness.
Andrea: Nice.
Fred Skoler: You know, I can help you do that.
Andrea: That’s fantastic! OK, again, we will have links to all of what Fred just mentioned in the show notes just to make it easy to connect with him if you’d like to. Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners today, Fred.
Fred Skoler: Oh thank you, Andrea, and thank you, listeners, for letting me take a little bit of your time today.