The Exporters: a customer focus game for Kaspersky Lab

Customer focus refers to a company's ability to create an additional customer flow through in-depth understanding and satisfaction of their needs.

As Kaspersky Lab seeks to better understand its customers and strengthen this skill in the future, it approached ManGO! Games requesting to run a customer focus game session.

In four hours corresponding to four full years of playtime on a made-up island, the participants came back to reality armed with important experiences, skills, and findings.

Mission. Hold a customer focus game for one of the company's departments.

Background. There are three important tasks the company has decided to focus on over the coming year:

• Strengthen customer focus.
• Increase mutual awareness between departments.
• Improve cross-functional interaction.

The management's concern was the company's fragmented structure and silo thinking demonstrated by certain departments.

We decided that the Exporters client-focused game should best serve this purpose.

Game process. In the near future, Russia made a huge economic breakthrough to produce the world's best eco-fueled unmanned cars. Upon entering the global market, a certain manufacturing company becomes a major exporter in the field, aiming to outpace the competition and gain world leadership.

With the world market waiting for Russian cars, each client country has its own cultural peculiarities and regional demands, something important to keep in mind when communicating.

The company's ultimate goal was to balance two smaller ones:

• Financial: make a million-ruble profit.
• Corporate: uphold an impeccable reputation by maintaining a high customer satisfaction rating.

First of all, the Kaspersky Lab participants were divided into 5 groups: Clients and Company's Management, Marketing, Sales, and Logistics teams.

Each round, clients were to represent a new country with its own specific needs and national peculiarities. During the 40-minute gameplay period, they approached and explained their needs to the company. The exporters' task was to meet the delegation with due respect to the guests' national traditions. The marketing team, among other things, was required to come up with an advertising campaign to meet the client's region-specific needs.

Each round was followed by an intermediate feedback session. Over the four in-game years, the company was expected to gain valuable lessons from this experience.

The mechanics of the game allowed the participants to try on different business roles, gain experience in handling inconsistencies, and realize the importance of customer centricity.