As customers become more adept at solving smaller issues through self-service channels, the problems that they contact companies for are becoming more complex.
This is putting contact center agents in a challenging position, as they find themselves having to work harder, as well as smarter, in order to make sure customers leave the interaction with their issues resolved.
Because of this increase in issue complexity, knowledge management (KM) is becoming ever more important. In order to leave customers happy, agents need to be able to quickly access the information they need, whether that’s a list of technical instructions or something as simple as a customer’s shipping address and order history.
In many cases, an effective knowledge management program can mean the difference between an excellent customer review and a mediocre one.
And it doesn’t only affect customers. Employees who are empowered by an efficient, easy-to-use KM system are both more productive and more satisfied, as they don’t have to waste anyone’s time scrolling through endless files to find the one piece of information they need to help their customer.
Here are a few tips on how to improve your knowledge management program.
If your contact center is like most, your knowledge is spread out among many different places. There could be bits of important information in emails, spreadsheets, Word documents, housed on various social media sites...the list continues.
In addition, you may find that certain people or teams have specialized knowledge that you want to capture. Should that person leave or the team dynamic change, that knowledge could be lost. Prevent that loss by asking whoever holds the specialized knowledge to document it in an article.
Then, you’ll want to make sure that all this knowledge - articles, instructions, websites and passwords, etc. - is placed in one easy-to-access location.
Collecting this information and aggregating it into a single place can be difficult and certainly time-consuming. However, it’s vital if you want your KM initiative to succeed.
According to the report The State of Knowledge Management, by thinkJar Research, only 34 percent of companies have knowledge maintenance processes in place. This is in spite of the fact that maintenance has been proven to be the biggest factor when it comes to knowledge management program success.
If you have a specific KM contact center software platform, try seeing whether the system has an alert system built in. Many platforms offer reports that will show you when a section needs maintenance, as well as the amount of usage and user satisfaction.
Even if you don’t have a dedicated KM software platform, you can still create effective methods of maintaining your knowledge. Make your KM system easy to access and update, for example, to encourage agents to fill in any holes or update outdated articles.
Web-based self-service is immensely popular among today’s customers. In fact, according to a Forrester research report, in 2014 76 percent of customers reported relying on web self-service to resolve their issues.
Since customers have proven their preference for self-service over talking to representatives, why not give them access to some of your KM resources? Placing articles and other content on your website in a special customer portal will increase customer satisfaction while also saving your agents time. Making this information available can provide you with up to 50 percent incident deflection, according to Atlassian.
If you want your KM program to truly succeed, it needs to be valued as an element of your workplace culture - not as an afterthought. If agents are expected to contribute to your KM initiative, they need to be given the time to do so.
Too often, companies say they value KM but don’t budget any time or money to build up their systems. This will only lead to frustration for everyone, from leadership on down to employees. If you want to reap the many benefits of KM, you’ll have to devote the resources to building your program - and you can be assured that it will be well worth it.
To learn more about how contact centers are approaching knowledge management in 2016, read our blog post “7 Trends in Contact Center Knowledge Management for 2016.”
