KM for Omnichannel Customer Engagement

Superior customer engagement remains one of the few differentiators that businesses can sustain over time. The winners in today’s omnichannel environment are the companies that leverage knowledge to empower customers and contact center agents, and provide standout customer experience across channels and devices.

We have implemented knowledge solutions for blue-chip companies worldwide, helping them design and deliver great customer experiences. In the process, we have compiled hundreds of best practices. Here are some of the popular ones.

1. Quantify value. Assessing expected and realized ROI before and after the deployment helps you justify the initial investment as well as continuous improvement of the knowledgebase (KB).

Best practice: Make sure the ROI metrics you use are aligned with business objectives. For instance, if your business goal is to increase upsell and cross-sell, reduction in average handle time will be a conflicting metric. As you assess ROI, keep in mind that knowledge management (KM) delivers positive ROI across a broad range of business problems. Some examples are:

• Deflection of requests for agent-assisted service through effective self-service;
• Increase in first-time resolution and sales conversion;
• Reduction in escalations, transfers, repeat calls and average handle times; and
• Reduction in training time, unwarranted product returns, field visits and staff wage premiums.

2. Build the team. Successful KM implementations employ the right team for knowledge capture, creation and continuous improvement.

Best practice: Empower a cross-functional team that can bring a 360-degree approach to knowledge management. Best-practice teams typically include the following members:

• Strategist: Lead expert that determines the organization, topics, roles and responsibilities, and long-term plans;
• Select users: High-performance service and sales agents, who use the KB on a daily basis, can provide useful feedback from the trenches, and even contribute answers. Be sure to reward such agents to foster ongoing knowledge contribution;
• Subject matter experts: Experts that have answers, especially for questions of high complexity
• Knowledge authors: Writers and publishers that are focused on content development, taxonomy and publishing; and
• Project managers: Tactical managers that keep the project on track and ensure forward momentum.

3. Start with depth. Unfocused knowledge deployments almost always result in a shallow KB that is full of holes like Swiss cheese. If users can’t find answers, or receive inadequate or wrong information, they will simply stop using the system.

Best practice: Focus first on depth rather than breadth. Start with common questions on common products or lines of business (the 80–20 rule) and expand out over time.

4. Implement best-practice frameworks. Best-practice frameworks have emerged over time in knowledge management. For example, the KCS framework, advocated by the Consortium for Service Innovation (CSI) and popular in the tech industry, is a comprehensive methodology that helps improve speed of resolution, optimize resources, and foster organizational learning. Adopting frameworks like KCS is a win-win-win for customers, contact center agents, and the organization alike.

Best practice: Look for “KCS Verified” providers to implement the best and the next practices in knowledge-centered customer support.

5. Maximize findability. Users prefer different ways of searching for information, just as drivers prefer different ways of reaching their destination. Some drive on freeways, others would rather take the scenic route. A GPS-style approach with multiple options to find information dramatically improves knowledge base adoption and ROI. For example, new agents may find it difficult to wade through hundreds of keyword search results, but might fare better if they are guided through a step-by-step dialog, powered by technologies such as case-based reasoning.

Best practice: Multiple search options such as FAQ, keyword and natural language search, intent-driven search, topic-tree browsing and guided help allow a broad range of users to quickly and easily find information. Make sure to use a common omnichannel knowledge platform to ensure consistency of answers and don’t forget to deliver knowledge across traditional and mobile devices for access anywhere.

6. Crowdsource, but scrub. Most businesses are not taking advantage of the enormous opportunity to tap into community and social knowledge and, when they do, they often make the mistake of creating yet another inconsistent knowledge silo.

Best practice: Foster and harvest social knowledge but scrub and unify with trusted knowledge, and then proactively publish across all channels. Knowledge in online communities and social networks foster peer-to-peer service and can help augment enterprise knowledge assets.

Best Practices = Success

Implementing these KM practices not only delivers ROI, but also enables transformative customer experiences. Here are some real-world examples:

• Premier home appliance manufacturer: $50M in savings by eliminating unwarranted truck rolls through knowledge-powered resolution processes in the contact center and website.
• Semiconductor giant: 59% increase in Web self-service adoption, 30% increase in first-contact resolution.
• Global knowledge and legal services solution provider: 70% deflection of calls and emails through knowledge-powered self-service, 30% reduction in content authoring time.
• Leading telco provider: 42% reduction in unwarranted handset returns through knowledge-powered resolution process in the contact center.
• Global bank: 88% reduction in agent training time and 70% increase in productivity through knowledge-powered account opening process in small business sector.

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eGain customer engagement solutions power digital transformation for leading brands. Our top-rated cloud applications for social, mobile, Web and contact centers help clients deliver connected customer journeys in a multichannel world. To find out more, visit http://www.egain.com.