Knowledge Management:
The Holy Grail for Today’s Economy
With all the channels and means for customers to get information, you might think a centralized knowledge management (KM) strategy isn’t important any more. In fact, it’s the exact opposite—KM is more important than ever. The multitude of channels from call centers, VRUs, email, retail stores and company websites to social networks like Twitter and Facebook has exponentially multiplied the opportunities for inconsistent and just plain wrong information to be everywhere.
Think about the vast array of technology in play: content management systems and knowledgebases are used in the contact center; the website has an FAQ engine; the email response system manages its auto-responses; and social forums maintain their own databases. The trouble lies in disseminating content to all these different applications and databases. They are being modified by different people with different skill sets, and when you add in global distribution and multiple languages, it gets even more complicated. Even if you could make the changes to these different engines in a matter of days, how consistent and accurate will the answers be when you’re done?
This is why KM has become mission-critical. You need to be able to quickly create, maintain and update content across all channels so that customers can rely upon the accuracy of the information and know that it will be consistent regardless of the channel they are using to access it.
Consistent, Accurate Knowledge Delivery
So how can you make sure that customers are finding accurate and consistent information regardless of the channel they use? This is really a two-part question. First, how can you rapidly disseminate information across channels? Second, how do you help your customers find and consume this content?
The answer to quickly and easily sharing content is to use a knowledge platform. A knowledge platform is purpose-built to make the business of disseminating content across channels a rapid “one-step” process. Rather than requiring each channel’s underlying technology to be manually updated, a single update from the knowledge platform can push the most relevant content to every channel and customer-facing process when and where it is needed.
Think how this capability can help you improve the quality of your service—and gain a competitive edge. For example, your company wants to offer a 50% discount to consumers who switch to your service from a competitor. This offer must be communicated and supported by every customer channel including the contact center, retail locations, website, VRU, Facebook page and even your field service technicians. With a KM platform, you can create this content in a single place and propagate it to all the channels. When a service agent logs into the CRM application, the knowledge is already in place and integrated into the desktop application. When a customer logs on to your website, visits a retail location or kiosk that is fed by the KM repository, your special offer becomes an integral part of their experience. With just one source of knowledge, the offer is not only delivered in a unified, consistent and accurate manner everywhere the customer goes, but it can also be implemented far faster than if you had to wait for every channel to be updated individually.
High-Value Customer Experience
So, with a knowledge platform, you can deliver information far more efficiently and effectively, and that means you are providing a much more satisfying customer experience, right? Well, yes—and no. Certainly, increasing consistency and accuracy, getting crucial information out there right away to meet customer demands—all of this is going to improve the experience. But now the problem of helping customers find what they are looking for arises. Too often, companies rely on enterprise search engines or content management systems that offer only keyword search. Customers find themselves caught in endless search loops, sifting through page after page of results, giving up and making a phone call to your contact center, or asking their friends for help. Even worse, they may turn to a competitor and bad-mouth you to their friends over all those social channels. As Harris Interactive reports, 86% of customers will stop doing business with an organization after just one bad experience, and 82% of them will tell their friends about it.
The answer is not to present more results. Instead, help customers avoid the content clutter with a specific and relevant answer. This requires understanding the intent of each inquiry—a capability that is not available with enterprise search or content management. KM solutions that offer intent-based search leverage natural language processing, business rules, behavioral analytics, ontologies and the context of the inquiry to discover its “true intent” and deliver the most relevant answer. For example, a self-service customer asks how to complete an online transfer between her checking account and IRA. Instead of searching all repositories and producing a massive results list, KM directs the search to the most relevant knowledge source, such as the page on the support site that explains how to complete transfers, or a micro-site for IRAs. This eliminates the presentation of irrelevant documents that just happen to contain the words “checking account” or “IRA” or “transfer,” all of which could produce hundreds of results.
Advanced KM combines this intent discovery with “directed knowledge” that enriches the experience, both from the point of view of defining the inquiry as well as providing a response. For example, a wizard can guide a customer through the process of picking just the right product. The result can include not just the most relevant funds-transfer procedure, but also offer a rich environment of related knowledge, such as links to appropriate FAQs, a tricks-and-tips online forum and even a special offer or promotion related to the inquiry.
Killing Two Birds With One Stone
Why is there a new heightened focus on knowledge strategies? The current economic climate has forced businesses to be exceedingly vigilant on the cost of service and at the same time figure out new strategies to increase customer spending and retention. Top brands today are implementing knowledge strategies to make sure information across their global business is consistent and accurate. These same strategies bring new offers and products to market faster; quickly deliver troubleshooting solutions that prevent costly contact center inquiries; help customers find answers as rapidly as possible; and surround answers with information and opportunities that deliver more value every time a customer touches your company. The fact of the matter is that in this world of channel explosion, social exposure and fiscal responsibility; there are few things more relevant or more appropriate than a well-implemented knowledge management platform.
InQuira is a leading provider of intelligent knowledge solutions that connect people to the answers they need.For additional information, visit www.InQuira.com.