Ten Signs Your Search Engine's Stalling
If you want to make knowledge management work for your agents, rather than the reverse, take a look at what's really going on as customer interactions unfold in the contact center. At KANA, we've seen how agents search for answers. And actually, we're very impressed by what some agents do to compensate for the insufficiencies of their KM tools. Unfortunately, these acrobatics are a sure sign that your search engine is stalling—a direct path to inconsistent service and, ultimately, agent and customer attrition.
If you recognize any of these symptoms in your contact center, take it as a call to action: your search engine needs a tune-up!
1. Querying with magic cookies. If your agents are memorizing document IDs or using some other "magic" unrelated to natural search queries to find content, "Houston, your search has a problem."
2. Off-roading to Google. If your agents are proudly (or surreptitiously) resorting to Google to get answers, take a hard look at your search tools. Google is good. But if your search engine can't outperform a generic Web search engine—given it has a much tighter domain of content and context, and can be tuned to your goals—you can do better.
3. Gaming learning. Today's search engines are "smart." No doubt—click-stream feedback is a powerful tool for improving search relevance. But, if agents are expending time repeatedly running the same search and clicking on the "right" document to force it to the top of the results list, your search engine isn't learning-it has a learning disability. Search engines shouldn't have to be gamed.
4. Using Cliff Notes. We've seen agents use everything from note cards to the backs of their hands to scribble titles and key phrases for frequently utilized content. If your over-achievers have taken to "cliff-noting" content to prime their searches, the search engine ain't working.
5. Paper chasing. Are your agents printing out content, littering their cubes with hard copy? That's just another form of cliff-noting. Using functioning search is easier than a paper chase—not to mention more reliable.
6. Doing the link tango. Badly tuned search engines tend to "fixate" on certain content, especially content with lots of links to other content. Smart agents often take advantage of this tendency to click through on anchor articles and then ricochet through the link structure to find the actual content they need. If your agents are doing the "link tango" for information, you know your agents are great-your search, kaput.
7. Lots of "game over" search sessions. When search strings bring back large amounts of content that aren't earning click-throughs (document views), your agents are having the "game over" experience. Unable to identify what's relevant in this sea of material, they're forced to cheat to stay in the game. Smart search engines provide navigation, faceted guidance or clarifying questions to prevent "game over" interactions.
8. Dumbing it down. Your agents are verbally adept, and they'd love to ask questions "naturally." If your analytics are telling you that most agent searches have disintegrated into one- or two-word queries, take it as a direct reflection of your search engine's lack of intelligence. A search engine competent in natural language typically receives 20% of queries in seven words or more and about half in more than three, with fewer than 20% as one-or two-word queries.
9. Easter eggs. If your agents tell you they often find interesting new content by stumbling upon it, your search engine is delivering "Easter eggs." Finding content by accident—especially good content—signals a poorly tuned search engine. New content is usually highly relevant content and ought to be preferred by smart retrieval algorithms.
10. Taxi driver syndrome. Taxi drivers will tell you they don't want a map, they don't need a map, because they memorized the map. Unlike a city topography, a knowledgebase changes frequently. So if your best agents are saying they don't want or need search, it's not because they've memorized all your content. What they are really saying is: We don't need search that doesn't work.
If your agents have to get more and more creative to get the job done—thank them. And then reward them, and your business, by upgrading your KM engine. It'll pay off in efficiency, customer satisfaction and agent retention
KANA has more than 15 years of experience making search work for contact center agents. Take our Interactive Service Experience Assessment to see how effective your organization is at managing the service experience on www.kana.com. Or contact us at info@kana.com. We can help you build a better knowledge management strategy or simply get your search engine running smoothly.
Learn more about KANA's solution for Knowledge Management by downloading our white paper: Six Best Practices for Agent Knowledge Management at www.kana.com
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