Cleaning Up on the Customer Experience
KM Saves Customer Time
Over at Attivio, CEO Stephen Baker also sees a connection between the customer experience and KM. He notes that people expect a speedier resolution to their problems and faster answers to their questions now that interactions have moved online. Instantaneous, or close to it, responses to customer inquiries and complaints have become the norm. Particularly in the digital world, it’s always a good idea to work on not wasting people’s time. As Baker writes, making data and content accessible is key to an excellent customer experience. Content unification is essential to providing quick and accurate customer service. When employees have to search through numerous sources of siloed information, customers become dissatisfied.
Going a step beyond this, Baker believes that Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies can be applied to pull the relevant information from all that unified content. Analyzing contextual user information leads to targeted answers, ones that truly address what the customer wants and needs. In a world where customers “crave self-service,” having the technology in place to allow them to do this—and do it swiftly, efficiently, and correctly—is critical to satisfying customers. It’s KM that underlies an improved customer experience. With a good system in place, intelligent answers and insights flow naturally to the customer.
Key Component of Customer Services is KM
Mounir Hilal, Upland Software’s Chief Customer Officer and Senior Vice President, also credits KM with being the key component to excellent customer services. With customer expectations increasing all the time, companies need to be ready to meet those expectations. Central to that is KM.
Some aspects of customer service are repetitive. Think simple queries about opening hours, location, and directions. Only slightly less repetitive are specific questions about products, such as whether it comes in blue. These are the easily automated issues, ones that make customer staff into subject matter experts in no time.
Hilal brings to the conversation an acknowledgement that emotion plays a role. When employees are empowered to provide their expertise, they feel valued. This creates happy people who become company advocates and, in turn, convey their positive emotions to customers. Happy customers are repeat customers.
How companies interact with customers is a core component to success. Whether it’s fixing a dry-cleaning error, providing accurate product information, or solving a customer support issue, your ability to employ KM and related technologies will help you to clean up on the customer experience.