Dynamic Knowledge Management
Key to Better Web Self-Service

1. Build knowledge that is in the context of your customer. Many organizations incorrectly assume that publishing product manuals, and similar formal descriptive documentation, to the Web will enable their customers to solve their own problems. While this may work in some instances, most product manuals aren’t constructed to resolve customer issues. In other words, the context of the knowledge is incorrect.

Building knowledge in the context of the customer starts by understanding the questions they ask and keywords they use when they search for solutions. This process starts in your call center and extends to your website. In your call center, customer queries need to be captured in the actual "voice of the customer." This point of contact is where "conversational knowledge" is created. Much of your success with self-service will be your organization’s ability to develop conversational knowledge. While this may require a significant "rewiring" of how your call center agents handle customer calls, a robust knowledge infrastructure will empower them to accomplish this without additional overhead.

2. Understand your knowledge coverage ratio. Knowledge coverage is another factor to consider when planning to roll out self-service. Simply stated, how many of the known issues with your products have well-documented solutions? As noted in the example above, most customers may search twice on your self-service website, but each attempted search that fails will reduce their confidence in self-resolving their issue.

By studying coverage closely, you’ll increase the chance that your customers will succeed in resolving their issues via self-service. With a robust knowledge management infrastructure, your organization can become proactive in closing those gaps by analyzing reports that identify areas where customers were not successful in finding a resolution. Understanding this coverage ratio, and proactively developing knowledge to cover more resolutions, will substantially increase success rates on self-service.

3. Enable content vitality. A final factor is putting in place a knowledge infrastructure that enables knowledge vitality, or freshness, through deeply integrated processes. Knowledge is ever-evolving. Unlike product manuals, which are typically tailored to a static state, your customers’ experiences are dynamic and ever-changing. Your self-service knowledge should reflect the best resolutions of this cumulative set of customer experiences.

The best way to capture these experiences is through integrating systems and processes throughout your customer lifecycle management approach. The right knowledge management infrastructure will enable this content vitality by empowering both your customers and employees to participate in real-time knowledge improvements. Your empowered employees should be able to modify knowledge on issues as they evolve, giving your organization the ability to present the best knowledge options to your customers in real time.

A Dynamic Environment is the Ultimate Goal
When considering self-service, it is important to remember that customer-centric knowledge is not created just by your organization. It intimately involves your customer in a constantly evolving ecosystem. To improve your customers’ chances of finding the right knowledge, at the right time, the three focus areas above should serve as foundation blocks for your knowledge management solution.