A business can have service offerings everywhere you look, run by the best contact center agents. But if the knowledge management behind the customer service is shaky, it can count against you and even lead to lost customers. Service is one of the key determiners of how long customers remain with your brand. In addition to the speed with which inquiries are processed, the quality of the answers the customer receives is also crucial. But how does knowledge management for customer service work, and what does it do for your business?
The customer has a problem — and your customer service has to solve it. What’s needed is a quick solution. With a knowledge management to rely on, it’s easy to find the right answer. Search times in customer service can be reduced by up to 90%. And your employees only have to enter the content on a central platform once. Consequently, the quality of the content increases as well — because knowledge suppliers, editors, and knowledge consumers are in constant communication and know how to optimize the content. If an employee leaves the company, the knowledge doesn’t leave with them, but stays in the company — which is critically important for its service. And the positive impact of properly integrated knowledge management goes beyond the employees. The customer also benefits because the resulting high-quality knowledge ensures rapid and accurate solutions for issues that customers have, increasing their satisfaction. Customers have positive experiences with your company, and employees are unburdened. Instead of seeking answers, they find them.
When is it smart to employ knowledge management?
How to deploy knowledge management
At first glance, it seems like there are more customer service solutions out there than you can shake a stick at. Choosing a system should focus on one criterion — the requirements of the user. The software should deliver knowledge at the right time and place and not require extensive training or expensive modifications. That rules out wikis, because any user can edit the knowledge, which leads to a free-for-all and reduced information quality. Unstructured search engines that require the user to assess a large set of results themselves are also inappropriate. Only a knowledge management system designed for use in customer service can ensure that the user gets only the information that is specifically required on their screen. Especially now that omni-channel service is ubiquitous, a central knowledge base is very important, if for no other reason than to ensure consistent answers.
In addition to the technical side, the organizational and human side of knowledge management is decisive for its successful implementation, especially with regard to the design and implementation of the content.
Success comes from content
The information in dynamic FAQs or tutorials that you’ve made easily digestible can answer customer questions quickly. Since you’re offering this type of self-service knowledge, a lot of direct requests or tickets never reach you in the first place. But to gain that advantage, you need a systematic approach to knowledge management.
Start off with more general questions and then go into greater detail. You should place a project manager in charge of gathering information who will involve all the employees. The collected information then goes to the editorial team, which adapts it for the corresponding channels.
If you involve your employees from the beginning as your most valuable source of knowledge, you’ll ensure that everyone understands how important it is to have a knowledge management solution. Intelligent workflows with knowledge expiration dates, approval procedures, message management, and a suggestion feature will make it easier for knowledge editors to acquire, maintain, and update information. That’s a solid foundation for your customer service.
Proactive service generates satisfaction
Once you’ve started using knowledge management for customer service, you can also provide proactive service and prevent questions from even coming up by offering predictive information. This is a viable option, as a study by Harris Interactive/InContact demonstrated: 87 percent of users were pleased to have a company communicate with them as a customer and 73 percent of the consumers receiving the positive communications say that they now have a more positive opinion of the company. That means it pays to deploy knowledge management, link it to your CRM, and actively distribute knowledge to customers. Why not get started today?
For more information on how to perfect your customer service, visit www.getsabio.com/solutions