By improving knowledge management and customer support efficiency, companies or business organizations will be equipped with a competitive advantage that will be instrumental in the achievement of their goals.
Several companies have acknowledged the fact that knowledge management and customer support efficiency will give them the needed competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced business environment.
The concept of knowledge management is a concept that is not familiar to many. It is commonly defined as the identification of available and required knowledge assets and the control of actions to use and develop these assets to achieve organizational objectives. This includes not only the intellectual assets inherent to an organization but also corporate information of other companies, as well as knowledge-based technologies and best practices. Knowledge assets refer to the knowledge or information about markets, technologies, organizations, and products that companies own to enable them to profit from their business process. This knowledge or information can be obtained from different sources, like databases or data warehouses, folders kept in filing cabinets, and may sometimes be stored only in the minds of people. With knowledge management as an emerging business trend, many enterprises now see the need to “know” and determine their knowledge assets and to make maximum use of them. This trend further stresses the need for companies to focus not only on their tangible assets but on the intangible ones as well
Various knowledge engineering methods have been developed recently in response to increasing popularity of knowledge management. With these methods came the development of tools that are especially designed to build and support knowledge-based applications. Regarding strategic planning, business organizations need to be able to plan future business processes by carefully analyzing the information or market intelligence that they currently have. When it comes to tactical planning, business organizations also need to identify and organize existing knowledge as well as acquire new knowledge that can be used in the future. Generally, programs on knowledge management are tailor-made to the organizational objectives that need to be achieved. These objectives can be the attainment of a competitive advantage, improvement of performance, development of collaborative projects, or the launch of developmental processes.
In line with knowledge management, knowledge mapping may have to be done from time to time as a form of auditing procedure. This may include mapping or establishing the relationship between business processes and certain knowledge assets and the relationships between communities that create and share knowledge or information. The advent of the Internet has made it increasingly more convenient for companies to manage their knowledge assets through enabling technologies like web conferencing, content management systems, e-learning, and even blogs.
With a highly-efficient knowledge database, it would be easier for key personnel to make informed decisions that would largely benefit the entire business organization. Staff efficiency could also be significantly improved, as pertinent information is readily accessible to them. Many firms and business organizations believe that with proper knowledge management, customer support could be tremendously improved. This is a pivotal development, as customer satisfaction is found to be strongly related to the quality of customer service support provided to end-customers. Customer support and publishing costs can also be reduced with the ready availability of needed information. Thus, the need to be on the lookout for knowledge management and customer support efficiency.