Knowledge management and customer support efficiency are relatively new fields that represent a movement towards systematic and sophisticated treatment of information or so called knowledge assets.
The use of knowledge management and customer support efficiency may seem like two disparate concepts. But in fact, proper and efficient knowledge management can improve customer support efficiency drastically.
The term “knowledge management” does not have a unanimous definition as of the present, and may refer to the technologies that have arisen to facilitate and enhance the growth and sharing of knowledge. But it could also refer to organizational design, with respect to maximizing the efficiency of knowledge processes. These senses of the term are, of course, not exclusive, and do have some overlap or relationship with one another. An operational definition of the term might be laid out as follows: knowledge management is the identification, documentation, processing, and utilization of information or knowledge assets.
“Knowledge assets” is another rather broad term that includes not only intra-organizational data, but also emerging research from other sources, common knowledge from the past, and so on. In a sense, then, knowledge management has been around for as long as human beings have been trying to use the information that they have to further their organization’s objectives. What the emergence of the “knowledge management” field in recent times actually represents is the development of increasingly complex and effective models and approaches towards this end.
The basic goals of knowledge management are as follows. First is to be able to catalog or identify the knowledge assets that the organization currently possesses. This usually takes the form of databases or libraries, in which are encoded the information found within the company itself, such as programs, research results, data archives, and so on. Next is to be able to create efficient systems for accessing and editing these knowledge assets. The aforementioned databases are not designed to be static and unchanging, but are usually designed to be interactive.
For instance, technical support agents require access to a large amount of technical information in order to be able to provide adequate support. To facilitate this, knowledge managers would aim to be able to create a searchable, expandable database of relevant information. This database could be thought of as an expanded FAQ (frequently asked questions) unit, to become something closer to a Wiki or collaborative encyclopedia. If the agents are able to use this database tool well, then clearly, they will be able to increase their efficiency significantly.
But knowledge management is not limited to just technical information. Another example of knowledge management in action could be in the documentation systems for a contact center. Fast and efficient customer service owes a lot to being able to access customer history and other information quickly and easily. And here, we can make the connection between knowledge management and customer support efficiency. In the case of information calls, then obviously a better-managed knowledge base would prove to be more useful and efficient. For inquiries about business processes, a database containing process information within the company would be very helpful. And even for complaints, an efficient system of logging and documenting complaints could help customer support respond to future, similar complaints.