Knowledge management is one of the most important business functions in any industry – for call centers, in particular, having an effective knowledge base isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s necessary.
Sharing mission-critical information in a digestible format is one of the most powerful ways to keep customers, employees, and stakeholders in-the-know when it comes to customer support, product information, training practices, business processes, and more. That’s exactly why we created Zingtree in the first place; to provide an interactive knowledge management platform that presents just the essential information at each step in the agent’s process flow. In the call center world, interactive knowledge bases and documentation are an incredible alternative to traditional articles, making it easier:
- for customers and call center employees to engage with and understand the content at-hand
- to cut down on time spent solving problems and finding the specific information
- and to enrich information and improve retention with visuals, media, and other interactive elements
In a recent Call Centre Helper article, the author, Craig Rich, delves into how knowledge management functions in the call center landscape, as well as several mistakes that are made often and tips on how to fix them. He shares how knowledge is split into three main categories:
Explicit Knowledge: Formal and systematic, and usually in the form of written documents, it’s easy to communicate and store, such as information found in documentation, books, instruction manuals and on the web. It can also be in an audio or visual form such as instructional diagrams or videos.
Tacit Knowledge: Typically, the information held in people’s heads. The trick is to either enable them to share this information via tools and processes or to connect these people with those needing the information.
Embedded Knowledge: Information stored within policies, procedures, legal documentation and other unstructured data (such as social media). This can require observation, insight and analytics tools to identify this knowledge.
For every type of knowledge that needs to be properly conveyed, managing how it’s processed and presented for consumption can present a new series of challenges without the right tools on-hand. Traditional linear documents can be confusing for agents and can lead to fruitless searches and unnecessary steps being taken; interactive decision tree-based content is much easier to navigate, and also presents the added benefit of enabling reporting to track each step of every procedure – on every single call.
One of the main purposes of sharing knowledge within a contact centre is to ensure that information is easy to navigate and use for all team members. This information should be the latest and most accurate on record and there should be a common source for it, which should become an obvious place for the team to go when seeking information… If applied and planned strategically, knowledge management will allow the contact centre to be the heart of the organisation, demonstrating value far beyond the basic customer interface.
This is where having a complete, comprehensive system in place for knowledge management comes in. With a well-developed strategy for knowledge base management in a call center, there’s a huge wave of benefits that come with it, including:
– Improved contact centre metrics such as Average Handle Time, First Contact Resolution and Customer Satisfaction.
– Lowering the Time to Competency for new employees.
– Lowering overall training costs.
– More accurate call logging, and reduced after-call work (ACW).
– Enabling wider sharing of information across the whole organisation.
– Operational efficiencies communicating key information more quickly.
– Consistency across an omnichannel implementation.
– Ability to create a “trusted source” or a “single source of truth” for key information that needs to be shared either internally or with your customer base.
– A source of intelligence to help product teams improve future versions of products or services.
– Enabling emerging technologies such as AI, chatbots, robotic process automation.
– Increased Employee Engagement.
As the author stresses, it’s important to understand the mistakes that can arise when preparing a complete knowledge management strategy, as well as implementing a system for it, in order to succeed. So, what are the common mistakes and what can be done to fix them?
Keep reading the full Call Centre Helper article here >>
For a call center, an interactive knowledge base can serve as a self-service support platform for both employees and customers alike, offering a guided format for presenting important information, tutorials, and how-tos in a categorized and clickable display. Call centers and other organizations that use decision trees to create a fully-interactive knowledge base have seen a 20% reduction in support-related costs, and ultimately have happier customers and employees due to the saved time and effort.
When it comes to creating a customized, in-depth, interactive knowledge base for call centers, Zingtree has the most powerful toolkit for getting started. With the ability to build decision trees that host product/service information, troubleshooting help, and call scripts securely, as well as integrate with popular CRM tools, it’s a one-of-a-kind way to streamline and simplify knowledge management.
What do you think about the future of knowledge management? Join the conversation with us on Twitter.
Head over to the Zingtree Knowledge Base to see how we set up our own interactive knowledge base with decision trees.