What Is Knowledge Management?
What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge management is the process of identifying, collecting, manipulating and maintaining information to make it accessible and usable by your Support Center professionals and customers. The goal of knowledge management is to create a centralized repository for storing all pertinent information that will be needed by the Call Center professionals in order to support the customer base successfully.
A knowledge base is the repository for storing all of this information in an organized and structured way. This tool allows professionals to navigate through massive amounts of information, to make connections between pieces of information and to make sense of these connections easily.
Once the knowledge base is created, it must be maintained to ensure that information is relevant and up-to-date. Access to this knowledge can be shared with your customers through self-help environments. Knowledge bases can also be tied to problem management tools to create more efficient methods of logging service requests and documenting solutions.
The information contained in the knowledge base is not restricted to technical issues – it can also include policies and procedures, contact information and any other subject matter on which customers could phone in for assistance. Information is similar to knowledge much in the same way that a nugget of coal is similar to a diamond. Information is knowledge in its raw form – it must go through a transformation before it becomes valuable. If you think of information as raw material, the process of transformation is the polish it receives before it becomes a valuable asset. Before information can be called knowledge, it must be collected, reviewed, standardized and verified. Information can be false. However, knowledge is fact and because of this, it is also true.
You are only as Strong as Your Weakest Link: The Power of Knowledge Sharing
When referring to the power of a team, it is important to remember the saying; "You are only as strong as your weakest link." This, too, applies to the operation of a successful contact center. If a contact center professional is lacking in any area of service, whether it is technical knowledge, customer service skills, or motivation, it is the duty of the team to help bring that person up to the desired performance level. To accomplish this, knowledge sharing must occur. It benefits customers and the team when professionals work in an environment where information is shared. A team can achieve far more than any one person can.
There are several methods for sharing knowledge within the contact center. The one, most powerful method is the implementation and dedicated use of a knowledge base. With a knowledge base, the contact center will be able to share its knowledge using this on-line tool. As the application accumulates more data, this process will be the most effective platform of knowledge sharing. It will allow any contact center professional to immediately look up relevant information while interaction with the customer. This ability will ultimately result in a higher First Call and First Contact Resolution rate, which equates to happier and more productive customers.
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