In this information-driven, on-demand economy, a company's ability to manage and leverage information is moving into the spotlight. Companies that are able to capture and leverage the knowledge of their employees, subject matter experts, customers and partners most effectively achieve numerous benefits, including:

Enhanced employee productivity and satisfaction
Improved business processes throughout the organization
Greater profitability
Increased customer satisfaction and retention

These are some of the key drivers behind Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives. What do you mean by Knowledge Management, you ask? Although there is no universal definition of Knowledge Management (KM), generally it's a process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, value generation involves capturing what employees, partners and customers know and sharing that information among employees, departments—even with other companies—to derive best practices. Technology is a key enabler.

While each of the aforementioned benefits merit attention, for this issue of Leverage, let's focus on the last point—increased customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, how does Knowledge Management enhance and strengthen customer relationships? Let's take a look.

Developing and Leveraging Customer-Focused Best Practices

First of all, with the right processes and technologies in place, companies can capture and share key knowledge from employees, partners and customers, including:

Knowledge of customer-related processes and how they interact

Knowledge about customer behavior and personal preference

Knowledge about customer product use or service quality

Employee knowledge, such as sales practices and client care insight

Business partner knowledge, such as the complimentary services and products of interest to customers

Knowledge about the skills, competencies and goals of specific employees

Improving Service Quality, Efficiency and Effectiveness

Next, Knowledge Management can play a key role in improving contact center and customer service interactions. KM technologies that provide the ability for customer service representatives to access the right information at the right time enable more knowledgeable, efficient, and effective customer service interactions. With answers to their questions and guidance on resolving issues at their fingertips, representatives are empowered to resolve issues with greater speed, accuracy and consistency.

As an excellent example of Knowledge Management in customer service, a nationwide retailer utilizing the RealDialog™ Agent Assist knowledge management system in their contact center realized the following improvements within just six months of implementation:

Reduced customer hold times by as much as 86%
Decreased average call handling times by 37%
Cut escalations by 62%

Customers don't need to wait as a service representative seeks answers or information among paper documents, external data systems, other employees, or their managers—nor do they need to call back at a later time to get what they need. Service agents can address customer issues quickly and accurately—in a single contact.

This ability to resolve more issues on the first contact reduces the costs of repeat callers and directly increases customer satisfaction. In fact, studies indicate that for every 1% improvement in FCR, you get a 1% improvement in customer satisfaction.

Also, having immediate access to the information they need enables service agents to maintain a singular focus on the customer. They interact with confidence and deliver a more personalized experience while making a strong emotional connection with the customer. New and inexperienced agents can deliver high quality service and accurate information without extensive training time or costs. Employee job satisfaction increases as interactions with customers become easier to manage, and happier employees mean happier customers.

Ensuring Consistency Across Channels

Few things frustrate customers more than receiving an answer via email from one representative that is different than the one they received on the phone from another. A KM technology that supports multiple interaction channels can improve service efficiency as well as quality and consistency of email, chat, Web, and even remote service/in-store interactions. Regardless of how they choose to contact a company, customers can trust the information they receive. As more and more customers opt for these channels, this can greatly impact overall customer satisfaction.

Improving the Online Self-Service Experience

To ensure positive online self-service experiences, companies should enable their customers to reach the accurate and consistent answers they seek with minimal effort. The KM technology that underlies the self-service system has a significant impact on this experience.

Next-generation KM technologies (like Astute Solutions' RealDialog) mimic the experience of interacting with an expert "live" agent—enabling customers to ask questions the way they wish and receive immediate, accurate, and personalized responses. They can do this because they understand natural language, understand the intent behind questions, and are integrated with relevant data repositories.

Customers are more satisfied with this type of self-service experience as they get what they want and need, immediately. They don't need to wait on hold or wait for an email response. At the same time, the volume of calls and emails into the contact center declines, which enables agents to focus on delivering higher-value, higher-quality experiences to inbound inquiries.

Increasing Responsiveness to Customer Wants, Needs
and Preferences

Next-generation KM technologies that continuously capture customer and employee inputs and queries enable a company to become more responsive to customers' wants, needs and preferences. These technologies harness, analyze and enable managers to view actual customer questions and feedback, which can reveal:

Unanticipated issues and questions
Ideas for improving the customer experience
Problems and opportunities that impact the customer relationship and the brand
Ideas for new products and enhancements

This provides a deep level of insight that companies can leverage to fix, strengthen, or enhance customer relationships. This includes identifying specific changes or additions they should make—to their knowledge base, products, services, and processes.

Conclusion

Improving Service Quality, Efficiency and Effectiveness

As you can see, knowledge management processes and technology can play a significant role in the customer experience and can serve as an enterprise-wide change agent for ongoing product and process improvements that impact customer relationships. The right KM technology enables companies to improve satisfaction by delivering higher quality service and consistent, accurate and timely information across all customer touch points. In addition, they can help companies retain existing customers—and win new ones—by capturing critical insights that drive product, service and process improvements.

To learn more, about Astute Solutions' next-generation knowledge management technology, RealDialog, visit www.astutesolutions.com/realdialog.php

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