Smart Knowledge Management For Customers & Agents

Knowledge is the lifeblood of the contact center. When a consumer contacts a business by phone, chat, email, or self-service, that business must be prepared with accurate, timely, and up-to-date information. For this reason, knowledge management has been integral to call center operations for some time. Sticky notes and printouts were formerly the primary tools for agents to utilize on the phone with customers. 

Following this, businesses either implemented knowledge base software from external technology providers or created and maintained internal portals to house the requisite knowledge base content. However, these conventional approaches need to meet the requirements of today's contact centers.

The requirements of consumers are more changeable than ever. Every day brings new advances in technology. The business climate is volatile and constantly shifting. To keep up with the rate and breadth of change impacting their operations, contact centers must transition from static, manual knowledge management to agile, data-driven smart knowledge management. 

Improving Customer Experience Through Knowledge Management

The contact center's knowledge management program has always been quite rigid. Companies compile a database of articles pertinent to solving client problems, which are then reviewed and updated at regular intervals (often quarterly or yearly) based on the knowledge and experience of managers. Utilizing AI capabilities, smart knowledge management brings this process into the present day, allowing businesses to examine data from both self-service and supported service interactions concerning the usage of certain knowledgebase articles and then evaluate, update, and manage these articles to conform to the changes that have been seen. Knowledge management that is both effective and efficient relies heavily on data, analytics, and AI.

Knowledge-Managed Companies Experience High Performance in All Areas

Since assisted and self-service operations are powered by accurate, timely, and relevant information, businesses can better meet quality service-level agreements (SLAs). These SLAs may assure that customers' concerns will be resolved without further communication or more than a certain number of handoffs between agents. While every company is different and will use its own service level agreements (SLAs), every contact center needs the knowledge to succeed. Knowledge users who are particularly astute at applying what they've learned report a YoY increase in the number of quality SLAs met, which is 2.6 times higher than those who are less knowledgeable.

Effective Knowledge Management Increases Profits And Lowers Expenses

The contact center may be transformed from a cost center to a strategic facilitator of revenue development via the astute use of knowledge management. It achieves this by equipping call center staff and field salespeople with the playbooks and information to maximize cross-sell and up-sell possibilities. Once again, the use of AI abilities is crucial in this regard. 

With the use of AI, businesses are now able to automatically identify the conversational context and assess the journey's overall flow. Agents and sales representatives may be instantly informed and given next-best-action suggestions for a customized cross-sell / up-sell offer if models based on comparable previous interactions indicate that a specific portion of the discussion constitutes a cross-sell / up-sell potential.

Key Takeaways

One of the most important factors in a company's ability to respond to changing market circumstances and customer expectations is the knowledge management practices of its contact center. Companies need to catch up to those who implement smart knowledge management (dynamic, data-driven, and AI-enabled) because they rely on conventional knowledge management operations (static and manual). Users skilled in the use of knowledge management rapidly identify windows of opportunity for tailoring supported and self-service activities with the appropriate material to resolve client difficulties. They've found that by increasing efficiency, their service expenses have decreased while their income has increased.

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