By
Jodi Beuder
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Date Published: November 21, 2013 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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Comments (1)
With new and improved technologies outside, and in, the contact center, leading companies are turning to customer knowledge management systems to ensure increasing customer demands are consistently met. A knowledge management system is an integrated database of dynamic information that contact center agents have access to, to help them with product information and service solutions, including a knowledge base for easy information collection organization. Knowledge management systems are built for contact centers so agents have all information they need for the customer experience, right at their fingertips.
Just as internal technologies are being improved, so are external resources becoming increasingly abound to customers. And with that bounty comes more customer demand, requiring more information about a company’s products and services, upgrades and defects, recalls and warranties, and so much more. Customers are demanding, and companies look to knowledge management to help them.
Customer knowledge management utilization includes most of a service call time; agents are spending time on the phone doing research on solutions, spending time on discovery of the customer issue, and communicating their findings and expertise to the customer. When a company invests in improving these segments of knowledge management in the contact center, calls will improve, and so will metrics like first call resolution, time to resolution, and average handle time.
By investing in a customer knowledge management system, companies can meet increasing customer demands with ease, by:
Decreasing Research for Solution Time: Knowledge management systems (KMS) are connected to the CRM; customers should look to the CRM first and see what exists there for the customer. If there isn’t much, the next step is the KMS. What are best practices for handling this type of situation? Listening to the customer and understanding their needs is priority for the call; once an agent knows this, they can look to the KMS and its dynamic search engine and find solutions and content specifically based on the customer’s situation.
Decreasing Time Spent on Discovery: Knowledge management systems feature all industry keywords and jargon and connect those terms to the customer’s inquiry and true need. By looking up the customer’s intent in the KMS, direct solutions will come up saving the agent a lot of time trying to define what the customer is asking for.
Lowering Amount of Communication Time: With KMS, a contact center agent can get to a solution for the customer in a swift manner. They can provide more information than the customer expected, based on how much relevant information is within the custom KMS. By having information at their fingertips, agents will be able to solve customer problems quickly and more than efficiently.
Increasing Customer Loyalty: Customers who call in with problems and then get resolution in a swift manner are happy customers. If those customers are also offered additional resources to help them in the future, whether it be regarding the product they called about, or ways they can implement self-service in the future, they will more than likely become loyal customers. Not only was their problem solved, but they walked away with additional benefits.
By having a knowledge management system, contact centers can see improvements internally with their contact center agents, and externally with an increase in customer satisfaction and customer retention. When companies work hard to make their employees’ jobs easier to manage, employee retention improves as well.