The oft-quoted statement: “Knowledge is power,” is more relevant today than ever. But the challenge is to mobilise it. After all, taking knowledge from various systems and transforming it into operational and customer benefits is no small feat.
Consider the sheer amount of information that resides within corporate environments. Far from remaining static, it continues to grow exponentially. Internal teams - like contact centre agents - waste valuable time looking for the right information to deliver it to the customer - in the right format - at their time of need.
Moreover, customers expect fast and accurate answers. When they don’t get them, contact centre conversations can go from bad to worse.
Indeed, it only takes one or two disappointments for a customer to look for alternate solutions, and few things upset them more than incorrect or inconsistent answers.
The solution is to harness knowledge with an advanced Knowledge Management System (KMS). With a finely tuned KMS, agents will save time, reduce overhead costs, and deliver a positive experience.
Unfortunately, the process of centralising knowledge into a single, easy-to-use system is incredibly complex. Why? Because knowledge is everywhere.
The Benefits of Knowledge Management
In organisational settings, knowledge management unlocks an understanding of customer wants, needs, and preferences. It also allows service teams to answer their queries with little hesitation.
As an Enghouse guide states: “At its heart, the concept of knowledge management is simple. It starts with collecting information from those that have it, such as subject matter experts, and then delivering it to wherever it is needed, in the right format to whoever needs it. However, turning the concept into reality is more difficult.”
“At the same time, the importance of knowledge in the contact centre is growing. Customer queries are increasingly complex, while the information itself is changing rapidly, requiring knowledge to be kept accurate and up to date.”
Accessing Knowledge - Contact Centre Problems & Challenges
A typical contact centre agent faces the following challenges:
- High volumes of repetitive questions take up agent time.
- Complex product and service offerings require longer onboarding and training.
- Multiple sources of knowledge are scattered across the organisation, often only in the head of employees.
- Global multilingual audiences.
- Customers expect fast and accurate answers regardless of channels.
Managing Knowledge in the Contact Center
The solution is to centralise information into a knowledge base. This will help businesses deliver answers to whomever needs them.
“The key is to tailor the information to the situation and the capacity of the audience to utilise it,” said Steve Nattress, Product Director at Enghouse Interactive.
It’s also important to be consistent across all channels like IVRs, chatbots and websites. And with agent-assisted channels like voice, web, chat and email.
“The knowledge has to be everywhere,” said Nattress. “And the Enghouse Knowledge Base can deliver it where it’s needed.”
A Video Is Worth 1.8 Million Words
Gone is the day when a picture was worth a thousand words. Now, as Forrester research estimates, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words.
Indeed, video has rapidly become the preferred media to deliver information. One-third of users in the US have watched one tutorial per week. Forrester also estimates that 75 percent of employees in the US prefer a video to reading text.
“The goal should always be to get the information fast,” Nattress said. “Enghouse uses advanced AI to deliver exactly the right piece of information - or even the precise piece of information within a video that contains the answer.”
Combined with email and web chat tools, the Enghouse AI engine automatically suggests answers to the agents by understanding customer intent and matching it to content within the knowledge base.
“This goes way beyond keywords,” he said. “The minimum unit of meaning is a sentence.” The Enghouse Knowledge Base can analyse sentences and gauge context, which is a powerful tool. Even better, it allows agents to focus on higher-level inquiries while other customers find answers on self-service channels.