How to choose the best knowledge management software: Key attributes to look for

Today’s digital economy has allowed customers to expect convenience. They want easy engagement with the organization, using a channel of their choice, at their convenience—be it phone, email, web self-service, chat, SMS, or social media channels such as Twitter or Facebook Messenger. These changing customer expectations are posing a big challenge to service organizations, who are struggling to deliver the right knowledge at the right time, across all channels for both customers and agents.

Knowledge management is a critical—and often missing—technology piece. Here is what Gartner had to say: Timely and contextual knowledge presented to agents in a clear and concise form is a pipe dream for most service environments, yet without it the service experience will always be in jeopardy. Knowledge is an underemphasized aspect of experience design and demands a higher prioritization.?

Is your organization also facing similar challenges and is looking to find the best knowledge management software to deliver the right knowledge at the right time?

Here are key attributes to look for in your knowledge management software system (and the solution provider) (think of this as a condensed Knowledge Management Buyer's Guide to help you choose the best knowledge management platform) to maximize your odds of success.

1.?Does it find?

Can the knowledge management software system find accurate answers fast when the customer is on the line and the pressure is on? Make sure your knowledge management software system makes findability easy with flexible search options so that the user can pick the path to the answer he/she likes.

The contact center could also mandate the path, based on agents’ tenure with the organization and regulatory requirements in the case of human-assisted service. Examples of “find” paths include FAQs, keyword search, natural language search, federated search, topic tree browsing, etc. Suffice it to say that the business value of content without fast findability is zero, or even negative if one were to look at the cost of content creation and maintenance.

2.?Does it federate?

Thanks to the Web, online forums, and social networks, knowledge is literally everywhere and is easily accessible. And sometimes, “power users” know more about products, tips, and tricks than even the companies that make them, which could come in handy in customer support situations. Likewise, in consumers’ purchase journeys, online reviews are often the first stop. It therefore makes eminent sense to tap into all this information and present the results on the business’ own website when customers search for answers rather than having them go to other websites, creating abandonment risk. Compiling answers from multiple sources and presenting them to customers while marking them as trusted/curated or otherwise is called “search federation,” an important knowledge management software system requirement now.

Likewise, the knowledge management software system should be able to “harvest” answers from such sources automatically and feed them to the knowledge manager for quality control and publishing as trusted knowledge.

3.?Does it personalize?

Finding accurate answers and getting to resolution is good, but depending on where the user starts the quest for answers it can be fast or convoluted. One way to increase speed to answer is to get hyper-relevant right at the start by personalizing for customer preferences, agent roles, agent skills (e.g., based on products supported, language, skills) etc.

The knowledge management software system should be able to personalize for authenticated customers or even anonymous prospects to the degree possible, while making it easy to deliver hyper-relevant knowledge from one single knowledge base. Doing it from multiple, disparate knowledge silos fragmented across touchpoints creates pandemonium rather than personalization.

4.?Does it guide?

While an important business use of knowledge management software system is finding answers, the next-gen knowledge management software system should be able to guide agents and customers through next best steps in their conversations and processes. After all, today’s millennial agents (and customers) are used to being guided in all aspects of life.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes guidance to the next level. AI-infused knowledge management software systems can handhold agents through customer interactions, based on organizational best practices and regulatory requirements for automated compliance. The output might be step-by-step guidance to a customer goal like problem resolution or even a go/no-go decision on whether to take on or do something.

Watch out for pretenders like rigid scripting and rule-based systems that claim guidance—they tend to put agents and customers in conversation cul- de-sacs, especially when the customer goes off-script (which is not uncommon), and cannot make mid-course adjustments to move the interaction towards the customer goal. Moreover, such legacy systems are difficult and expensive to maintain.

5.?Does it comply?

Compliance with ever-changing industry regulations, whether it is for content, access, or interaction, makes customer service even more challenging for companies, particularly in highly- regulated industries. In fact, 70% of compliance professionals expect increased regulations, 59% expect increased personal liability, and 69% expect compliance staffing costs to rise . This is where AI-enabled guidance offered by the knowledge management software system can help.

6.?Does it embed in other systems?

Does the knowledge management software you are considering offer pre-built integrations so that the knowledge management capabilities can be embedded in the agent desktop provided by the “systems of record” providers such as call center infrastructure, CRM solution providers?

To improve the call set up and wrap up process, the knowledge management software system should include an out-of-the-box integration with leading CRM and call tracking applications. During call set up, the IVR data can be captured to pre-populate questions so that the agent can get a running start on the issue resolution process. After the call, the resolution transcript from the knowledge management software system can be automatically saved in the call tracking system along with the service request. This results in speeding up wrap up and ensuring high-quality data for reporting and feedback, a great way to improve call center productivity. The pre-built integrations to ease the embedding of knowledge in CRM/ contact center desktops is important as the service organizations seek to minimize their efforts and hence the costs to integrate the two systems.

7.? Does it pervade?

Clearly, the world has gone omnichannel, with omnichannel penetration of commerce at anywhere from 35% (healthcare) to 65% (consumer electronics.) And it is no secret that mobile is a big part of omnichannel. Can the knowledge management software system deliver consistent and channel-tailored knowledge on any channel or device?

Does this knowledge management software system under consideration support mobile, whether it is the mobile web with responsive design or an app? Can it bootstrap a human-assisted service conversation or an autonomous remote fix from device data?

8. Does it engage (proactively)?

While delivering knowledge on demand in a reactive way is table stakes, contact centers that want to differentiate themselves deliver contextual, personalized knowledge proactively across touchpoints to accelerate customer service journeys. Will the knowledge management software system you are considering allow you to proactively deliver knowledge across all the touchpoints easily?

9. Does it unify?

One of the top pain points in customer service is the inconsistency of answers across touchpoints and even across agents serving the same touchpoint, per the consumer survey mentioned earlier. Is the knowledge management software system you are looking at capable of delivering knowledge that is personalized to the customer and the touchpoint from a single omnichannel knowledge source?

10.?Does it make it easy?

Out-of-the-box knowledge management functionality, proven domain expertise, best-practice methodology, ease of trial, ease of deployment, and ease of optimization are critical to not only creating business value with knowledge but also doing it with speed and expanding it over time. Will the knowledge management software system you are considering provide best practices, expertise, methodologies to make it easy for deployment of enterprise in your enterprise?

11. Does it “pay”?

If there is a killer use for knowledge management in the enterprise, it is in the contact center. Historically, knowledge management has been limited by weak technology and generic content management substitutes. Not all knowledge management software system providers walk the walk when it comes to delivering actual success.

eGain Knowledge Hub?, the top-rated artificial intelligence knowledge management software scores highly on all these key attributes and is the best knowledge management software choice for your enterprise wide needs.

eGain Knowledge Hub?,?the top-rated, analyst-awarded knowledge management software, guarantees quality customer service by infusing your customer service agents with knowledge, making all agents as productive as your best ones. By providing agents and other users a range of ways to get to information from the common knowledge base, it ensures fast, consistent, and accurate answers.

?Related resources:

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