Why is Knowledge Management Important?

First, a definition. Knowledge management is defined as the process of creating, using, sharing, and managing the information in an organization. Knowledge management is also a set of practices to maximize the business value of an organization’s knowledge by gathering, maintaining, and delivering it at critical points in business processes.

Why is KM important for customer engagement and contact centers?

When it comes to contact centers and customer service organizations, knowledge management is a critical—and often missing—technology piece.

A. Knowledge Management is important for the service experience

Here is what Gartner says about knowledge.

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.

Gartner analysts have previously cited Knowledge Management (KM) as the No 1 technology for enhancing the three main customer service perspectives of operational performance, CX, and employee experience.

We couldn’t have articulated the dire need for knowledge management any better!

B. Consumer surveys reiterate the value of knowledge

Knowledge-related issues are the top deterrents to getting good customer service, according to a massive?consumer survey conducted by Forrester Consulting. When asked, "What are the biggest pain points that customers face when contacting a company for customer service," this is what respondents said:

1. Different customer service agents give different answers (41%)
2. Customer service agents don’t know the answer (34%)
3. Can’t find answer on website (31%)

Not surprisingly, these issues are mirrored on the agent side.

• 65% of contact center agents cited knowledge-related issues as their top hassles in providing good service to customers, according to an?eGain survey?of contact center agents worldwide.
• No wonder 84% of contact center agents hate their desktop tools (Source: Gartner).

C. Knowledge management elevates agent, customer, business experience at the same time

The benefits of knowledge management can't be ignored.

Done right, knowledge management can elevate the experiences of multiple stakeholders at the same time—customers, agents, authors, administrators, business managers, and others.

Specific to contact centers and customer service organizations, KM can transform—not just improve—contact center metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), First-Contact Resolution (FCR), Agent Time to Competency, Compliance, Average Speed to Answer (ASA), Consistency of Answers, and Agent Confidence in Answers.

Here are some results we have actually seen from blue-chip clients that have implemented our AI-powered knowledge solution.

Telco client: The business made it mandatory for its agents in contact centers and staff in its retail stores to use eGain Knowledge and AI guidance to solve customer problems. The adoption led to a 37% improvement in FCR and a 30-point boost in NPS across 10,000 agents and 600 retail stores.

Global bank: The bank soared to #1 in customer service NPS and reduced training time by 50%, even as it expanded to 11 countries with mostly novice agents in its workforce!?

Another telco: This telco reduced induction training time by 43% and time-to-competency by half.?

Water utility: The company used AI-infused Knowledge in the contact center and on the website and saved ~$5M per year by reducing unnecessary engineer callouts. It also improved FCR by 30%.

To know more about what knowledge management is and what it can do for your business' customer engagement,

• visit https://www.egain.com/what-is-knowledge-management/ and also
• sign up for eGain Solve 22 , eGain's annual event and the best place to learn how to do KM right.