Why Legacy Knowledge Management Doesn't Work for Customer Service Anymore
The pandemic overwhelmed the customer service infrastructure
“Due to overwhelming demand for service, we are not able to take your call.”
“Our wait times for customer service may be longer than usual due to COVID-19.”
When COVID-19 came, it brought a tsunami of questions about payment deferrals, paycheck protection programs, COVID-19 infection, stay-at-home directives, shipment status, and more. These overwhelmed contact centers and websites. A large insurance provider, that is also an eGain client,?saw a 700% increase in customer service demand amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Calls to a retailer’s customer service were pushed to voicemail. You left a message, but never heard back. The same thing would happen to a follow-up email. This led to customer frustration with many switching to competitors.
FAQs and legacy “knowledge management” don’t cut it anymore
1. Digital interactions are up
The volume of digital interactions with businesses went up during the pandemic. 80% of respondents reported that they had increased their use of digital customer service since the onset of COVID-19. That behavior is here to stay. As the uncertainty with COVID infections continue, so do the interactions.
2. Queries come in all shapes and sizes
Questions, related to COVID-19 or not, come in all “shapes and sizes”. They fall into three main types: Informational, transactional, and situational. Here are some examples.
INFORMATIONAL QUERY
TRANSACTIONAL QUERY
领英推荐
SITUATIONAL QUERY
These are queries that entail problem resolution, purchase advice, etc.
Many websites have FAQs or basic keyword searches that put the burden on the consumer to read reams of documents or process hundreds of search results to find answers for themselves. Others have deployed chatbots that can “meet and greet” but get stumped even at the slightest hint of complexity in the customer query. The result? More angry calls to add to the tsunami.
3. Hybrid work model is a new challenge
Moreover, customer service agents have been dislocated. What started off as a result of stay-at-home orders and offshore contact center shutdowns, has become, some say, a permanent state of affairs.
Remote or hybrid work has continued even as the pandemic has turned endemic. No more walking over to the next cubicle for help or picking an expert’s brain in realtime. The business has the tough task of keeping remote workers up to date with company policies, processes, and service know-how. When they can’t? There’s more customer frustration and defection.
New customer and agent situations require new knowledge management
To be able to handle the range of queries in the pandemic era and beyond, businesses need a new kind of KM, not FAQs, basic keyword search, clueless chatbots, and document repositories. Do you agree?
Note: If you would like to know the what, how, why of modern knowledge management in customer service, we invite you to attend eGain Solve 22 on October 11-12 at Las Vegas. Do check the agenda , and if you think it's a useful conference (apart from the fact that it's free), register on the page.
More resource for you:
Find out what is meant by new knowledge management.
Here's more on the types of knowledge
What is Knowledge Management?: https://www.egain.com/what-is-knowledge-management/