Anyone that has designed a detailed customer experience strategy knows the value of knowledge management. A good knowledge management system (KMS) can be the difference between revenue growth and failure. Consultants and business academics have argued for years about the best way to explore the knowledge within a company, but we now have cloud-based solutions that can be readily integrated into any size of business environment, simplify the knowledge experience and truly deliver value to the organization whether from a financial, customer satisfaction or colleague satisfaction perspective.
Why is knowledge management so important to designers of customer service processes? If you can extract corporate knowledge and integrate it seamlessly into agent tools and training then agents on the frontline are more prepared and better able to find answers to customer questions, indeed the information may be automatically presented to them via an AI based rule. Errors and misdi-recting customers to the wrong information are also reduced. A strong KMS can really help to get the right answers to the customer at the right time - and the first time they contact you. As I have spoken about previously, there is nothing, in my opinion, more important that first contact resolution for a customer.
Forrester Research recently published a very interesting report that includes one of our leading partners here at TTEC EMEA - KMS Lighthouse.
The Forrester study was exploring the Total Economic Impact of using such a KMS system. They found that a specific KMS Lighthouse customer achieved a 269% ROI on the initial investment over three years ($2.2M net present value) and increased customer satisfaction considerably.
Enterprises and customer service organisations use KMS Lighthouse to optimise knowledge across the entire organization to drive efficiencies in customer inter-actions across any channel they chose to engage with. Improved access to knowledge drives employee satisfaction, reduces attrition, streamlines onboard-ing of new hires, and improves customer satisfaction. It should be noted that easier access to the right answers also creates a strong boost for employee sat-isfaction and this cycles around to customers - if the employees working on cus-tomer service feel better supported and capable then they will serve customers better and drive satisfaction for both. This is more critical than ever when we consider the employee may be 100% remote and lack the physical support of a team leader or supervisor. Delivering the best tools to help them significantly reduces frustration.
As mentioned, to create this report, Forrester Research interviewed a KMS Light-house client. They worked on identifying the benefits, risks, and outcomes ex-perienced while using the KMS Lighthouse knowledge management product. The client reported reduced training costs and reduction in both the classic con-tact centre and digital channel handling time.
There were also some interesting additional benefits identified during the study - in addition to the headline ROI figure the client enjoyed:
- 18% reduction in contact centre average handling time
- 25% reduction in digital channel average handling time
- 75% reduction in training time
These are all very impressive statistics, but just look at the reduction in training time. Just imagine if your customer service team could use a KMS to reduce training time by 75%. There is an immediate measurable benefit from being able to get team members up to full productivity faster, but there is also this feedback loop where employees are happier that they can be productive more quickly, feeding into their superior performance and ultimately, increasing the customer satisfaction.
Well deployed and integrated KMS is essential for any modern customer service strategy, and this research shows that Lighthouse KMS is a leader in the field and should be a strong consideration for your organisation.
Let me know what you think about the Forrester research report. Please leave a comment below or get in touch via my LinkedIn.
