Today’s customers have incredibly high expectations—and when they reach out to customer service for help on any channel, from phone to chatbots (and everything else in between), they expect to get their questions answered or issues resolved, fast.
To do this, every part of your business—well beyond customer service alone—must have centralised access to accurate, up-to-date information at all times. Not only is this sharing of information a tried-and-true business best practice, one capable of boosting organisational efficiency and productivity, but it also has a trickle-down effect that can impact virtually every aspect of the experience your customers have whenever they engage with your brand.
Achieving this requires implementing an effective knowledge management system organisation-wide. But what exactly is knowledge management? In this article, we’ll discuss why it matters for your business and how you can put your knowledge base to good use, both internally and with your customers, to drive real and lasting impact.
IBM defines knowledge management as the process for identifying, organising, storing and disseminating information within an organisation. First, a knowledge management system is essential for ensuring your company’s internal teams—especially those that touch the customer experience in some way—have access to a central repository of consistently accurate business-related information. But arguably even more important, this can almost organically form the backbone for how both customer service agents and customer self-service solutions are able to address customer needs more effectively.
And if there’s anything we know to be true today, it’s that nothing stays the same forever. Information today changes rapidly in the face of shifting business objectives and evolving customer needs. Unfortunately, many companies simply haven’t invested in the right resources, whether they be tools and skilled staff, to manage through this ever-changing flow of information at scale in a streamlined and well-organised way.
What should be an even bigger wake-up call for companies, however, is that as employees change roles or leave altogether, critical information all too often gets lost in the shuffle. This can have an incredibly negative impact on all business functions, in terms of both cost and productivity, that can take years to “rebuild.” But that doesn’t have to be the case.
The primary goal of a knowledge management strategy is to give companies a centralised, scalable, and convenient way to access and update essential information that supports key business functions, including customer service. Doing so can break down the silos existing within companies, departments, teams, and even employees themselves to ensure that everyone has quick and easy access to consistently accurate, up-to-date information at all times.
Even more, it eliminates the need to update the same information in multiple places, which has the added benefit of minimizing the potential for information inaccuracy.
A knowledge management system takes the hassle out of how companies share information and facilitates an organisation’s ongoing knowledge transfer, so employees—including outsourced customer service agents—can dedicate more of their time, effort, and energy on high-value activities that improve the customer experience and boost a business’s bottom line. Not to mention, having good knowledge management practices in place can give companies a competitive advantage.
If a company’s shared knowledge has lived in siloes or has been managed in ad-hoc ways for years, the hardest part of launching an effective knowledge management strategy is simply bringing all of those pieces together in a uniform way. This requires a significant investment in time and resources to collect, collate, and curate literally tons of information.
The next big challenge is making sure that the information you’ve brought together “under one roof” is up-to-date and accurate before disseminating it organisation-wide. Getting over these hurdles is the key to ensuring that everyone within your company has access to the same information without having to look high and low for it. However, if your company has never been the poster child for knowledge sharing, don’t expect this to happen overnight.
Having access to accurate and up-to-date information is more important today than ever before. Digital tools and services have accelerated our ability to produce unlimited streams of content. But that means, within companies, there’s a lot of content and information floating around, much of which can have an even greater impact if made easily accessible to those who need it.
Keeping this in mind, the biggest benefits of knowledge management typically revolve around:
An effective knowledge management process allows companies to streamline their operations and take proactive steps towards improving the customer experience from the inside out.
There are a lot of productivity benefits that go hand-in-hand with implementing a successful knowledge management strategy, including:
In fact, 74% of organisations estimate that effective knowledge management increases company productivity by 10% to 40%. It also has the added benefit of boosting employee happiness by eliminating the roadblocks that make it really hard for employees to find the information they need to do their jobs effectively. This comes at a time when employees spend up to 26 days per year searching for information when they could dedicate that time to more meaningful work.
While it may not be something you think about regularly, there is actually a big cost to not sharing knowledge uniformly across your company. For some the cost of lost knowledge, resulting from a single employee’s departure, can run around $1 million. For others, it’s absolutely priceless. This makes a lot of sense because every time critical and valuable knowledge gets lost, companies have to start from scratch to fill the void. Doing so requires allocating valuable resources that would otherwise be focused on keeping the proverbial trains moving forward.
These costs also add up fast—so much that it has been found that Fortune 500 companies lose over $31 billion per year simply by not sharing knowledge across their organisations. Therefore, there’s really no scenario where the cost of investing in a knowledge management system outweighs the costs and implications of not sharing organisational knowledge altogether.
Don't hesitate to read our article 100+ Inspiring Knowledge Base Examples to know more about some knowledge base use cases.
Companies that share relevant knowledge effectively have a leg up on creating better, more cohesive customer experiences by making critical knowledge easily accessible to all teams that touch the customer experience in some way. This is even more important within the customer service experience: The faster that customer service agents can access pertinent business or customer information whenever customers reach out for help, the quicker they can resolve customer queries—which has a direct impact on overall customer satisfaction and happiness.
In the context of customer self-service solutions, knowledge management systems—primarily knowledge asset bases—allow those intelligent tools to tap into a repository of accurate information to help customers be more autonomous throughout the entire customer journey. When implemented well, these solutions can answer up to 70% of tier-1, FAQ-related queries on their own and, as a result, reduce the number of requests into customer service by 50%. This is especially important knowing that 72% of customers today prefer finding answers to their questions on their own before having to reach out to a live customer service agent for help.
This not only gives customers a better way to get the (oftentimes simple) information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, but it also frees up customer service teams to dedicate more of their time and attention on resolving complex customer requests. But this is virtually impossible without an effective knowledge management in place.
“Companies that prioritise knowledge transfer are perceived by employees as more competitive with respect to revenue growth and client satisfaction. Workers see them as more innovative and more attractive for employment."
— ‘The New Knowledge Management’ (Deloitte)
There are a lot of different kinds of knowledge management systems used by companies today, but they certainly aren’t one in the same. Here’s a quick rundown:
82% of employees said their organizations need to do a better job of tying knowledge to action.
— Source: Knowledge Management (Deloitte)
Now that you understand the critical importance of knowledge sharing across your entire organisation, it’s time to put a knowledge management strategy into action. But you might be wondering where to start. Fortunately, we’ve put together some helpful tips on what you should keep in mind when implementing a knowledge management system for the first time:
Companies today simply can’t afford to keep knowledge and information hidden within silos.
So, if your company is ready for a knowledge management system, but you’re not sure where to start, the good news for you is that Smart Tribune has a solution for you: Smart Knowledge.
Our intuitive, AI-powered knowledge management software helps companies organise and share business-critical knowledge more effectively and efficiently while also creating a foundation for implementing intelligent customer self-service solutions—like Smart FAQ, Smart Bot, and Smart Push—that help customers be more autonomous at every step along their journey with your brand.
To learn how Smart Knowledge can transform your business, schedule a demo today.