Transforming Contact Centers Using Knowledge Centered Support

Introduction:
I was driving a team responsible for building one of the leading Knowledge Management tools in the world while driving the CRM practice for my orgainzation. Without a lot of background knowledge on CRM & especially Knowledge Management or Contact Center Applications - given my background in software engineering for Financial Services - I was swamped with the data and my corresponding lack of knowledge initially... but the topic was so interesting and topical that I was intrigued. Intrigued enough to spend the past 2 1/2 years - incidentally loving it -working on several contact center consulting projects & CRM implementations especially in the Telecom and Financial Services Industry. Amazing experience and this article is a compilation of some of my thoughts around Contact Centers and Knowledge Management over the past 2 odd years...

Base Camp:
Over 92 percent of U.S. consumers form their image of a company based on their experience using a call center. However, Call Center is regarded as one of the major 'cost elements' for accounting purposes. The tool or process that is most essential for customer attrition is regarded as by many as a 'cost element'. Funny right?

The Customer Service and Support (CSS) centers of today need to transcend much beyond handling customer requests with minimal cost. CSS has to be enabled to make the transition from being regarded as a ‘necessary cost center’ to an ‘indispensable profit center’. The key to this, I argue are Knowledge Management, Channel Integration, Effective HR Training, Integration with Back end systems and a Culture of Continuous Customer Centricity.

Why is KM so important?
Lets understand why KM lays such a crucial role in a contact center or a CSS channel:

1. Minimize time to resolution – the key to customer satisfaction during a call or a transaction is not just the time taken to identify the customer (which is pretty straight forward given the investments most companies have made in stand alone CRM & IVRS systems) but the time and efficiency by which the customer issue or query is resolved to complete satisfaction. This requires a high degree of sophistication in terms of Knowledge Management, Integration etc.
2. Knowledge Driven Service Model – A good KM model allows companies to capture unstructured data, information and structured data and make it available to all employees and customers, as well as outsourced contact center agents/companies. This presents a model for effective updation and modification of Knowledge Management & ensuring the knowledge is captured and processed into identifiable and re-usable chunks of data
3. Customer Loyalty: Effective KM sharply reduces the need for escalation or change in agent due to specialization within a contact center. There is a direct cost benefit of reduced escalation & additionally, a more strategic impact on customer satisfaction. We all – as customers, recollect positive experiences with pleasure which makes customer retention easier and good press due to increased CSAT.
4. Customer Data: Market research practitioners will agree that Customer feedback is extremely difficult to gather, analyze, authenticate and draw actionable items from with a large degree of certainty. With effective KM in Contact Centers there is an easier way out than asking Customers to fill in long questionnaire or answer interminable questions from an often bored and dispassionate interviewer. Knowledge-powered Web sites and other channels enable the business to capture the customer's dialogue with the organization, which can be easily analyzed and action items derived for customer insight and increased wallet share.
5. Pursuit of constant improvement: A structured KM program allied to effective tools breeds a team of people constantly trying to improve available knowledge. This is especially true for companies with a large and diversified customer base and correspondingly large Channel Management office.

A step by Step Primer to Implement a KM Solution for a CSS:
About to come...