Optimizing Customer Service through Knowledge Management

The proliferation of customer service channels and increasing customer expectations for accurate answers across all channels has made it more difficult for organizations to provide adequate customer service.

This report looks at how implementing an end-to-end knowledge management strategy delivers a better customer experience while significantly reducing operating costs.

One of the most common problems companies face is having inaccurate or outdated content published in their web, e-mail, chat or other knowledge bases. This leads to an inconsistent customer experience and eventually a loss of trust in the company. Many organizations also face internal governance issues, either through a lack of central knowledge administration, or confusion about which business unit or group owns and manages content. In some cases, there are separate knowledge bases for different channels and groups, such as customer care and marketing, resulting in discrete content silos, as well as higher resource and technology costs to update and support multiple systems.

To improve the customer experience, it is critical for organizations to address these problems through an accurate, accessible and easy-to-maintain knowledge management base. From client experiences, Accenture recommends adopting an end-to-end knowledge management strategy that combines enterprise-wide governance, and well-defined processes with a knowledge management platform.

Today, when customers have questions about an organization’s products or services, they have many options from which to choose: the self-service options on the company’s website—using a computer or tablet, an e-mail to customer service, an online chat session with a customer service agent. The list seems endless.

Regardless of which channel customers choose, they want easy access to an accurate and consistent answer. This expectation puts organizations into a quandary. Customer service executives must determine how to supply correct answers to customers across a proliferation of service channels, for the lowest possible cost. To achieve this objective, organizations should balance increasing customer expectations with several internal operational decisions—all related to how knowledge is managed.

To maximize return on investment for a knowledge management system, organizations should focus on content that is:

• Accurate. Knowledge management content must be correct and address an organization’s core issues.

• Accessible. Content should be easy to understand and viewable through the channel and devices customers use.

• Easy to maintain. Organizations should implement clear and simple processes that enable customer service representatives to establish a virtuous loop, continually reviewing and updating content based on feedback, ratings and analytics.

Based on a number of successful client experiences, Accenture recommends adopting an end-to-end knowledge management strategy that combines enterprise-wide governance with well-defined processes to drive usage of a centralized knowledge management platform based on leading-edge technology.

The ultimate solution is an integrated, enterprise-wide knowledge base—one that organizations can use to capture, store, retrieve and continually refine valuable information to provide customers with the right answer, at the right time, across all channels. Equally important, this approach can help organizations reduce operating costs while optimizing the customer experience.

Three components should be included when adopting an end-to-end knowledge management strategy: People, processes and technology.

• People: Knowledge management is most effective when an organization has an established knowledge management capability and dedicated knowledge organization, staffed with committed resources—people who will create, manage and use the knowledge.

• Processes: A well-defined and standardized content management process encompasses detailed workflow processes, along with collaboration tools such as feedback cycles, rating systems and analytics, to help continually improve content—from generation through to delivery.

• Technology: An integrated, enterprise-wide knowledge management technology platform that enables searching, sharing and archiving across the full content life cycle.