Do you know that as per a study conducted by Microsoft, 95% of customers say customer service is an important driver of loyalty to a brand? That’s why organizations nowadays are more focused on support.
Every organization wants to provide products and services that require minimal assistance from them. Yet, some questions or issues do pop up and they require the guiding force of a blazing fast support team to address customer queries.
Time is money for customers. And they don’t want to spend a lot of it on your support team. That makes speedy resolutions crucial. A strong knowledge management (KM) strategy empowers your support agents to quickly find relevant answers and close tickets.
Challenges Customer Service Teams Face
The performance of service teams directly impacts how the brand is perceived by the masses. In fact, a study revealed that one negative customer service experience can only be undone by 12 positive ones. That’s a lot! So, let us take a look at the factors that ruin CX.
Time for providing solutions due to dispersed information: Making the customers wait for a longer duration can go against the brand. Every customer expects a quick resolution.
When a query is raised, an agent might have to run through systems, departments, and even individuals to provide relevant solutions. This is one of the biggest reasons for the delay which leads to customer frustration.
Obsolete information and duplication of knowledge: Organizations function in a dynamic environment, and it is only natural that some information becomes obsolete or loses its relevance with time. That can bury the fresh and relevant pieces, which in turn increases the turnaround time for agents. Such issues arise when KBs are overlooked or poorly managed for long.
Goes without saying, effective and efficient knowledge management strategies are the go-to solution in these cases.
How KM Quashes These Challenges
A laidback KM will hamper your support team’s ability to provide effective resolutions. Having discussed what shortcomings a support agent faces, let’s take a look at how a better-organized knowledge repository can turn the tables.
1. Provides Access to Entire Knowledge Base
When a query appears in front of the agent, they jump from one window to another to find the relevant documentation, case notes, and customer journey. AI-driven search platforms can help. They help unify all the disparate content sources. In such scenarios, an AI-powered search tool can deliver everything service engineers need right inside their console, thus saving a lot of time.
2. Enables Customer Self-Service
While companies try to deflect maximum cases, even customers find it convenient to find solutions on their own. Creating an online community with a knowledge repository that has data from various channels in one place can be a great idea. It can help customers help themselves, and even each other.
You can take it a step further with AI and ML-fueled addons. They leverage user details and session activities to understand what they might be looking for, and provide better suggestions and answers.
FACT: 74% of millennials have a more favorable view of brands that offer a mobile-responsive customer service portal, reflecting a desire to be empowered to resolve issues wherever and whenever they want.
3. Improves Resolution Delivery
Just imagine the plight of customers who wait for a solution that they’ve already tried (and probably didn’t work.) Unfortunately, this happens more often than one would like. Here again, effective KM can help.
With ML and natural language understanding (NLU) by its side, an advanced KM strategy equips your agents with the means to analyze user journeys and offer better case-resolving solutions. This reduces the average handle time of the case and boosts FCR.
4. Fuels Proactive Customer Service
KM helps businesses to understand what kind of issues customers face the most. This empowers the management to zero-down on the root cause and work on eliminating it. This can be achieved by creating pertaining content well in advance.
For example, in the last software update release, a telecom company received multiple queries for the themes introduced within the update. Taking cues from its previous experience, the company ensures that self-help docs are in place for customers who might face difficulties in accessing a new theme.
FACT: 68% of consumers say it improves their perception of a brand that sends them proactive customer service notifications.
5. Promotes Collaborative Support
When done right, KM brings a lot of advantages to the table. For instance, it helps the organization to better understand the customer needs, analyze behavior patterns, and identify the areas for improvement.
For example, by analyzing version updates, the organization can identify recurring issues. So, the developers can act upon it in the following releases for a more hassle-free experience. This way, all the teams contribute to improve CX.
6. Keeps Knowledge Bases in Pristine Condition
Undocumented cases require more time and effort to be resolved. And once they’re resolved, it is important to add the solution to the KB. Otherwise, all the efforts will be lost and your agents will struggle when a similar issue comes in.
With new aids like Knowbler, the process of creating new knowledge articles can be automated. It scans the response from your agent and leverages NLG to auto-populate a new knowledge article on a predefined template.
Want to master the art of knowledge management? Here’s an ultimate guide for you!
A happy customer vouches for the brand, and an efficient and effective support team makes that happen. But if you look closely, it is knowledge management that neatly stitches it all together and comes out as the real hero. You may find our ebook useful to understand how organizations can utilize knowledge management to scale its customer service.
