Knowledge Management Systems
What It Is
A Knowledge Management System (KMS) is a computerized system designed to support the creation, storage, and dissemination of information. Such a system contains a central repository of information that is well structured and employs a variety of effective and easy to use search tools that users can use to find answers to questions quickly.
Why It’s Important
One of the greatest challenges of running a contact center is making sure that customers are getting consistent, accurate, and timely information. KMS are developed to help contact center operators meet this challenge. By having answers to frequently asked questions in a central repository, agents and/or customers can search and retrieve the correct answers quickly and consistently. The concept of "create once, use by many" employed in the knowledge management process greatly increases the operating efficiency of contact centers and reduces overall costs. Other tangible benefits include:
- Greater consistency and accuracy of information to customers
- Improved handling and response times
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Reduced contact volume (when implemented as a self-service tool)
- Reduced training time and costs for new agents
- More effective feedback from users on the quality and usefulness of the knowledge.
Most importantly, a KMS can provide comprehensive reporting to help contact center managers to continuously evaluate and manage the quality and effectiveness of the knowledge and productivity of their staff.
How To Implement
A KMS can be implemented in the following manner:
- Deployed as a premised–based solution or as a hosted service provided by an application service provider.
- Deployed for a wide range of knowledge, ranging from simple to the very complex.
- Configured for use by contact center agents as an answer tool and/or as a self–service tool for use by end–customers on a website (e.g, as FAQs).
- Support multiple languages and be deployed to support all communications channels (calls, email, webchat).
- Integrated with other contact center service components, such as Integrated Voice Response (IVR) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and other databases to further enhance customer service and increase efficiency.
One note of caution: establishing a system to support the creation, storage, and dissemination of knowledge is just one aspect of knowledge management. In order to reap the full benefits that a knowledge management system can provide, have an efficient process in place to ensure the right knowledge is captured, managed, and kept up–to–date is vital.
Resources
Content Lead:
Tonya Beres
Page Reviewed/Updated: April 23, 2012
