Recently I came across this cartoon on the Facebook page of Knowledge Pad.  My first take was a smile and the thought “how off target”.  "Cavemen are attempting to capture knowledge, and it’s not even valuable, how ridiculous."  For some reason though, I continued to turn the cartoon around in my head and ponder my initial reaction.  My conclusion is that I’m wrong, and our natural inclination as KM pros is to neatly fit the round peg into the round hole.  However, while we don’t always get the ideal shapes, we still must make use of the captured knowledge.  They are capturing knowledge and it is useful when viewed in the right context. 

“We should right that spot down” could have many different meanings:

1.     The spot they found the mammoth

2.     The spot the arrow penetrated the mammoth

3.     The spot where they notched the arrow into the bow, causing it to accelerate so rapidly as to slay dinner for a month

4.     The spot they found the arrowhead that finally penetrated the thick mammoth skin.

In today’s KM systems and methodologies, the knowledge captured by these two cavemen could lead to a serendipitous moment (thanks Mike of UNICEF).  A little bit of tagging with keywords, a nice searchable title, and we actually have four potential pieces of knowledge derived from the cartoon:

1.     The ‘spot’ they found the mammoth is not significant to the locals; they already knew they live in a land filled with mammoths.  This knowledge is inherent.  However, an ancient Egyptian from the Nile Delta areas searching for a mammoth will probably never accomplish the mission.  Delivering the ‘spot’ knowledge to the Egyptian opens up new possibilities.  Sync it with google maps (old parchment), he now must traverse down the Nile River, cross the Red Sea and the Negev Desert, hike north into the Alps, and find mammoths in Gaul (or whatever it was called when mammoths existed).  Without a clue as to what/where the ‘solution’ is, the Egyptian will probably never find a mammoth until the KM system delivered a document from a geography and culture very different from his own.

Knowledge, no matter how obvious or simple to some, is not always inherent across business silos, cultures, and geographies.  Documentation of work experiences, best practices, and interaction builds a base of information that colleagues and/or co-workers may or may not reuse.  Making it available to others at least gives them the chance to find the ‘mammoth’, which perhaps they don’t even know exists.

2.     In the cartoon, previous arrows have always harmlessly bounced off the lumbering beasts.  Sort of like when Bilbo Baggins gains information on Smaug’s vulnerability in The Hobbit, these cavemen have found the soft spot in the mammoth’s thick hide. For generations, the cavemen have lived in fear of the mighty pachyderm, but now the tide has turned.  A new source of food and the ability to prevent stampedes becomes evident. 

Knowledge Management is increasingly getting information based upon others’ experience to a client/end user at their point of need.  Documented knowledge is reused at different rates.  “Password Reset” may be used 10 times every day, while “How to conduct a goat rodeo” may be viewed once a year in a 100,000 end user organization.  “Password Reset” provides incremental value, while “Goat Rodeo” may inspire a new routine at Ringling Brothers.  But when the time comes, wouldn’t it be nice to search and find the way to prevent a mammoth stampede is by shooting the matriarch in the lower abdomen?  That’s the beauty of KM:  you never know when or how it may be reused. 

3.     The cavemen were using the bow with string as a musical instrument.  Plucking the string with a pick (a stick with a pointy stone attached) produced a pleasant sounding vibration.  It also happened to attract a few curious mammoths.  Panicked by his predicament, the caveman took his music “pick” and attempted to fling it at the menacing mammoth using his bow as leverage.  Eureka!  Saved from a stomping plus dinner for the whole clan!

The intersection of luck, defense, and music gives us a new knowledge object.  Spreading this knowledge around eventually led to a descendent combining the use of fire with bow and arrows to create a stunning Olympic opening ceremony.  The point is this:  without the capture, process, validation, delivery and reuse of the original knowledge, the occurrence of subsequent innovation and creativity takes more time, in turn costing the society (organization) resource and expense.

4.     20 minutes before the miracle of killing a mammoth, the two cavemen had stumbled upon a rock mine full of black stones with jagged edges.  Never having seen obsidian before, the cavemen replaced the (in comparison) brittle gazelle horn from their arrow shaft with the new found unbreakable stone.  On the first shot, the cavemen could not believe their good fortune as the stone tip pierced and the prey fell. 

Marking the ‘spot’ of the quarry allows others to use the same resource and not have to reinvent the wheel or stumble upon a solution too.  KM centric organizations are constantly striving to build these efficiencies into their everyday processes.  IT Help Desk agents are searching the knowledge base first.  Enterprise KM initiatives are replicating this methodology too by having employees’ blog and create Communities of Practice to share similar experiences. 

So what have I (and perhaps you, the reader) learned today?  My barrier to see outside my normal thought process caused me to laugh and dismiss the Caveman Cartoon as archaic and ridiculous compared to the present state of KM.  How wrong I am though.  This is the basic building block of KM, Capturing knowledge.  Today, we Process it through the KM system.  It becomes Validated by our peers and the community at large.  The knowledge is globally Delivered through multiple channels.  People then Reuse the knowledge to create the desired result, or innovate by combining knowledge into new outcomes.  Thank you, Gary Larson, for taking me to the Far Side of Knowledge Management and back. 

The smallest stone will still cause ripples in the pond... In the support and call center space we are constantly trying to wring out new efficiencies.  Better ways to communicate, less costs.  Consultants and Vendors (Ridgehead included) pontificate the value of various projects which have big-win implications.  Sometimes though, it's the little things that we barely notice which will increase our metrics by a hair or two and improve customer satisfaction for minimal to no cost.  The following is an example.

I came across a neat little site yesterday:  www.fontcapture.com.  Font Capture allows you to create font from your own handwriting.  My first thought was WOW, now I can forge handwriting ;).  Next in the mental checklist:  How can we apply this technology to support center operations?  Resulting brain-dump:

1.     All agents have signature on emails

2.     Chat too

3.     Chat Bot fun

4.      Does this add another security layer?  (still pondering this)

Adding a personal touch, no matter how small and brief, is a great way to add character to the interaction.  A signature humanizes the email or chat exchange.  This is significant because the client’s perception of a call is enhanced with a human being, a person at the other end, and not just a drone to which they release their frustrations upon.

The real fun begins with branding a Chat Bot and adding the signature.  What if the Subway (fast food chain) help/service desk had a photo of Jared and his signature as part of a Chat Bot?  Or universities use their mascot with a cute name.  The user intuitively will know they are not chatting with a live agent (maybe we have a button to “Escalate to Live Agent”), but the smile is there, the mood is lifted. 

Increased automation collapses many of the person-to-person interactions.  Font Capture gives us a way to recapture a little human touch without adding time or significant cost to each contact, and it’s automated!  We will increasingly blur the lines between human and machine during phone or computer exhchanges.  Recognizing this trend, introducing the changes subtlety into the company culture, and embracing new innovations are the keys to success in the future.   

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

As mentioned in our last blog, help desks are not receiving an increase in budget unless they are government related or a recent merger/consolidation occurred.  In fact, most help desk managers and call center directors have a constantly scrutinized budget which is probably shrinking.  “Do more with less” is a common statement coming from the CIO.  How can we navigate these turbulent times and leverage our knowledge to create more value for the organization and hold ground in the budget battle for our troops (agents) and business unit (call center)?  Here are some tips to help create a plan of attack (and expand the personal knowledge bank too):

·         Sharpen and expand your skill set.  IT support staff management may lack skills that come naturally to leaders of other business units .   Earning an IT degree, moving into middle management, and then effectively working the political landscape of the office is quite tricky.  Many of the 2 and 3 year IT degrees do not teach Marketing, Economics, or Management courses which help prepare the ambitious IT professional for advancement beyond "team leader" or "Level 2 support engineer".  Therefore, we must diligently stengthen and hone our non-IT expertise.  If the thought of delivering a presentation to management makes you squirm, check out your local Toastmasters.  Read Negotiation Genius to gain perspective on soft skills which improve persuasiveness.  C-level folks and your competition take entire courses in the art of getting the best deal.  Learn their tactics, and add them to the arsenal in order to survive.  BONUS:  As a by-product, normal job tasks will benefit from your improved sales, negotiation, and presentation skills.

·         Think like a CXO.  Speak their language!  Leadership is more apt to consider your request when you deliver the message in their lingo.  Make sure your proposal is easy to measure and compare against company numbers and proposals from other business units.  CXOs (and SVPs in larger orgs) want to SEE a cost/benefit analysis in dollars/pounds/euros/yen.  Their business metrics are balance sheet and profit/loss related.  Executives don’t react to “if I have 5 more agents, Average Hold Time will be reduced by XY seconds, thus increasing customer satisfaction by 10% and getting employees back to work faster."  They don't understand, don't have time, and frankly don't care about the nitty-gritty details.  Quantify your needs and the resulting organizational benefits into corporate speak: "By an increase in budget of $100,000, we will save the organization 4,000 labor hours in the business units we support, which correlates to a $400,000 increase in productivity."

·         Know your internal competition.  Competition?  Within my organization?  Marketing people, the sales team, R&D, plant operations and other business units all have something in common:  they are all trying to maintain or expand their piece of the budgetary pie too.  The pie is finite and currently contracting for a majority due to the global recession.  More hungry mouths, less to go around.

So, you think you can reduce costs by 15% in the long term by seeing a short term increase in budget allocation of $100,000 for a project.  You casually mention this at your bi-monthly concall with the CIO.  In the meantime, other groups have similar projects which they pitch to management too.  Example:  Sales may have a plan that ideally increases revenue by 10%, but will take $100,000 in order to open the new market.  They send to the CFO, CIO, and other decision makers a market research report with anticipated costs and projected revenue streams for the next 3 to 5 years.  Competition for the same $100,000 happens every day, and most in IT don’t even know how bad their butts are getting kicked. 

In summary, mid-level IT managers are struggling in the current climate.  Competition is fierce for finite budget and many CXOs view the help desk as a cost-center with minimal and/or negative impact on the bottom line.  Learning and honing new skills will expand your skill set and get you more face time with leadership.  Once there, articulating budget requests in upper management language is paramount to success.  Additional motivation comes from innately knowing that fellow associates are competing for the same limited resource.  Good luck and reach for the sky.  Your increase in revenue or decrease in expenses is important and worthy of consideration if you frame it properly into dollars and sense.

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

The transcript is allegedly real.  We are amused by the cleverness of the end user.  The agent also scores points.  However, I’m sure that the metrics at Bloomberg’s desk will get skewed due to other people trying similar pranks. 

Seriously though, this interaction provides the Help Desk industry much to ponder.  What if we expand the scope of Help Desk coverage outside of its traditional IT role?  What if we gave agents the ability to escalate a chat to HR or a psychologist or the company day care center?   Many reading this scoff, but we have to adapt and innovate in order to continually create value.  I don’t know of any Help Desks out there that actually increased budget in 2009 (unless you're government related or a merger took place).  Therefore let's use this as a learning experience to think outside the box and possibly expand our operations instead of always being challenged to contract.

One more observation of note:  this chat took 17 minutes to complete.  I’m willing to bet the agent had 3 or 4 chats occurring simultaneously.  Awhile back I discussed the usefulness of opening the chat channel and its myriad benefits here in this blog.  Looks like Bloomberg just gave us a few more ideas.  Enjoy:    

15:21:03 NBCM WORKER: HI
15:21:03 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: Thank you for using Bloomberg HELP! We have received your question, and a live representative will be with you momentarily. Thank you for your patience.
15:21:09 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: hello
15:21:51 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: how can I assist?
15:22:03 NBCM WORKER: any ideas on how we can get this kid out of the hot air balloon over colorado?15:22:08 NBCM WORKER: b/c i am totally consumed by this
15:22:22 NBCM WORKER: and noone at my work is offering anything sensible
15:23:07 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: I wish I knew of a simple solution
15:23:25 NBCM WORKER: i mean is this helium going to slowly leeak out?
15:23:36 NBCM WORKER: or should we send the seals in with some chutes?
15:24:01 NBCM WORKER: and where are the parents in all this. im sorry to be venting. i just feel like i dont have anyone to talk to
15:24:38 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: please talk to me about it
15:24:49 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: I feel the pain.. I wonder that the kid is thinking up there
15:25:00 NBCM WORKER: this issue is bigger than just kids in hot air balloons
15:25:12 NBCM WORKER: its a lack of parenting in this country, its dispicable
15:26:25 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: Im sure the parents will never leave the kid alone
15:26:47 NBCM WORKER: i mean what did they have this balloon tied down with? 4 lbs test berkely trilene?
15:26:56 NBCM WORKER: like i have on my trout rod?
15:28:58 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: im sure we will find a lot of answers once this situation is resolved
15:29:17 NBCM WORKER: 6 year olds cannot hardly wipe their own bums let alone climb in a homemade hot air balloon and friggin set it free
15:30:12 NBCM WORKER: in other news apparently the dad was on wife swap, so now things are adding up. the dad, as if building a hot air balloon like a boyscout isnt bad enough, is a scum bag
15:31:06 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: karma
15:35:16 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: Patrick, hopefully the kid will be fine and you can get back to work. Is there anything else I can assist you with?
15:35:47 NBCM WORKER: too much to handle in 25 mins before the bell. but i thank you, kindly
15:36:15 NBCM WORKER: HEY WE GOT IT DOWN!!!!!!
15:36:24 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: NICE
15:36:55 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: thats great news, hopefully the markets will close high
15:37:00 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: thank you for using bloomberg help!
15:37:01 NBCM WORKER: exactly
15:37:03 NBCM WORKER: TY
15:37:17 NBCM WORKER: you'd make a great psychiatrist
15:37:46 BLOOMBERG HELP DESK: thank you

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

“Superstar” agents (SAs) are slowly becoming a thing of the past in many support organizations.  You know, the guy three cubes down who can answer any Lotus Notes or Blackberry or (insert organization app Here) issue.  He does not even have to look at a manual, cheat sheet or knowledge base to resolve the situation.  He is great, right?  Aren’t all SAs? 

Well, he was great until you introduced the new ticketing system.  Now every ticket he closes has the same code, skewing the data reports.  Other agents get dissatisfied when they see a teammate bucking the system.  They ask, “Why do I have to follow systems/procedures when he does not?”  On the subject of dissatisfaction, there are numerous books, articles, blogs, and conference presentations that target how to keep these very SAs.  Increases in pay, bonuses, promotions, and other retention tactics are constantly prescribed.  These are temporary solutions to a looming problem involving advances in help desk operations. 

The need for traditional SAs is diminishing as we rely more and more upon knowledge centered support (KCS), knowledge management tools, and a more structured approach to resolving issues.  A successful implementation and ongoing dedication to a KCS environment will produce some quick wins as well as long-term recurring benefits, most of which are detrimental to the superstar agents:

1.     As knowledge is entered into the k-base, the scope of agent support coverage increases.  Knowledge navigators are agents who utilize the k-base to its utmost potential.  Instead of intuitively knowing the resolution, these agents quickly perform searches.  We now have our Blackberry expert answering questions on Lotus Notes.  Less escalation from Level 1 to Level 2 means less cost, as the average L2 call is up to twice as expensive as resolving at L1.  The SAs finds his role eroding as other agents answer questions without leaning on him.  Warning:  knowledge hoarding in this stage is a typical occurrence.  SAs are resistant and try to undermine the system.

2.     Knowledge Navigators embrace and strengthen the KCS system.   By authoring new knowledge, dressing up existing knowledge (tagging, rewriting, etc.), and associating the correct SCIM code to closed tickets, knowledge navigators are tuning the knowledge base.  This increases the likelihood of search results producing the right answer at the onset, further decreasing First Call Resolution.  SAs that embrace the system by transforming into Knowledge Navigators find themselves in the middle of the entire knowledge initiative and many times are the ongoing Knowledge Managers and/or Knowledge Domain Experts.

3.     Robust knowledge leads to self-service nirvana.  It’s time to rollout a tool for end-user knowledge consumption via self-service.  A great target number for call deflection to self-service is 10%.  Some companies realize quite a bit more deflection by modifying the method of contacting the help desk.  Some users must create their ticket and the help desk calls them.  This process introduces the end user to the knowledge base and potential solutions.  Back to our 10% target and the subsequent rewards such as lower queue time, fewer repetitive calls to the desk (lowering agent boredom/frustration/stagnation), and a corresponding increase in the more difficult, diagnostic type questions for the remaining agents to resolve.  Here is an opportunity to move SAs within the organization.  SAs can become liaisons with the application developers to design and upgrade new features based upon data harvested by the help desk.  Other options include promotion to Level 2, attaining Knowledge Domain Expert status, and training new agents (all soothing to the ego many SAs have). 

4.     Headcount reduction and reallocation is ready to commence.  The desk is taking fewer calls with less escalation occurring, all while FCR is improving.  These metrics are great, except we now have a correlating increase in agent idle time.  Smaller help desks may choose to shift certain staff into other areas such as project management or knowledge management, keeping them on standby for when spikes occur at the desk.  The rewards for larger desks are ever more interesting:  Let’s say you have 100 agents; slowly shifting 10-15 into other roles will create new projects with added rewards.  Additionally, natural attrition amongst agents will reduce headcount, as there will be no need to hire replacements. 

To recap:  knowledge management tools will fundamentally change the process by which agents resolve issues.  The process, in turn, strengthens the knowledge base, which gives returns in FCR and leads to self-service.  Reduced repetitive calls to the help desk give us room to cut budget or shift resource to areas of need.  Superstar agents find less demand for their skills and their natural talent and flair is confined by the business process orientation of KCS which stresses community knowledge.  Moving SAs up to Level 2/3 or into a different role within customer support are the best options to retain them before stagnation and frustration leads to your top talent departing for perceived greener pastures.  Good luck on the path to KCS success; beware of the landmines along the continuous journey.

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

A few months ago a colleague posed a quandary which many help desks face, especially those implementing a KCS framework:  Structured or Unstructured (Content/Knowledge)?  Structured gives agents and clients consistent answers and lend themselves better to search (or so many people believe), but Structured is more difficult to maintain, timely, and costly.  Unstructured fits the true KCS principle of authoring in the workflow, capturing the clients EXACT words, but may fit into the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ model.  So which is better?  I've seen a couple of companies use a blended approach successfully, which I'll discuss shortly.  Let us first review some other pros and cons of the different styles of content.

A hidden plus of Structured Knowledge is that it lends itself well to translation. Having authors repeat keywords and phrases in multiple articles will naturally lead to matches in the Translation Memory which will lower translation turnaround time, lower cost, and expand the global scope of the Knowledge Base for end user self-help and agent searches.  Advances in Search Engine technology assists agents and end users by bubbling up Most Likely Solutions, Top Rated Content, and Tagged Content.  Structured knowledge is tagged with SCIM, taxonomy, and keywords making it more likely to intersect

Unstructured Knowledge also has hidden nugget: Having content that echoes the user issue word for word (KCS).  Knowledge Navigators (agents) armed with the right toolset will be able to wade through the 'garbage and find the right answers. Search Engine technology assists agents and end users by bubbling up Most Likely Solutions, Top Rated Content, and Tagged Content.  End users searching for answers via self-service are more likely to find their resolution when content is worded in their style, not with agent jargon.  If the end user understands some of this technobabble, they probably would not be calling the help desk in the first place.  

A few companies out there have found the right blended approach.  These organizations tend to have dedicated individuals (KDEs, SMEs, Tech Writers) scrubbing the knowledge base and updating it regularly. They follow a similar pattern in that when knowledge is classified as a resolution to an issue, its weighting goes up, automatically making it more likely to appear in future keyword and phrase searches. In other words, every single issue is linked to a solution from the knowledge base, or else the issue is flagged and a new piece of content is authored. having agents author in the workflow utilizing a template allows for a KCS environment while still putting items into a semi-structured format. Obviously the focus is on resolving the call, but without too much effort, we may also have as a byproduct a piece of knowledge that is semi-structured and came about within the KCS methodology.  Once the semi-structured content is associated X number of times with a ticket as a resolution, it triggers an email to the KCS KDE. Now the knowledge gets 'dressed up' as a more structured piece of content.  As agents encounter a piece of knowledge and find that it resolves an issue, they may tag it with the clients keywords/phrases to further the growth and searchability of the content.

Having the knowledge move from an Unstructured (infant) to a Structured (mature) piece of content over a period of time is the best way to embrace both worlds.  We capture the words of the client up front in a template, and over time and reuse of the content, evolve it into a structured piece of content which is SME and Agent verified, tagged for future search success, and cleaned up enough to lend for easy translation.  Sounds easy, right?  ;)

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a key role in every Web marketing strategy.  New URL aliasing functionality makes it easy to create descriptive, meaningful and SE0 friendly URL aliasing consistently.

Auto Aliasing
Normally-generated URLs are barely human readable, let alone search engine-friendly. With search engines using the text in a URL to define where a page shows up on a search return, it has never been more important to have descriptive URLs. While you can manually create aliases that will do the job, I believe tools should give you the ability to generate them automatically, with consistent structure.  These human-readable URLs are predicable and scalable, following consistent patterns that can apply to all of your sites. The use of words and phrases that actually define the page itself increases these aliases’ search engine rankings. By following a pattern, they are scalable, and that pattern can be used across your sites as they grow.

For existing content and CMS systems, migration and adoption of the new aliasing scheme should be simple with the right rules in place and a good database administrator.

Web site performance affects search engine returns as well, and Ridgehead’s URL aliasing takes this into account: these aliases are cached, improving performance.

Taxonomy Based
URL aliases can be auto-created by the Fuzion.NET based on the taxonomy of your Web site. It uses the levels of the taxonomy plus the title of the page itself to produce an alias. Search engines will find those words, increasing the page’s relevancy in any search for them. And because it is based on the taxonomy (which lets content be established in one-to-many relationships), multiple aliases can be created that will have relevancy to multiple search criteria.

Folder Based
Ridgehead’s CMS is also capable of automating the creation of folder-based URL aliases. Similar to taxonomy-based aliases, deriving an alias from the folder structure produces one that is relevant to the content’s actual location. With descriptive folder names and good organization, this will produce SEO-friendly addresses comprised of folder structure plus title of page.

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

With special thanks to ITIL guy Cliff Collard:  In the time it takes for an end user to search the company intranet for the help desk phone number and then dial, they can search for a solution via the KB, resolve, and be back to work. Company productivity improves and help desk costs are reduced.  Zen is imminent. 

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Founder of LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

As our workforce continues to drive structural changes within organizations, we must look a bit closer at Chat to play a larger role in our support toolbox.  Many systems today still force clients to pick up the phone in order to interact with the help desk.  Due to a myriad of reasons (past negative experience, no patience for the IVR, no time, etc.), many clients will turn to alternative means in order to find resolution outside of the service desk.  Additionally, Google has created the “I want the answer(s) in 1.5 seconds” generation. So why not give clients additional channels including Live Chat and a Chat Bot?

A Chat Bot sitting on top of the a robust Knowledge Base, interactively communicating with the users, supporting them with their needs in a true self-service (ticket free) environment is part of the future solution tool set. The next era of self-service does not have quantifiable metrics. You know when someone is chatting with the Bot, you know when they view knowledge, but this is artificial/automated intelligence. Let’s face it, at the service desk we typically know the answer right away. The hardest thing is for an agent or end user to create a ticket for the same problem over and over. This is redundant and a waste of money. It’s already a Top Ten Solution for a Product, a Most Likely Solution for a Topic, or a FAQ. Delivering the solution with minimal human help is the next wave to hit us.

Multi-Channel end-user access to the knowledge base is a risk/reward proposition often difficult to quantify and get executive buy-in. However, the resulting convenience for end users and agents is difficult to ignore.  As the Internet has become an indispensable tool for personal and professional activities, the comfort of using the Internet to solve problems has risen exponentially. In some  support organizations where a focused initiative of opening new support channelshas been executed over a period of time, the transformation has flipped the usage from 80% live call to 80% chat/email/self-service. 

Chat allows for Multi-Tasking: If the user needs to be in a conference or is focused on a task, they are able to engage the help desk without giving the full attention necessary for a phone call. This allows the user to continue with the performance of work while passively resolving the issue.

Time To Resolution (TTR) is faster with chat (according to end users). First, the user is able to engage with the service desk while performing other tasks whereas a point-to-point conversation requires the user to be dedicated for an unspecified period of time. This means that, from the end-users perspective, the TTR is significantly faster for those issues that are not a hard down situation. Secondly, a single agent dedicated to chat support is able to handle up to four chats at once, which drives down queue holding time without adding more headcount. Converting calls to chat is quickly improves metrics without sacrificing customer satisfaction.

Chat gives real-time status updates: Once a chat relationship is established, an automatic response can update the user on the expected time to resolution.

Back to the Future: User types their problem, search engine runs query through the k-base, top five answers are delivered with Titles hyperlinked to the solution. Within seconds end users are able to interact with the knowledge base and then they may choose to escalate the chat to a live agent, request a call from the next available agent, create a ticket (with the footprints auto-SCIMed), or get back to being productive because they self-served. Pretty cool stuff with a strong Knowledge Base in place. 

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

Join the LinkedIn Group Knowledge Management Best Practices

KM and Help Desk Tweets on Twitter 

Last week I received HDIs bi-monthly magazine Support World which contained an article titled “SELF-SERVICE What a Customer Wants”.  The general theme centered on the future of self-service.  Most organizations have at least dabbled in Self-Service, and many have applied significant time, money, and human resources to open this channel to end users.  The concept is fairly simple:  if we document what our agents, SMEs and resolver groups know, and expose this to end users, our initial investment will be recouped with a  reduction in calls and the correlating domino effect of a reduction in headcount, overhead, and management costs.  Meanwhile, we may actually get end users back to work faster and increase customer satisfaction.

Knowledge Management practitioners will tell you that Self-Service is not only a great new channel for support, but will be the primary channel in the future.  End users prefer it, and so do the budget folks. 

Is this not convincing enough?  Well here are a few more reasons why you need self-service and the processes and systems in place to nurture and support its growth:

·    Your end users will need support for MORE applications, MORE hardware, and MORE IT related issues.  Which means your help desk and/or organization will need to expand support scope. 

I’ve posed this quandary to a couple of call center directors and received similar variations of the response:  “we are limiting the number of products we support in order to control costs.”  Nothing can be more detrimental.  Dissatisfaction goes up, hurting metrics.  The general purpose of the help desk is diluted.  Organization productivity is hurt (difficult to measure, but real).  Let’s get the knowledge we glean from agent-end user interactions and document it, scrub it up (we don’t have to polish it to a shiny gloss), and make it available for consumption.  Once we have a deep knowledge base, we drive traffic to the self-service site.  This endeavor will most likely contain a mixture of campaigning across business units by leadership, publication and notification of a new help-desk channel via email and the company employee intranet, and through the agents communicating its presence to end users.  As new technology is rolled into the company, spikes in call volume are flattened by knowledge quickly being documented and published to the self-service site.  A reduction in phone calls frees up budget to expand operational scope.  For example, if my budget is $10M and I support via the phone 200 products, for an average of $50,000 per product, and I lower my costs 10% through self-service, then I now have $1M in year one ROI to justify the training and technology required to implement the organizational shift.  In year two I can then expand my product coverage by 20 products.  Of course, taking over support for these products, shifting a portion of the calls to self-service and away from the incumbent resolver groups will now show increased savings for the 20 products, plus the organization as a whole.  Now we’re showing measurable ROI within our business unit. 

·     SMEs and Resolver Group (typically L2 and L3) costs are reduced while we benefit from leveraging their valuable skills.

As SME and Resolver Group knowledge is documented and made available to end users and Level 1 agents, our $35.00 to $50.00 phone calls are being shifted to self-service or a $20.00 Level 1 incident.  One global organization we have dealt with has over 100 resolver groups operating independently of the help desk knowledge base.  They ‘hoard’ their solutions in separate CRMs which bring value only when a call is escalated to them.  Maybe some of the knowledge is too complex to expose to end users, but having a portion there is a nice start.  We can also shift Level 2 and Level 3 knowledge to Level 1.  This concept aligns itself well with the KCS methodology.  As we train our agents to become ‘Knowledge Navigators’, we are training them on how to use the tool and search for answers instead of naturally knowing the solution.

·     Lowered Resistance to Change:  younger clients are comfortable searching for answers without assistance and our more mature end users are quickly adopting and adapting to these techniques.

Users are migrating towards solving their own questions via keyword/phrase search like never before (thank you Google).  Wading through the IVR, sitting on hold waiting for an agent, and waiting for an agent to call back (if you allow for self-submitted tickets) are some of the frustrating exercises that end users are able to circumnavigate with self-service as an option.  It may take just as long to search for the help desk phone number as it does to search for ‘Reset Password’.  The convenience with an end-user facing, searchable knowledge base is what the younger generation expects.  There are college graduates that begin working in corporate environments and can’t believe the hoops they have to jump through to get an answer.  The more seasoned employees are gravitating towards the new channels too.  The explosion of over 40’s on Facebook attests to the ability for end users to change behavior when offered the right environment.  

Self-Service is the future starting point.  How about this for a process:

1.   End user goes to self-service portal, cloaked as a system to submit an online ticket.

2.   End user enters System, Component, Item, and Module information, and is getting ‘Most Likely Solutions’ and ‘Could this help you?’ solutions delivered unobtrusively along the journey.

3.   Situation is resolved by end user finding their answer without even consciously knowing they were searching the Knowledge Base.

4.   Footprints are tracked and the options to Chat, Email, Call or pose question to company IT Forum are presented to the end user.  The data is auto-SCIMed into the ticket, cutting down agent work and auto-routing the issue to the resolver. 

A study by Gartner in November 2008:  says “most IT organizations struggle to provide meaningful self-service sites to end users.  A lack of best practices, transparent workflows, metrics and reporting has made implementing a self-service site challenging for IT organizations.”  I believe this is because the tools are designed with Ticketing/Incident Management and Agents as the primary focus, with Knowledge/Self-Service and End Users taking a backseat.  As more companies embrace KCS and build robust knowledge bases, the industry will reach a tipping point and self-service centric tools will trump the legacy ticketing systems.  Self-Service IS the Future!

Matt Haggerty

773.793.3251 

matt.haggerty@ridgehead.com

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