In the modern world, effective knowledge management for superior customer experiences (CX) is a must.

But before we get into why the above statement is accurate, we must understand what knowledge management is to begin with.

Knowledge, in this context, refers to any information about your company and brand – from product details to company policies and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). Knowledge management is the organization of this information through an online accessible database or simply documents that consumer-facing employees use to aid their interactions with customers.

Picture a call center script frequently used by agents answering phones and dealing with customer complaints. These scripts will often have the best practices for dealing with these complaints and a compiled list of the most frequent doubts and questions customers might have.

Therefore allowing agents to simply consult the script for answers instead of searching for solutions, checking with their superiors, etc. This means they can handle each call faster, screen more calls every day, and service more customers than otherwise. Ultimately leading to a better customer experience and increased profits through an optimized process and fewer funds spent on training sessions, etc.

To sum up, enterprise knowledge base management brings superior customer experience by:

1) Helping customers access knowledge around their products and favorite brands, therefore boosting their satisfaction levels, and

2) Giving customer service agents access to answers and information about the most common queries and doubts, allowing them to serve customers faster – reducing customer churn, average call times, dependencies on training programs, and more.

Now that we’ve got a general idea of how knowledge management for superior customer experience is a must, we can look at how it elevates CX in a little more detail.

How does knowledge management elevates CX?

1. Promotes round-the-clock service

In some companies, Call center agents work in shifts to ensure phones are answered no matter the day, but this isn’t always the case. Other companies have shifted to AI, utilizing tools such as chatbots to ensure that customers have a route to service 24×7. Chatbots are usually provided by third-party vendors but are linked to an informational, digital database hosted by the organization itself.

This database possesses reams of information, from basic product information to tutorials or FAQs, and the chatbot simply uses triggers in customer questions to bring up related solutions and answers. For example, if you were to ask the bot for a ‘refund,’ the bot will search through the company’s database for queries related to the word and pull up an answer regarding that company’s policies around refunds.

More advanced bots can even conduct the refund transaction for you, allowing you to refund an item and schedule a pick-up date for the same, all without a single human intervention. If the company sold electronic items, for example, a washing machine, you might have a query about how to use the said item in a particular way. The bot will, once again, parse keywords from your question into their database and pull up relevant answers for you to read – instead of an agent needing to guide you through the process.

Most bots will still allow you to request access to a live customer service agent if you cannot find the answers you need, but this is usually a last resort to be used only if customers feel they need further assistance.

2. Empowers customers through self-service

Self-service is one of the biggest revolutions in the sales and service industry, changing how companies look to care for their customers and ensure positive CX. Earlier, heavy emphasis was placed on a ‘personal touch’ – companies would ensure that a company representative met customers to show they cared and were alert enough to respond in person. But self-service changed how these interactions were viewed.

Some studies showed that customers cared less about this personal touch and more about having their resolutions resolved quickly and efficiently – no matter how this resolution came about. Knowledge base management brings superior customer experience & satisfaction in this area, as solutions like the bots, as mentioned earlier, or simple documents like FAQs allow customers to quickly find the answers they are looking for, resulting in a lowered reliance on interactions with service agents. And higher satisfaction through quick interactions and empowerment arises from being able to seek and find solutions for themselves instead of waiting for minutes on end to get an over-burdened call center agent on the line.

KM solutions give customers the ability to self-serve, which only serves to boost their impression of a company, contrary to what traditional salespeople and companies believed.

3. Quickly resolves customer queries

If we think back to our earliest interactions with helplines or call center agents, the picture is one of frustration. Endless hold tones or muzak, twiddling our thumbs as we wait for a customer service agent to finish their existing call and attend to ours. No surprises here to not that this often led to customer churn – where customers would hang up before an agent could get on the line – before resolving never to deal with the company again because of their negative experience.

Meanwhile, service agents were under pressure to attend to more calls than ever in order to combat churn but had to ensure they gave each customer enough time on a call to handle queries and complaints. This delicate balancing act rarely worked out for either party, so solutions like KM for superior customer experience are an absolute must. A simple IVR system is an example of this. Where earlier, an agent would have had to answer the phone and direct you to the right department depending on the nature of your query, automated IVR scripts quickly filter customer calls to the correct department with the press of a few buttons, saving countless hours for not just agents, but customers themselves.

Similar tools like an online knowledge base FAQs allow customers to look up solutions for themselves instead of needing to call the helpline and wait. Fast resolutions lead to happy customers – and better CX.

4. Educates customers and boosts retention

As mentioned above, giving customers tools with which they can self-serve will keep them happier and thus boost retention. Customers will remain loyal to companies that make their lives easy and will move on from companies that have great products if their service doesn’t match.

Tools like online manuals and FAQ documents also help educate consumers on the products they acquire, leading to fewer basic questions posed to service agents. This frees up time for service agents to attend to more complex questions and queries – thus keeping even more customers happy and loyal as a result. KM tools for customer service ensure a cycle of information and customer satisfaction and are a sure way for you to boost retention rates.

By this point, we can all agree that KM is a vital component for superior CX – all that’s left is for you to select a partner to provide the same so you can boost your customer satisfaction rates. There are a number of KM solutions providers available, and a quick search online will connect you with some of the best KM parties available on the market today. Reduce customer churn, acquire the tools to allow people to self-serve, and boost your CX today!

Author Bio

Sowmya Juttukonda is a digital media specialist at Knowmax. Knowmax is an AI-backed knowledge base for support agents that helps enterprises reduce support costs and solve productivity challenges. Knowmax, which is powered by decision trees, picture guides and a robust content management system, supports quick answers to knowledge base queries, seamless customer experiences and business efficiency.

Customer expectations are constantly evolving with technological innovations and they seek new and more interactive options for customer support.

At this stage in your knowledge management journey, the proper knowledge database will enhance your teams’ efficiency and help personalize and simplify customer interactions.

A centralized knowledge base for customer service powered by artificial intelligence improves the performance of your support team and the satisfaction levels of your customers.Having the proper knowledge management in place also helps customers find and access the knowledge they need to succeed with your product or service. In most cases, customer service teams can use it without much difficulty and even customers can do the same through self-service solutions such as chatbots, dynamic FAQs, and customer data tools.

Knowledge Management and AI

Knowledge management systems – primarily knowledge resource bases – enable these intelligent tools to connect to a repository of accurate information in order to allow customers to be more autonomous throughout the purchase journey. A knowledge management system eliminates the problem of how companies share information and facilitates the continuous transfer of knowledge across the organization so that employees can spend more time, effort and energy on high-value activities that improve customer service and increase the profits of the business.

Many organizations store information in a variety of forms, ranging from content repositories such as a blog or customer support forum, a website’s FAQ or dashboard for agents and information on self-service portals. A well-executed information architecture enables access to information, easily understood and explained, and known throughout the enterprise. Creating a detailed plan to eliminate these disparate structures will make it easier for both internal teams and customers to access and act on information.

With the rapid growth of machine learning and deep learning, AI tools have significantly changed today’s customer service. From chatbots to self-service tools, knowledge management systems are leveraging the benefits of AI to offer new and interactive ways of customer service. .

Benefits of AI-powered Knowledge Base 

AI-enabled knowledge bases are a great way to significantly improve the customer experience and offer customers unique ways to interact and solve their queries. They are also influential in streamlining internal processes and help agents to focus on important factors affecting the C-SAT scores. AI-powered KM systems are also efficient in creating personalized learning modules to upskill agents according to their existing skillset. Let’s take a look at some of the most vital benefits of AI-powered Knowledge base:

Identifying shortcomings

The AI Knowledge base helps the organization better understand customer needs, analyze behaviours and identify areas for improvement. Artificial intelligence enables an organization to deliver knowledge tailored to each user and their context, allowing customers to get help where they already are, and finally, it provides a real-time dashboard displaying the state of the knowledge management solution, including how agents use the platform and what information helps or harms the customer experience.

Seamless collaboration & update

With an AI-powered knowledge management system, internal teams can efficiently collaborate and stay updated with the latest updates. AI ensures that minimal human intervention is required while timely updating the knowledge base. It can also act as a catalyst for knowledge sharing and smooth internal communication.

Accurate information

Specific knowledge is essential to provide the highest level of customer service. One has to give the correct information at the right time to improve the engagement with each customer, understand when customers are asking specific questions, and include relevant content and knowledge in the journey. AI-powered KM accurately captures the customer’s query quickly and offers concise and straightforward solutions. It also helps maintain consistency in information across all communication platforms, significantly improving the speed and ease of accessing information.

Self-Service

One of the biggest advantages of AI-powered knowledge management systems is their use in self-service platforms. Self-service platforms are perfect to offer new ways of solving customer issues and queries. They motivate the users to solve their own problems and look for the answers on their own with relevant cues from the knowledge base for self service to identify their queries. Self-service platforms are also appreciated by customers in large and it boosts the customer experience and satisfaction scores.

Cost-Efficient

AI powered KM helps in significantly reducing the operational cost by eliminating manual work hours on redundant tasks, for example, answering a commonly asked query or helping find information faster . AI can take over mundane tasks efficiently, helping organizations save significant resources, time, and money. 

A big challenge in implementing sturdy Knowledge management is to establish clear metrics and goals for the knowledge management system so that you can determine if it helps or hinders agents in real customer interactions and whether customers can easily find the answers they are looking for using self-service portals. The answer is to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to create a single, centralized knowledge base that covers all channels, allows agents and customers to easily find the answers they need, and that can be continuously updated and automatically.

The first choice for many consumers is now self-service. Studies have shown that almost 90% of clients anticipate a brand having its own service portal – and they prefer knowledge base enabled self-service channels such as FAQs.

Managing knowledge is critical to successful self-service, but it’s difficult to achieve it. However, it can be done, and the payoffs can be huge. Relevant research supports the idea that people prefer to help themselves rather than seeking help; it is therefore essential to offer exceptional self-service. This means that you can collect and quickly reach the answers to questions from your customers. Once objectives are established, a company needs to develop a process and the right instruments to collect and store the information and knowledge. Regardless of how this happens, critical knowledge must be stored in a user-friendly location and format.

The advantages of self-service:

A self-service customer portal is one of the most powerful applications for knowledge management. Customers receive quick answers, and call center agents can handle more complex queries and tickets free of charge. If agents can concentrate on more valuable cases, your business increases, and scales. Few other solutions offer a win-win situation.

The only way to get support from some organizations is to hang on the phone for long periods. With a self-service mindset, when customers have a problem with a product or service, their first idea is to go online and to find the necessary answers with FAQs, articles, manuals, videos, chatbots, and virtual assistants.

How can customer relationships be improved with knowledge management?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an integral element of the sales and service process. By managing knowledge, a business can track the number of calls, emails, questions asked and resolved, and the issues discussed most often. This will allow a company to see how customers usually interact with their products and services, allowing it to make any improvements necessary. The management of knowledge also increases customer satisfaction through self-service. For example, a FAQ page and personal account information can be entered on a website, removing the need to talk directly to an agent to help customers get their desired answers quickly. Customer feedback tools further optimize knowledge management. Feedback forms can be strategically placed on a website or included in an email, such as online surveys or opinion polls. If clients see a simple survey with the option to answer or not and are also able to see how others respond, they may be more likely to talk and share experiences.

Benefits of Knowledge Management in Customer Service:

• Fast and detailed responses to questions often asked.
• A personalized experience for customers. You can track past purchases and interactions, make custom suggestions, address customers by name, and create portal content addressing new issues using customized data.
• The possibility of building an online community where clients share information and support employees from your organization.

Adding Knowledge Management makes Customer Self Service easier

Customer self-service is a simple and effective way to build customer relationships and satisfaction. Unfortunately, over half of the customers find self-service portals difficult to use. If your self-service portal isn’t easy to use, the effort put into creating it is all for nothing because your customers won’t use it. Most clients can solve their own difficulties, but only if they know where to find information. The exceptional experience of customers can be achieved through a knowledge base software that provides simpler, easy-to-understand solutions to common issues. Customers have agreed on the fact that they would like to explore knowledge management tools if it is faster and convenient. Choosing a knowledge management system with self-service abilities that makes the flow much easier for customers is important.

A knowledge base for self-service also:

• Helps customers to carry out typical tasks with their live agents.
• Provides 24-hour support from whatever device you use on any channel, including chat, voice, e-mail, and social messaging applications, to anyone seeking assistance from where they are.
• The knowledge base of self-service is convenient and also carries complex functions.

Self-service in a modern contact center has become a requirement for success. You will not only meet your customers’ expectations, but you will also reduce costs to support your organization and improve your brand’s reputation.

Many measures can be used to measure the performance of your self-service portal. The most frequently used are:

• The proportion of contacts for live support compared to self-service options.
• How many times do customers go and visit a solution without requesting live support?
• The results of customer satisfaction are the main measure and are usually measured by surveys.
• When customers find what they need through self-service, they should lower their call volume trend or the number of customers per day.

Finally, your company should measure the savings from self-service. And, while monetary savings alone are of great value, the additional value should be seen in employee satisfaction and retention, driving additional savings.

Knowledge management for self-service changes the customer experience altogether. New-age customers want quick solutions to their queries and knowledge management tools to add pace to that method. Your knowledge management tool for self-service is not a substitute for great customer service. It is a great tool to help both your customers and their agents to add value and save you time and money in the short term. Regardless of how far you are at this stage, it is never too early (or too late) to begin strategically approaching your organization. An effective system of knowledge management assists clients in obtaining the right type of support and faster. Knowledge Management initiatives focus on achieving well-defined, achievable, and best practice goals that provide a competitive advantage over the long term in terms of improving customer experience overall. Incorporating Knowledge Management for Self Service in Customer Service is a huge step up for improving the customer experience. Which KM tools would you prefer for your business?

Customer satisfaction can be defined as how happy customers are with a company’s products, services, and capabilities. Learn how a Knowledge Management system can help keep your customers satisfied.

The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) has become one of the the defining data points to evaluate consumer experience and brand growth. While the marketing, pre-sales, and sales processes add to customer satisfaction, customer service heavily influences CSAT scores.

Customers demand immediate and accurate resolutions to their problems, and at times, agents succumb to this pressure in the absence of proper and organised information. At times like these, a Knowledge Management system could prove to be a boon for organisations looking to revamp and revitalise their customer experience and boost customer satisfaction.

The dilemma of Customer Satisfaction for today’s demanding customer

Multiple factors drive customer satisfaction which is growing more complex every day with social media innovations. Customer experience has been revolutionised, and customers expect unique and engaging ways to interact with brands. The demands are challenging, and there’s intense rivalry between brands to be on top. Using Decision trees in customer service organisations constantly seek to improve their CSAT scores to provide their customers with a premium and memorable experience.

The era of increasing choices and information overload

We live in a world with limited attention spans and an overabundance of data. Customers make their choice in split seconds, and it becomes vital to hold their attention for a better customer experience. Brands have less than a minute to impact and attract a potential customer; the first interaction could pave the way for a long-term consumer.

Customers face several challenges like excessive, unorganised information. They also have to go through a lot of conflicting information on self-service platforms. Often, the resolutions provided are inaccurate,, or the response time is low, leading to extreme frustration.

A knowledge management system is crucial to solving these challenges, improving today’s picky customers’ stickiness, and improving overall C-SAT scores.

The need for Knowledge Management

A knowledge base is a single repository offering comprehensive information about a product or a service. It is a searchable directory offering a single source of truth for consumers.

It is possible to achieve positive customer service across multiple channels and different touchpoints with incredible consistency using a knowledge management platform.

An excellent knowledge base helps both the internal teams and the customers in case they’re interacting with a self-service platform. A single unified knowledge platform gives the power to extend customer service content to their preferred medium. It helps create content ranging from ‘how-to articles’ to pictorial guides.

How Knowledge Management can help improve customer experience

A knowledge base must be built-in synergy with organisational goals, structure, and culture of the workplace. A knowledge base is a one-stop solution to create, store and access in-depth information. A Knowledge base platform is suitable for both small and large businesses. Most modern Knowledge Management platforms are customisable and allow adding or removing features according to specific needs.

Knowledge Management systems enable self-service, offer faster resolutions & fewer tickets. A Knowledge base built on an omnichannel strategy provides great consistency despite any mode of communication. It increases the overall CX by providing high first call resolution and lower abandonment rates. They empower structured content management and help in easy navigation towards solutions.

Knowledge Management systems also provide pictorial and visual guides and a step-by-step resolution for an accurate and quick answer. Chatbots powered by Knowledge Base can interact with customers like a live agent solving their queries without the need for human intervention.

The need for a futuristic Knowledge Management solution to sky-rocket your C-SAT

If you look to improve your CSAT scores instantly,  the Knowledge Management system is what your brand needs. It provides an all-in-one searchable knowledge directory for comprehensive knowledge, information, and data. With the benefits of cloud computing, updates on just one system reflect them across all other networks.

You can also create visual guides for hard-to-follow information and make it easy for agents and customers to follow. A knowledge management platform understands and regards the power of communication and gives multilingual support to create and store information in the preferred language.

The knowledge management system focuses on reducing the average wait and hold times and offers quick resolutions. It is a single platform accessible to agents containing the information required to save considerable time on communication and drastically bring down average handling times.

A user with no prior content creation experience can instantly begin authoring, editing, and creating fresh content through the Knowledge Management System. Multiple security layers help in seamlessly defining roles and rights among internal teams to provide a clear and steady flow of information and create a hierarchy. A knowledge management system has multiple approaches that help in finding relevant information instantly through keyword search.

A Knowledge Management system uses its capabilities to support multiple information formats and ensures that all organisational data is structured and accessible on a centralised platform. Some of the supported formats are PDF, word documents, PPTs, and excel spreadsheets. With Knowledge management, you can easily access a library by allotting permissions and rights to users, employees, and front liners.

A knowledge management system comes with an analytics dashboard to observe, study and analyse the content hit day-wise and name-wise together with the overall usage. Analytics helps in identifying what customers are looking for and helps to prepare better for the future.

Further, a customised knowledge management system gives a unique feel according to customers’ demands. With features that allow you to add your company credentials on the frontend and organise all business-related information and knowledge, a great Knowledge Management system can revolutionise the customer experience and exponentially increase C-SAT scores.

A knowledge management system is also beneficial for agents who can find relevant information quickly and focus more on consumer interaction. A great Knowledge Base is a building block that helps facilitate good customer interactions and high customer satisfaction. Implement a Knowledge Management system powered with omnichannel support and give wings to your customer experience.

As many employees and leaders in Customer Support already know, there are pros and cons to every service model.

Build out a team of agents, and you’ll give your customers the impression of being “high-touch.” But high-touch can mean high-cost: according to Harvard Business Review, the average cost of a live support interaction (phone, email, chat, etc.) for a B2B company is $13.

Does every problem need an agent? Gartner reports that 40% of live support interactions could be resolved in self-service channels. Naturally, there are some customers with particular needs who require the human touch, but what’s the ROI on live agent support for customers with simple requests?

The other end of the spectrum is scaled support: providing service via an automated phone system, chatbots, FAQs, etc. The approach here — to provide modern solutions for savvy customers in cost-effective ways — makes sense. The problem? Execution.

According to Gartner, 70% of a business’s customers use self-service tools, but only 9% end up fully resolving their issues. Why is it that saying — well, more like yelling — “agent” into your phone repeatedly or desperately hitting “0” on the keypad is the standard? It’s not because customers actually want to get redirected five times before speaking to the right agent. It’s because many of these self-service options simply don’t work. And customers know it.

Whether dealing with a person who isn’t much help or an automated system that leads nowhere, bad customer service can be a deal breaker. In fact, Forbes says that poor customer support is costing businesses $75 billion a year.

But all hope isn’t lost.

Dimension Data says that 73% of customers prefer to use a company’s website for support. And according to Parature, 84% of customers want to resolve their own issue using search, before raising a support ticket or calling customer service.

So the $75 billion question is: does your website have the search chops to scale your service model, without compromising quality of support?

Transforming your website into a support hero

Search on a business website isn’t a new thing. In fact, it’s quite old — outdated, in fact. Millions of businesses are using keyword search to “power” their websites. The problem is that the technology behind keyword search hasn’t evolved since 1999. Today, when you type a question into a search box, you get back a list of hyperlinks that contain the keyword, but lack the context. In other words, the search bars on most business websites don’t know what you really mean.

But consumer search engines — think Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo — are a different story. Over the last 20 years, Google has led the charge on making consumer search more robust. Instead of only using a single algorithm to scan for keywords and return blue links which may or may not be relevant, Google has incorporated natural language processing (NLP) to understand questions and intent to deliver actual answers.

So the key is to ensure that the search powering your website is modern, based in AI, and thus designed to enhance the customer experience — not take away from it like keyword search. Features like NLP and extractive QA (an algorithm that allows your website to deliver featured snippets of information from long-form and unstructured data like product manuals, tutorials, or ebooks) ensure the rich content about your business is accessible for your customers to actually self-serve when they have an issue.

This benefit applies to your own support agents as well. Beyond affecting the bottom line, having information spread across a variety of systems affects productivity — 36% of a typical knowledge worker’s day is spent looking for and consolidating information. By equipping agents with AI search, they can deliver the most helpful information in a timely manner, providing a better experience for both themselves and the customers they’re serving.

As a last line of defense, this modern search experience can also be embedded as a customer fills out a support ticket. In real time, AI-powered search can turn a customer’s ticket description into a live search query intended to deliver helpful information, meaning customers no longer need to submit a ticket because they got the answer they needed through search.

Expanding the reach of your content

Going back to our two key stats, we’ve addressed the 73% of customers preferring to use a company’s website for support. As for the 84% who want to use search, your website search is a critical piece of that, but not the only one.

Any discussion about search has to include third-party engines, i.e., primarily Google. You can pay Google for higher SEO relevance, but 1) get in line and  2) you’re playing in the game — the AdWords engine —  that created other problems to begin with.

This isn’t meant to be a deep dive on search engine intricacies, so the bottom line is: branded search on Google isn’t helping your support-seeking customers. It’s serving them ads about your company and even competitors. There’s nothing more frustrating for customers than to be sold to, before getting their issue resolved.

With AI-powered search for support, you can use your search-optimized landing pages and synced FAQs to influence rankings and relevance on Google and other search engines, and even increase the chances of appearing as a featured snippet. When your business controls the messaging, your customers have a better chance at getting helpful results, instead of a sea of ads.

To learn more about how AI search like Yext’s Support Answers can help scale your service model and improve quality of support, visit: www.yext.com/solutions/support.

About the Author

Marc Ferrentino serves as Chief Strategy Officer of Yext. He is responsible for product management, user experience, product marketing, corporate strategy, customer insights, platform developer program, and verticals.

Prior to joining Yext, Marc was the Founder and CEO of Nomi Technologies, which was acquired by Brickstream in 2014. Marc has worked as a senior executive for high growth tech companies throughout his career, including serving as the Chief Technical Officer of SaaS at BMC Software, and Chief Technical Architect for Salesforce.com.

Marc holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and has participated in the M.A. of Statistics program at Columbia University.

A well-planned and maintained knowledge management system is the cornerstone of a successful customer experience strategy.

No matter how great your product or service may be, customer experience can make or break your business:

• Modest improvements to customer experience can generate up to $775 million over three years for a company
• 70% of consumers say they will continue to support companies that give them great customer experience
• Poor customer experiences are costing businesses more than $75 billion a year
• 61% of consumers say they have stopped doing business with a brand due to a poor customer experience

The Temkin Group breaks customer experience down into three core elements:

Happy customers are more likely to be loyal spokespeople for your brand. ThinkJar CEO Esteban Kolsky found that 72% of consumers will tell six or more people about a good customer experience.

On the other hand, frustrated customers will most certainly go to great lengths to see your business tank – Kolsky’s study found that 13% of consumers will tell 15 or more people when they’re unhappy with a company.

So to keep your customers happy, make sure you give them a great experience. To achieve this, you must satisfy customer demand for excellent service. This is where your knowledge management system comes in – it could very well be the most important part of your corporate website.

When your customers come to you for answers, they’re most likely visiting your site, since two-thirds of them prefer to first try solving issues on their own. Your website needs to have the tools that enable them to achieve this, with your self-service portal being their first port of call.

90% of consumers expect your site to offer an online self-service support portal. 75% of consumers regard such a portal as the most convenient channel for resolving issues and getting product and service information. You need to provide them with more than a simple list of FAQs – your knowledge management system must be as intuitive as it is comprehensive.

Your knowledge management system is the backbone of your self-service portal and the key to improving customer experience.

Knowledge management can elevate customer experience

Almost three-quarters of consumers start their service queries by looking for answers online themselves. Right away, your customers are judging the experience your self-service portal delivers according to:

• the amount of time it takes them to get the information they want
• the amount of effort they need to put into their search

Your customers aren’t going to stick around for long if they can’t find what they need quickly and easily. Depending on the nature of their query, they’ll either contact your business directly through another channel or give up completely. At worst, they could end up turning to one of your competitors for better service.

(Source)

External knowledge management benefits

A functioning knowledge management system helps your customers get information effortlessly, reducing their search duration by 80 to 20%, and showing them you value their time. Most consumers will tell you this is the most important thing you can do for them.

Your knowledge management system relieves customers of the frustration of waiting for call center representatives and tapping through endless IVR rabbit holes. You also save them the hassle of submitting help desk tickets and waiting for responses to those tickets.

Thoughtful planning also helps you build a knowledge management system that gives your customers better insights into your products and services, helping maximize the benefits they gain from your products and services. Self-service provides opportunities to deliver top-notch experiences throughout the customer journey: from research and onboarding through troubleshooting and repairs to feature optimization and referrals.

With the right planning, execution, analysis, and updating, your knowledge management strategy improves your customer experience. In turn, a better customer experience reaps several rewards, including, but not limited to:

• Greater customer loyalty and retention
• Increased word-of-mouth
• Reduced acquisition cost
• More purchases per customer

Internal knowledge management benefits

A well-executed knowledge management strategy can also benefit most of your company’s teams and internal processes. When your website’s self-service portal can handle simple support requests and repeat queries, it lightens demand on your support team. This gives team members more time to handle more complex and urgent issues that make up high-value tickets.

In this way, knowledge management empowers your customer service reps to help your development teams update features and improve your products and services. They can also give your marketing teams a better understanding of how to communicate with customers more effectively. In the long run, high-value tickets help your business provide an even better customer experience while boosting support staff engagement as important contributors to your company’s growth and success.

Your knowledge management system can also create significant cost savings. The support tickets your support teams receive through chat, email, and calls are a labor-intensive operating expense.

(Source)

Each ticket your support team handles ranges from around $3 to $50. Every time your customers resolve issues through your self-service portal, however, the cost averages $2 per ticket.

When preparing your knowledge management strategy, follow the 80/20 rule of ticket triage. Of all the tickets customer service teams handle on a daily basis, 80% of them can be handled by your self-service portal. The remaining 20% are your high-value tickets.

To help your support specialists provide fast and useful service, your knowledge management system must cover more complicated issues and provide you with actionable insights. While they may have customer service skills, team members are really only as good as the information they can access immediately.

How to use knowledge management to deliver a better customer experience

Whether you already have a knowledge management system in place, or you’re looking to create one from scratch, you want a solution that is fast, effective, affordable, and easy to build and use.

Scalability is also an important factor; as your business grows, you will need to handle increasing customer service requests efficiently without overburdening resources and blowing budgets.

Create a knowledge base that improves customer experience and benefits your organization as a whole. When doing so, it’s important to understand the difference between a knowledge base and a corporate Wiki, with the former being far more useful and advantageous than the latter.

To build out your knowledge management system effectively and efficiently, look for a solution that allows you to segment access. This eliminates the risk of overwhelming or confusing customers with too much information and helps you navigate customers to the answers they’re looking for quickly.

Track the usage of each segment to understand what information is most sought by customers, identify knowledge gaps, and what categories require revision, expansion, or deletion. This will give you actionable insights for continuous improvements to your

• Customer support
• Knowledge management strategy
• Knowledge management system – content, organization
• Products and services
• Company offer
• Marketing

When updating each segment, be careful to avoid redundancies, and make certain all updates ultimately serve your customers.

You’ll also need to know what kind of information your customers are most likely to be searching for. They could be coming to you with queries about pricing or shipping. Maybe they’re looking for how-to guides or troubleshooting advice. You’ll most likely be relying on your support team’s experiences and insights and some market research initially. Once your knowledge management system is up and running, its analytics will be invaluable, informing you about

• Your customers’ most common questions or problems
• How your customers use your products or services
• What your customers care about

Make sure your self-service knowledge base has an intelligent search function that automatically suggests answers while customer or support staff is typing question. Account for spelling errors/typos (“Show results for…” that Google displays when user misspells search term).

Your internal knowledge management system should help customer support agents collaborate with customers in resolving customer requests as quickly as possible.

Finally, look for a solution that is intuitive enough for non-tech-savvy customers to get the information they need when they need it. At the same time, it should have features that enable different teams to leverage data that can help them achieve their department-specific KPIs.

Examples of Customer Experience Excellence Through Knowledge Management

Fullstory

The Fullstory Launchpad does a great job of centralizing information, giving new customers the guidance they need to get started with their products while also empowering their more advanced users to take their expertise to higher levels.

Nureva

Nureva’s thoughtful use of category icons provides customers seeking answers and assistance with an excellent user experience.

Buypeel

Just like its products, Buypeel’s online help section is sleek, minimalist, and very user-friendly.

Mathseeds

Mathseeds features a kid-friendly help center that’s engaging and informative for all ages.

Duet Display

The mobile-first design of the Duet Display help portal is a treat to use on any device.

Conclusion

 To paraphrase the late, great Stan Lee, with great knowledge management comes great profitability. Your customers want answers now, so there’s no better time than the present to build or update your knowledge management system.