Page 223 - DCAP307_PLANNING_AND_MANAGING_IT_INFRASTRUCTURE

Unit 13: Knowledge Management

One important response to the discovery of a new trend or that knowledge is missing is to push Notes
content into the hands of those that desperately need it as quickly as possible—even if that
content is not perfect. This is crucial when new products are launched, causing a spike in calls
and e-mails for assistance. In such situations, less can be dangerous: it’s better to put ideas and
trial answers into users’ hands as soon as the need arises—a process social networking facilitates
by enabling you to leverage the user community to develop information and answers. Just
make sure users have a mechanism for rating these new solutions, and then review your progress
daily to refine and improve your answers.

13.3.5 Best Practice 5: Think Globally

We’ve stressed the importance of starting with a reasonable scope for your knowledge
management initiative and not trying to implement everywhere all at once. But this does not
mean that knowledge management is just a departmental or discrete solution useful only to the
call centre or Web self-service.
Knowledge management can have broad application across the enterprise. As such, it should be
treated as a corporate initiative, not just a departmental point solution. Knowledge management
can
 improve employee productivity with intranets for human resources, product development,
and professional services.
 boost the performance of your sales force automation operations with sales intelligence
portals.
 increase the efficiency and effectiveness of relationships with partners and vendors.
Even when you’re starting with a classic customer service implementation, it’s important to
enlist the support and participation of groups outside the customer care organisation by
illustrating the value to be gained from knowledge management.

Example: The marketing department will want to help develop and monitor content
when you can show that relevant offers on the self-service support site generate higher commerce
spending.
Thinking globally also requires planning for the use of knowledge management across multiple
channels. This is important, because how solutions need to be structured can vary considerably,
depending on the channel in which they’re used.

Example The answer to a question delivered via e-mail can be lengthy and detailed,
because the customer can spend time reviewing the response.

However, a lengthy response is not appropriate for a chat interaction and some content simply
may not work for a given channel.

Example: Technical solutions that require some level of expertise typically serve only to
frustrate self-service customers. In such cases, the answers are better delivered by phone agents
who understand how to walk the customer through the resolution process.
It’s also important to structure knowledge for multilingual deployment. Here are some high-
level guidelines for content translation:
 Apply the 80/20 rule to the content designated for translation. Focusing on mature products
with stabilised content enables more-affordable translations and improves resolution rates.

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