How has knowledge management evolved over the past few years?
In the 1990’s, the IT world was a buzz with the knowledge management (KM) revolution. In preparation, companies started hiring KM managers and purchasing expensive systems with the promise of making information flow easier and more efficient. Over the years, however, the KM-related positions faded away, these systems remained under-utilized, and people were left with a bitter taste in their mouth when KM entered the conversation.

So what happened? For one, there were so many different definitions of knowledge and of knowledge management. Some people thought knowledge was what existed in the hard copy documents lying around the office, so KM meant record or document management, organizing information in a company so it was easier to find. They simply automated existing information processes, taking paper files and documents and converting them into a digital form.

Others thought of it as a way to capture tacit knowledge from employees, which means it relied on employees to contribute information. This latter definition could be part of a cyclical problem. If your employees are not contributing to the knowledge base, then the knowledge base is not very effective, and will therefore not deliver on the promise of making information access and exchange easier.

It was also too rigid. Older KM systems did not take into account that people were contributing content, so the content would naturally evolve as procedures and policies changed and employees moved roles. Without a flexible system, knowledge would become outdated quickly and rendered useless.

What are the key benefits of knowledge management in the contact center industry?
At the heart of it, KM is about enabling people to share information more freely so that they can be more effective doing their jobs. With increasing competitive pressures putting even more emphasis on customer service and the user experience, there is more of an impetus for users to contribute to the knowledge base in order to create additional efficiencies. Companies are becoming increasingly geographically disperse, so there is even more of a need to have a system that allows information to be efficiently distributed electronically when people are in different offices and time zones. And finally, the much talked about Web 2.0 movement has reminded people that knowledge exists in many forms, not just in a dedicated KM system, but in everything from content management and CRM systems to blogs, wikis and forums. It has changed the way knowledge is collected. Contributing content is almost second nature to this emerging web 2.0 generation.

Customer feedback, via the contact center or web self-service, when accessed in real-time, can be used in turn to amend existing knowledge content and prevent future problems. A more effective web self-service capability can reduce contact center costs. To harvest the knowledge that resides in these web 2.0 tools such as discussion forums and blogs, internal users with privileges have the ability to click to recommend or contribute content from a forum topic, easily capturing questions and solutions for publication as formal knowledge content. Consumers using web self service systems have tools to navigate and find information within the forums, such as navigating forums by product category, quickly viewing popular or recent topics by category, filtering replies to topic questions by those marked as solutions, or quickly listing all of the user's individual questions posted to the forums. In addition, topics are marked as read, unread or updated since last read by the user viewing the forums. 

Finally, search and information management capabilities have caught up to the evolution of content. Companies can use intelligent search mechanisms to categorize user intent and knowledge applicability, and then in turn, drive a better user consumption experience (i.e. not just search results). To make sure that these searches produce the most accurate results, there are mechanisms that can value knowledge content by its reuse, and management mechanisms and workflows for information review, approval and archiving.

What advice would you give to a contact center considering a knowledge management solution?
Whereas the old KM was too limited and rigid, KM 2.0 is expansive and could overwhelm customers and employees if not managed properly. Good knowledge is essentially worthless without an effective way to retrieve it. With this sort of volume and the more internet-savvy consumer and employee, basic keyword search isn’t going to cut it. The sheer magnitude of responses generated is time consuming to sort through. In this time, the consumer might abandon the search and pick up the phone, thus defeating the purpose of having a web-self service option. In the case of the contact center agent, the extensive time it takes sorting through the keyword search results not only impacts the bottom line, but also customer satisfaction and retention. Using a Natural Language or intent-based search makes accessing this information, regardless of its format, significantly more productive. With these systems, when content or user input is processed, a series of sophisticated linguistic and statistical techniques are applied, each of which builds on previous steps to add to the complete understanding of the content or question currently being evaluated. This allows the system to automatically retrieve the best answer available in the content sources present, as well as, alert content owners to exact cases where more detail might be necessary. An intelligent search system not only satisfies current needs, but can also complete responses that anticipate and fulfill subsequent needs by delivering related information and relevant promotional offers that enable the user to continue his or her sales, service or research process.

In addition to the more traditional forms of structured and unstructured data, a company’s search capabilities need to cover web 2.0 technologies. When a user posts a topic in a forum as a question, an intelligent search system can determine if there are any answers or related information available to display from forums and other content sources; or even determine if marketing promotions should be offered to the user posting the question. Forum content needs to be searched along with metadata, such as the replies to questions that have been marked as helpful, or a solution. To help sort through the potentially massive amounts of data, your search can return just those answers that others marked as helpful for resolving similar problems. Reputation models to allow the user community (including employees, customers, partners) to determine the strongest contributors and the value of each contribution.

Although the search tools of these new KM 2.0 systems can now expand the knowledge base to encompass this user-generated content, it does lend itself to potential disaster if not properly structured. To ensure that contributing content remains a reward and not a risk, companies need to have managed, controlled processes in place that can address this without hampering one’s willingness to contribute. Internally, companies can restrict the number of users that can contribute content. Externally, companies can set up triggers or alerts, so that when certain keywords are contributed, that post or document is brought to the attention of the person or persons managing the forums. Filters can prevent profanity or other offensive language from filtering in on both sides.

Updating your knowledge management and introducing web 2.0 tools into the enterprise can be a blessing but potentially a curse if not done correctly. To make sure that you are on the positive end of the spectrum, you need to:

1) Get enthusiasm built behind the project. Your knowledge base is only as strong as the people that contribute to it.

2) Have a search function that can not only access the right information, but also understand the user’s intent to generate the most accurate response experience possible. 

3) Monitor the web 2.0 technologies. The ability to harvest knowledge from users and employees is wonderful, but if it is not managed properly, it can get out of hand.

In your opinion, where and how will we be using knowledge management technology in 5 years time and what challenges will we need to overcome to get there?
A big driver of KM 2.0 is the aging workforce. According to a recent study by the Conference Board, by 2010 about 64 million workers, 40 percent of the nation’s workforce, will be poised for retirement, though not all will choose to leave. As baby boomers leave the workforce in droves, a growing concern among the companies they are vacating is the knowledge vacuum created in their wake. With a company being only as strong as its employees, companies are faced with the daunting task of capturing the knowledge before it’s too late, and with some sort of efficiency.

In light of the pending retirement wave, it is incredibly timely that web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and wikis are making their way into the enterprise. Before the evolution of the Internet and web 2.0 technologies, the chances of this happening would be slim, especially with so many companies being geographically dispersed. With wikis, blogs and forums becoming increasingly more mainstream, there is a better chance that the insight and information from retiring employees will be captured before 2010’s mass exodus to the golf course, as long as companies manage it properly.

How does knowledge management impact contact center employees?
A KM 2.0 system is more flexible and can constantly evolve. Agents can update the system when they discover additional insight into how to solve a problem. Users (with the right privileges) can quickly draft or recommend new content, or recommend changes to existing content. Understanding that people are going to use the system in varied ways, users can have personal profiles to update their preferences. This personalized view can automatically track details from previous sessions. For example, it can identify content that the user has not read yet, has already read, or has been updated since the user last read the content.

How will these technologies change the way contact centers function?
Competition has intensified across almost every industry as companies focus more and more on the user experience. For companies that sell into a competitive market, purchase decisions often hinge upon customer service quality. Wireless providers, banking institutions and insurance companies, for example, all advertise superior customer service experiences to lure users away from their current providers, leading companies to constantly scrutinize their current offering. Seeking any way to improve their user experiences, many organizations are starting to look to KM as a key part of their customer service function, arming service agents and web self-service users with the best possible information to solve service issues as quickly and pleasantly as possible, while at the same time preventing future problems from arising for other users. They are also focusing on how employees can benefit from the knowledge their colleagues possess. A call center agent that has dealt with a service issue will have insight into how to solve it quicker, and can also contribute to a discussion on how to prevent the issue from happening again.

For many industries, customers are becoming more technically savvy and prefer having the resources available to solve problems themselves. In this competitive landscape, they can and will go elsewhere if the company with whom they do business cannot deliver that level of customer self-service. From a customer satisfaction and an efficiency standpoint, self-service options become even more critical. Taking this a step further, companies in the KM 2.0 world realize that these customers have valuable knowledge that could be helpful in improving the self-service process as well as to other users. Companies are becoming more and more open to tools such as discussion forums where users can essentially help each other solve their problems.

About Michael Murphy:
Mike Murphy brings over 20 years of technology management and sales experience to his role as CEO of InQuira, Inc. Mike started InQuira in 2002 with a goal of developing a solution that would set new standards of functionality and commercial viability for Web-based customer search and navigation.

About InQuira Inc:
InQuira, Inc. improves the quality of customer interactions through websites and contact centers with integrated applications for intelligent search, knowledge management, analytics and user experience. InQuira’s solutions leverage the company’s patented intelligent search technology to understand customer intent in real-time and create a personalized response experience that incorporates the right information, data, applications and navigation paths.