Relationships with customers are often affected by how well your customer service representatives (CSR) know your organization, but just as important is the CSR's ability to provide superior customer service and effectively deal with customers' recurring problems. Meeting customer needs in a timely manner is greatly augmented by the ability to share knowledge across the organization. Such knowledge sharing can lead to enhanced customer intimacy and further opportunities between customers and organizations.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Fortune 500 companies lose at least $31.5 billion a year by failing to adequately share knowledge. In many cases, it is not for a lack of trying, but most organizations do not study the two biggest failures: technology that is too complicated and the human nature that poses barriers to knowledge sharing.
CSRs are uniquely positioned to interact with the customer not only first but also more frequently than any other person in an organization. Understanding customers and their needs is difficult for most organizations.
From executives on down, most organizations and their employees simply have no idea what customers need or how they want it. In an era when the customer experience and how well customer expectations are met differentiate otherwise similar organizations, the modern CSR cannot ably manage the customer relationship without being able to quickly process and diagnose the difficulties customers may face.
In order for organizations to share knowledge and learn from past mistakes, employees must be trained to embrace this different approach. In recent years, APQC has identified major barriers to knowledge sharing. In their book, If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice, APQC Chairman C. Jackson Grayson and President Carla O'Dell point out four common reasons why knowledge is not shared.
Ignorance. Grayson and O'Dell believe those who have knowledge don't realize others may find it useful. At the same time, someone who could benefit from the knowledge may not know that another person in the company already has it. This is potentially the most critical problem in the call center.
No Absorptive Capacity. Many times, an employee lacks the money, time, and management resources to seek out information they need.
Lack Of Preexisting Relationship. People often absorb knowledge from other people they know, respect, and like. If two managers don't know each other, they're less likely to incorporate each other's experiences into their own work.
Lack Of Motivation. People do not see a clear business reason for pursuing the transfer of knowledge.
These barriers often prevent knowledge-sharing programs from reaching their full potential. If organizations plan to implement knowledge sharing on an ad hoc basis, they can count on not revolutionizing the way they do business.
One of the best ways to overcome the human barriers to knowledge sharing is to embed it within the organization. Embedding knowledge sharing into your organization's hierarchy is crucial to the overall success of the program. Determining which of the value propositions is right for you is also vital; it depends on where the greatest potential for improvement lies in the call center. No matter the focus area you pursue, the principles of knowledge sharing must be firmly woven into the company's structure to achieve an optimal level of success.
Organizations that are able to implement knowledge sharing often realize that most of the problems their customers face are not new problems; in fact, one or more CSRs have seen the problem before and have found a solution, but the information is usually never shared with others. At Xerox, customer service managers believe that 80 percent of the 40,000 daily customer calls have a solution that has already been identified. The issue then is not re-inventing the solution but finding where the knowledge resides in the organization. The ability to share knowledge has helped Xerox maintain excellence in customer service as well as make the call center a more productive part of the organization.
When Xerox first examined the issue of knowledge sharing, there were several obstacles to overcome. Initially, the organizational culture had to change. Xerox employees were not used to sharing information with each other and were hesitant to do so. Among the most cited barriers encountered in transforming to a knowledge sharing culture are:
Employee fears of not receiving recognition or credit for their contributions.
Employee fears of becoming dispensable.
Tools appropriate to the work being performed are not available.
Like other organizations, Xerox also found systematic barriers that prevent change. Some of those include:
Incentives in the corporation reward hoarding of knowledge.
An attitude of "we already know/don't need to know" was pervasive.
There was little respect for new ideas and their value.
Employees were distrustful of knowledge sharing due to uncertainty of what would happen to their positions once they began sharing knowledge.
Xerox overcame these barriers through communication and training. Employees often do not have experience in sharing knowledge and hesitate to do so. In order to convert an organization into a knowledge-sharing one, employees must be taught to share experiences with their peers, and the organization must promote the culture by embedding these principles:
Share what you know and do. Build and expand the company IQ.
Discover what you do not know. See if a solution already exists.
Honor, respect, and credit sources. Build trust and reciprocity.
When in doubt, err on the side of sharing.
As difficult as it is to codify tacit knowledge, the need to capture it remains because it has so much value. Having access to it only when its "owner" has time to share it or losing it entirely if she leaves the company are significant problems that threaten the value of the organization's knowledge capital. Allowing the room and space to share is also important because learning is the socialization of knowledge.
To embrace knowledge sharing is to embrace complete culture change. Aligning a business with a knowledge-sharing program is to radically reinvent the way an organization does business. Everything from quick questions to major planning and execution issues can take advantage of knowledge sharing. However, there is only so much time in the day. The key is to always be alert for knowledge-sharing opportunities and to match the investment with the benefit.
Knowledge sharing can be as simple as a phone call or as complex and structured as a chartered, permanent knowledge-sharing key process team with a full time process master. Between these two extremes, knowledge-sharing networks can be formal or informal, organizationally based or cross-functional, information systems–supported or personal, permanent or ad hoc. To be successful, though, everyone in the organization must realize that knowledge sharing is inevitably a journey, not a destination.
About APQC:
APQC is a resource for process and performance improvement, APQC helps organizations adapt to rapidly changing environments, build new and better ways to work, and succeed in a competitive marketplace. APQC focuses on: benchmarking and best practices, knowledge management, metrics & measures, performance measurement and professional development initiatives.
Published: Thursday, June 16, 2005
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