Knowledge Management Significantly improves the call handling process – BPO maximises call centre efficiencies to online retailer with Universal Knowledge.
An established online retailer with a number of global call centre sites sought to maximise staff productivity and customer service by introducing Universal Knowledge, knowledge management software.
Highly trained contact centre staff
The Call Centres handle thousands of queries every day from customers – for example in connection with refunds, deliveries, promotional information and credit account queries. With such a diverse range of issues to deal with, the organisation used a collection of organisational systems consisting of; inbuilt solutions, SharePoint and their intranet site which detailed the processes that agents should follow in dealing with these queries.
The in house solution was an excel based flat file system, combined with an intranet and Sharepoint site. Reviewing and updating the files was difficult, time consuming and not sustainable. The cost to the business of having this unreliable system and process was not being measured. There was no consistent review and approval process or mechanism for new content to be created or for Agents to share knowledge corrections or request new knowledge from others.
The need for a Knowledge management system was identified to improve the creation and maintenance of this business critical tool. With no search facility available from the existing system, the knowledge base also needed to understand the context of what the Agents were seeking. The Contact Centres needed an easy to use and maintain knowledge management system.
Content Authors were spread across different individuals’ roles and responsibilities and as such they wanted to concentrate on the actual knowledge needed, rather than configuring a review and approval process and being concerned with the look and feel of the content, since many authors could create new and edit existing materials.
A knowledge management system was therefore required to have easy to use templates for content creation, in addition to different review and approval processes for each product line or supplier that the business interacted with.
Universal Knowledge fitted the exact requirements with its natural language search and fragment technology, ensuring the time spent looking for customer relevant information and processes was dramatically reduced.
The KPS system would allowed the knowledge authors to create ‘Decision Tree’ based content, whereby the steps required for each process could be configured using a simple editor. Agents would only be presented with the relevant steps for each process, dependent on the selections made, rather than being presented with the entire process, as they had been with the in-house solution.
This would significantly improve the call handling process for both experienced and new staff. As these processes are held in the knowledge management system, the contact centre was able to realise the benefits of the quickly realised the additional benefits of using the new tool with minimal set up (it took one individual 3 months to turn 1500 knowledge items into decision tree, step by step guides).
Using the ‘Decision Tree’ to audit behaviour
For compliance purposes, the Contact Centres also required audit trails to understand the process steps taken. Being able to report on all interactions with the knowledge base was a benefit in which the organisation was quick to exploit. With no Management Information (MI) possible with the in-house system, contact centre mangers were now able to see which processes are used most often and whether there was any variance dependent on shift times or geography. Contact centre managers could now view audit trails of the steps taken by individual agents not only to understand what knowledge the customer wants to know, the most frequently used processes, they could also identify any training needs. This is all possible because Universal Knowledge captures every interaction with the knowledge base.
Change Manager for the organisation commented, “We’ve never had the facility to produce this MI until now, the possibilities for gaining really useful insight into our operation are endless”.
Implementing a knowledge management system, rather than just a process repository, also meant that the organisation was able to use athe Universal Knowledge communications platform embedded within the knowledge base to manage the flow of important information to agents, using the tool to distribute bulletins to the relevant teams.
A new template was created to allow the team managers to create bulletins as ‘required reading’ tasks which were immediately made available on the agents search home page, again with full audit trail on who had both received the bulletin and also marked it as ‘Read and Understood’. This powerful feature would mean that agents were always up to date with the information they needed to handle the diverse range of queries.
“This facility is a real ‘value-add’ for us. Having all the information for our agents in one place, with true management of that information, dramatically improves efficiencies”, remarked the Change Manager.
Quick to implement, fast to create efficiencies
After only 3 months of implementation, the organisation had configured all required processes and were ready to go live. Rollout was across all 6 global sites and after a day’s training, agents were using the system to handle customer queries.
The change manager also commented that “we are delighted to have come so far and at such speed due to the quick implementation time for this tool. I am excited by Universal Knowledge management system and its limitless benefits. The team is looking forward to analysing the metrics that can be gained from this tool, which will allow for continuous improvements”.
The key benefits include; being able to quickly update and add new processes, manage the flow of important information and audit all interactions. The addition of the Knowledge Management solution has improved the efficiency of the Contact Centre operation while supporting staff to provide outstanding service levels to customers.
Additional Information
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Knowledge Powered Solutions (KPS) offers knowledge management software (Universal Knowledge) that helps organisations deliver operational efficiencies and at the same time improve customer services by providing immediate access to information at the point of need. Benefits include significant increases in productivity, reduction in operational costs, reduced training times and increased speed to competency for agents. Customers and stakeholders receive consistent answers to their queries and issues for improved service quality.
For additional information on Knowledge Powered Solutions visit their Website
