Knowledge is power. You've probably heard that idea before, but have you put it into practice at your call center? Knowledge management software lets you design an on-line knowledge base for your company's Web site. By providing customers with the power to find the information they want, agents save time by not answering frequently asked questions. And you save money on the costs associated with handling phone calls.
Frost & Sullivan, a research firm and consultancy based in New York, NY, estimates that you pay ten cents or less each time a customer uses a knowledge base, and as much as $8 dollars to $30 when agents help customers through the phone. The same study reveals that up to 80% of all queries received by contact centers comprise repeated questions. Knowledge management software lets you cost-effectively answer them so that agents have the time to handle customers' more complex requests.
Reducing call volumes for cost savings is the number one reason why call centers use knowledge management software, according to a Frost & Sullivan poll. The company asked ten knowledge management vendors like Kana Communications, Primus and ServiceWare what their customers' top priorities were. Participating vendors said the continued growth of on-line commerce motivated them to expand the number of on-line customer service options they offer. And they noted that a knowledge base helped them to provide 24-hour support.
As more call centers use knowledge management software, Frost & Sullivan projects that revenues for vendors in this field will rocket to $1.6 billion by 2007 from $123 million in 2000. Frost & Sullivan's survey indicates that the average cost of the software ranges from $1,500 to $2,500 per agent. But the outfit says you can expect those prices to decline as more vendors enter the increasingly competitive knowledge management marketplace.
Knowledge management software can be just as useful to agents working at your call center as it can be to customers visiting your company's Web site. By creating a knowledge base for agents to help them answer customers' questions, you can increase their efficiency and job satisfaction. If you're still wondering whether or not your call center needs knowledge management software, take a look at the following five success stories.
A WELL-EDUCATED KNOWLEDGE BASE
Campus Pipeline provides software and services that enable the students, faculty and administration at colleges and universities to communicate with each other through campus-wide intranets and the Internet. For example, professors can display course descriptions at an on-line address and students can register for courses or view their grades from a Web browser. Campus Pipeline handles technical support for over 150 schools from its head office in Salt Lake City, UT, where eight agents respond to calls and e-mail messages from system administrators at each campus.
In May 2001, Campus Pipeline debuted RightNow Technologies' (Bozeman, MT) RightNow Web 4.0 knowledge management software from its Web site and provided technical assistance to ten system administrators at four schools. Mike Cleary, senior director of customer support, explains that Campus Pipeline works with the system administrators, who then offer support services to their respective campuses.
Cleary filled the RightNow Web knowledge base with 50 answers to frequently asked questions. He also added information about a beta release of a new software product that the ten system administrators who first had access to the knowledge base tested. They entered their user IDs and passwords from the company's Web site to view information about potential bugs in the software and how to resolve issues. After receiving positive responses from this focus group of knowledge base users, Cleary decided that agents could begin working with RightNow Web also.
Agents at Campus Pipeline use RightNow Web to save and view histories of customers' support incidents. Because the company currently works with nearly five hundred campuses and tens of thousands of system administrators, using a knowledge base helps agents to focus on each school's specific needs. Cleary adds that the knowledge base also provides agents with information to support new products and services.
To help keep knowledge base entries up-to-date, Cleary and a team of managers and technical writers review technical support issues that customers submit by phone, e-mail and by completing Web forms. They also review the answers that agents provided and add the most useful ones to the knowledge base. "We'll go through some number of [issues] every week," says Cleary. "The following week, those get published." He estimates that he looks at as many as 50 to 100 answers each week, but typically selects only ten to 20 on average. "The reason is that we've seen many of these incidents and they're already in the knowledge base," he says.
Cleary and his co-workers also remove the least helpful answers from the knowledge base using RightNow Web's incident tracking system. The software assigns a numerical score to each answer that customers view to determine how helpful the answer is. The software adjusts this score based on customers' browsing habits. For example, if someone quits the browser session or goes to a different Web site answer, RightNow Web knows that it's highly likely the answer helped that customer. Customers can't view answers with a score of zero, but Campus Pipeline employees like Cleary can decide if they should remain in the knowledge base.
Campus Pipeline upgraded to version 5.0 of RightNow Web in September 2001. The following month, the company let professional services and sales reps view a history of support instances for each campus by entering the name of the schools from Campus Pipeline's Web site. Because professional services reps frequently visit campuses to install products and offer consulting services, Cleary says they can arrive knowing each school's IT concerns.
By taking this last step, Campus Pipeline proves that knowledge bases don't need to be restricted only to your company's support agents. Cleary says that the company has discussed finding new uses for RightNow Web 5.0 that include enabling the student and faculty community to consult the knowledge base to answer simple questions without consulting system administrators. For example, a new student who wants to learn how to use the campus-wide e-mail system could view an on-line tutorial on that topic.
Cleary also plans to enable Campus Pipeline's potential customers to view information like white papers for products and answers to frequently asked questions from the company's knowledge base. The IT staff at a given college or university could also research product and service options that Campus Pipeline offers before speaking to a professional services or sales rep. Cleary saves time and money by not having to answer recurring questions about the company. And he uses the knowledge base as a marketing tool to broaden his customer base.
