When a customer reaches out to your virtual contact center, they are looking for one thing above all else: an immediate response with accurate and up-to-date information. Contact center knowledge management software ensures that an organization can meet that expectation consistently, efficiently and simply.
Businesses often explore contact center knowledge management software once they realize they cannot rely on a spreadsheet, shared drive or paper files to organize the content their agents need. These systems focus less on customer account details and purchase histories and more on information about products (such as common troubleshooting approaches), policies (such as returns) and processes. A system effectively becomes a central hub, consolidating and streamlining information and organization.
Why call center knowledge management software is important
Contact or call center knowledge management tools ensure that a business's actions are smoothly coordinated across the customer experience. Centralized information means agents are not left navigating a disorganized system when trying to resolve a customer concern.
Knowledge management tools help make a virtual contact center more efficient. A knowledge management system could give customers instant access to the information they need—meaning they would not have to wait while an agent hunts down details about a policy or the best way to repair a product. This helps improve agent productivity and allows them to handle more questions without having to hand off calls.
Knowledge management software can also help prevent errors, such as quoting policy details to a customer that are inconsistent with what is posted on the company website. Consistent information is critical as companies offer more service and support across more channels, including social media and text messages.
The employee experience benefits from increased productivity because artificial intelligence delivers up-to-date, accurate answers and guidance directly to agent desktops, allowing employees to focus more on solving customer concerns and virtual agents’ desktops to deliver. Our solution helps your agents understand the intent of customers’ questions, provide consistent answers across channels, build trust and drive customer conversations.
With remote work on the rise, knowledge needs to be immediately available. Contact center knowledge management software helps ensure that access; it also reduces training time and lifts morale. These benefits stem from the autonomy a knowledge management system can provide. Agents do not have to spin their wheels on routine or monotonous customer issues; the information in knowledge management systems can power self-service options.
These advantages ladder up to some of the most important metrics in customer service. At first, you might see upticks in first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and net promoter score. Down the road, you might see reduced agent turnover, improved productivity and more cross-sell and upsell opportunities.
Develop a virtual contact center knowledge management plan
Companies might already have the building blocks in place to deploy contact center knowledge management tools. They might have developed FAQs, for example, or a reference database of knowledge base articles.
The next step is turning that information into knowledge. Technology can help streamline that journey. First, conduct an inventory or audit of your customer service data, considering details such as:
- When information is generated or acquired
- How the information should be used by agents and customers
- How the information might be adapted across channels
- How the information will be distributed and shared among stakeholders
From there, you can determine the call center knowledge management applications and services that best meet your goals and needs.
A good contact center knowledge management system is agent-centric, with a user-friendly interface that integrates naturally into established virtual contact center workflows. The system should also be flexible enough that new workflows can be developed and added to accommodate new customer needs and channels.
The best knowledge management tools will also help companies build keyword databases. In some cases, it could integrate with customer relationship management and ticketing tools to avoid overcomplicating agent processes.
Remember, though, that knowledge is all about how information delivers value. The tools you use should put data into context and offer insight into improving service and support functions. Look for analytics and reporting capabilities that regularly measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your knowledge base and content.
Partnering for knowledge management success
Like customer and agent needs, knowledge is always changing. It can be difficult to keep up with what kind of system to use.
A managed service provider can play an invaluable role in deploying a contact or call center knowledge management platform, thanks to the best practices they have gathered from a cross section of their other customers.
Managed service providers can also provide ongoing support and advice on any additional changes or capabilities required to maximize your return on investment. By better understanding which content boosts key performance indicators, you will have better visibility into how your knowledge base should be expanded, edited or optimized for search.
Knowledge often provides a competitive advantage. By arming agents with technology that helps them capitalize on the information at their fingertips, a contact center knowledge management system will give your organization a leg up.
Get started by learning how Verizon's Knowledge Assist can help your agents resolve customer issues quickly, accurately and consistently.