They say knowledge is power.
Well, in business, it’s certainly true that the more you know, the more able you are to capitalize on your opportunities.
However, it’s not just what you know; it’s what you do with that knowledge that can really affect outcomes.
Unfortunately, in today’s increasingly-complex enterprises, the knowledge is often hard to locate, let alone be leveraged to drive improvements.
Product knowledge; market knowledge; customer knowledge; performance knowledge: it’s often scattered haphazardly throughout a business, buried in siloes and consequently rendered impotent.
The world’s smartest enterprises understand the value of all that knowledge and are rightly treating it as an asset capable of transforming their entire operations.
They are creating clever, searchable ‘knowledge bases’ that serve as fast and dependable sources of the ‘truth’ when answering customer questions, developing products, managing processes and resources, and planning the future roadmap.
As is always the case, the technological smarts are out there to help.
“Think of it as being similar to a Google-type, enterprise-scale search but in the context of the results being 100% relevant only to a particular business,” says Stin Mattu, Product Marketing Manager at leading global enterprise software provider Upland, whose RightAnswers ‘connected knowledge’ solution delivers huge returns on investment.
“Key information is gathered from any existing repositories including corporate websites, intranet sites, document management systems, SharePoint applications, and corporate hard drives. The information is brought together onto one single platform that provides users with one single and rapidly-searchable view, with options to import into the RightAnswers knowledgebase if the user deems it useful.
“RightAnswers also delivers the results out to wherever they are required, such as CRMs, self-service portals, contact centers, chatbots, website FAQs, and IT Service Management Tools. It’s about expanding rich, previously-hidden knowledge out to everywhere a user would have a touchpoint. That is a comprehensive resource with the potential to have a hugely positive impact on any business.”
In the contact center environment in particular, connected knowledge is a boon.
It has always been the case that agents are often unaware of where to go for detailed information they need to successfully resolve a customer issue.
Do they ask a colleague? Must they dig out from their emails a product launch PowerPoint sent to them by a manager at some point in time they can’t remember? Having a unified connected knowledge base means the relevant content is easily accessible and has been created in a format that can be sent to a customer.
“Contact center agents have the most difficult job within any customer service organisation,” says Mattu.
“Multiple customers every day; each query very, very different. They need a trusted information source they can go to quickly and in real-time. After all, when it comes customer service, what is the one thing that needs to stay constant? It’s the information they receive; regardless of the channel via which they receive it. In short, the information must always be true. That’s what you get when you have a quality connected knowledge base. It’s true for the human agent, it’s true for the live chat, it’s true for the chat bot, and it’s true for the self-service portal.”
Additionally, extra algorithm sophistication, Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning can be deployed to fine tune a connected knowledge base, and with the RightAnswers X browser extension, organizations can save cost, time and effort delivering knowledge across the enterprise.
And, in the case of Upland’s RightAnswers solution, user organizations benefit from close post-sale technical support to ensure their knowledge base constantly evolves as their product sets expand and their customers’ queries broaden.
Now that’s worth knowing..!
To learn more about how Upland can help your business leverage the transformational power of its knowledge base, click here
