Time is precious and expensive. Don’t waste it training employees/agents on ever changing knowledge that they can quickly look up in a knowledge base (KB). Invest your time training agents to quickly navigate systems, to recognize caller condition, to understand the ROI of concessions, and what it means to be a brand ambassador. A highly skilled agent can make a call or interaction with a company very pleasant, all while skillfully looking up the latest knowledge.
Some companies have complicated “go to market” offerings. For example, a company might need 3,000 or more knowledge base articles (each article can contain one or more questions and answers) to support its multiple product lines. Some companies are rapidly changing and 20-40 of these articles might change every day. It is responsibility of the organization’s subject matter experts (SMEs) to update these KB articles. To make sure each bit of information is available; is switched from “wrong” to “right”. Imagine how expensive it would be to train agents on this information every day. Knowledge that often times will change before they use it. Knowledge that can just be looked up when needed.
Some companies have simple market offerings and hardly change. They might only have 100 bits of information that agents need to know to answer questions and provide great service. These agents might be considered very skilled because they know all the information. But do they have high skill?
Click here to learn the difference between knowledge and skill.
The bottom line: a knowledge base is a tremendous asset to a company. Leverage this asset by making the information available in your public facing website in a helpcenter. (Zendesk provides an excellent option in Guide.) Most customers want to self serve these days, so a searchable helpcenter allows them to get answers 24/7 without having to contact customer service. Customers are happy and the company saves money with fewer contacts. It’s a win-win.
It takes work to maintain the asset: here is the Knowledge Wheel of Life to show how every single question of Customer Service can build the asset.
