Knowledge management systems play a crucial role in capturing, organizing, and sharing information within a company. In the world of information when each day businesses accumulate terabytes of data, those that fail to extract the value from it, fall behind their competitors. The importance of knowledge management is about improved productivity, fostered innovation, and better decision-making processes based on the synthesized results.
This article will delve into different ways that can help organizations capitalize on their intellectual assets and leverage collective benefits.
1. What are the benefits of knowledge management systems?
Harnessing organizational knowledge leads to several strong advantages. By understanding each of them, companies can work on strategies that could help to use them to their full potential.
1.1. Improved efficiency
When employees are able to access information quickly and share it with the needed collaborators, they make faster and more informed decisions without spending additional time searching for resources or someone who could provide the needed expertise. This advantage allows the employees to focus on value-added tasks and fosters autonomy.
1.2. Better collaboration
Shared expertise is one of the founding blocks of the organization’s efficiency as it promotes cross-cultural collaboration and prevents data silos. No matter how skilled your personnel may be, if there is no knowledge management system, expertise sharing will be complicated and it will constantly slow down the teams.
1.3. Knowledge retention
Internal teaching is an activity that sometimes may require excessive resources. However, when the knowledge management system is in place, the generated data can be used as a repository of internal knowledge. Employees may leave the company and teams may be restructured, but knowledge management mitigates the risks associated with knowledge loss due to these changes. All the insights are gathered in one place and can be used across the organization.
1.4. Continuous innovation
Depending on the domain, QoS and R&D departments can use generated data to work on product improvement. By leveraging the collective knowledge within an organization, knowledge management systems support a culture of continuous learning and innovation. They enable employees to access best practices, case studies, and lessons learned, fostering creativity and encouraging the generation of new ideas.
Some of the best approaches like sharing insights with R&D departments have already been mentioned briefly in this article. Let’s dive into more details.
2. How to build a strong knowledge base with remote visual support?
By adopting a systematic approach to the way your company captures, organizes, and utilizes video content, you can establish a robust knowledge base thanks to remote visual support.
No matter if you use a remote visual support tool standalone or integrated with your favorite CRM, FSM, EAM, or CMMS, by the end of the sessions, all your video recordings and shared files are stored in the archive. Suppose, you use field service management software. All your work orders will be enriched with the aforementioned archive that your experts and field technicians will be able to access directly from their FSM interface. This facilitates video collection processes without making you turn to a third-party page for data storage and mitigates the risks of losing precious information.
2.1. Make use of tagging capabilities
Remote visual support solutions like ViiBE offer tagging capabilities that allow users to categorize added files for easier search.
You can also tag particular moments in the video recordings. They can be used for tutorials, demonstrating how an expert solved a customer’s problem.
2.2. Build a unified organizational system
Consider implementing not only a system for tagging but also the way you name your tickets/work orders. A unified order will help users to retrieve needed videos faster.
Remote visual support solutions allow the creation of call centers and expertise that can be attributed to the types of assets your company works with. “A call center” is a pool of experts/technicians with each of them assigned to a particular expertise. You can name your “call centers” after geographic locations where your business operates, team names, etc. They can be used as a search criteria for a particular recording as well.
Sometimes, experts/technicians may forget to title a ticket/work order. As a result, it may lead to a disorganized environment. To avoid it, you can configure the settings of your remote visual support solution and keep these fields mandatory.
3. What insights to extract from gathered data?
3.1. Analyze customer interactions
Video recordings of your experts’ interaction with customers are a gold mine of valuable insights regarding customer satisfaction. By analyzing the facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language of the customers, you can evaluate whether the technical support was successful or not. Positive cues, such as smiling and engaged body language, may indicate satisfaction or interest. Conversely, negative cues like frustration or confusion can highlight areas for improvement or potential issues. How do your experts react in return? Do they anticipate the customers’ questions? Are they proactive?
Sentiment analysis is one of the powerful technics that enables companies to understand their customers better. Sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, is used to analyze chat messages that the customer and the support agent were exchanging as well as to assess the transcripts of video recordings.
This technique enables businesses to automate the analysis of large volumes of video data, allowing for efficient and scalable analysis of customer interactions.
3.2. Identify trends
Recurring questions, complaints, or points of confusion can highlight areas where further clarification, training, or process improvements are needed. Understanding these pain points will help your company to address customer concerns proactively, ultimately improving the overall customer experience.
3.3. Predict the future
By anticipating the trends based on the concussion that result from the aforementioned practices, your company can be several steps ahead of the competitors and provide tailored services to the customers. Being in tune with the customers’ needs influences customer loyalty and creates a trusting bond.
3.4. Improve your product
Sometimes companies can be so routed into the idea of what they know is right and what product will be successful that they forget to listen to the customers. As a result, they end up with the product that fails to address market’s needs. The alternative scenario is possible when the company launches a successful product but due to the lack of visibility on the customers’ feedback, the roadmap ends up curving in the wrong direction. This can be avoided thanks to knowledge management.
Do not wait for the issues to compound. By gathering the insights and sharing them with your QoS and R&D departments, you can continuously eliminate the downsides of your product and serve your customers’ needs faster. It also helps to prioritize the development of the next features or additional services.
3.5. Train your employees
By analyzing the interaction agents/experts/technicians have with the customers, you can identify specific skill gaps within your workforce. These insights help in tailoring training programs to address the specific areas where employees need improvement. This will boost their autonomy and ensure that the company is considerate of their professional development.
Data-driven insights can track and measure the level of knowledge sharing and collaboration within your company. You can analyze the ways interlocutors use collaborative features of your remote visual support solution to pinpoint areas where knowledge sharing is thriving. The agents/techncinais that outperform can later share their expertise with the colleagues for better problem resolution. The integration of such ambassadors will promote the culture of knowledge sharing and help to develop the sense of ownership and accountability in your employees. In turn, this will improve their performance with the customers and drive customer satisfaction rate higher.
4. Conclusion
By embracing these best practices, organizations can unlock the full potential of their employees, enhance organizational knowledge, and drive innovation and growth. Knowledge management becomes a strategic asset, enabling organizations to adapt to a rapidly changing business landscape and stay ahead of the competition.