Knowledge Management in Contact Centers

Christian Erickson:
Welcome to our special webinar today, the importance of knowledge management. During today’s webinar, you will hear about multi-channel journeys. You’ll hear about self-service technology, the importance of first contact resolution, key drivers of resolution. And we’ll also share with you the improved technology provider processes at COPC. And we’ll hear from livepro as well. I want to introduce our presenters for today’s webinar. [00:00:30] Brad Shaw, is the CEO of livepro. livepro are experts in customer experience knowledge management, and are passionate about improving the customer experience. Since 2001, livepro has been delivering the best knowledge management solution to award-winning customer service centers in all the major industries. Brad, and the livepro team are passionate about helping clients deliver the perfect answer to their customer no matter what channel they prefer to ask the question.  

[00:01:00] Ian Aitchison, will be delivering the majority of today’s presentation. Ian is the CEO of the Asia-Pacific region of COPC Inc. He has more than 20 years of experience in the customer experience and contact center industry marked by the consistent delivery of quality service and process improvement that is the hallmark of the COPC family of standards. His recent work includes founding the COPC research team, and he has played a key role in developing the service [00:01:30] journey thinking methodology that supports operations in driving improved customer loyalty and reduced customer effort. And Ian, I’m going to turn it over to you now. 

Ian Aitchison:
Thanks, Christian. Thanks, Brad, as well for joining us. And thank you everyone for joining us no matter where you are in the world. I want to start off by talking a little bit about multi-channel or multi-contact service journeys. [00:02:00] The industry we work in is certainly evolving. And from our research last year, it was interesting to find that the number of consumers going through a multi-contact or multi-channel service journey had increased by 71%. 71% of them said that they had to go through a multi-channel or multi-contact service journey to get their issue resolved, [00:02:30] which was an increase from previous years. Now, this was interesting because the majority of consumers have gone through a multi-contact channel. But when we asked the contact center managers and executives in the contact center industry, about what percentage of their consumers they thought went through, more than half of them said, they just didn’t know. And this was an interesting point to me that we’re flying blind in industry [00:03:00] a little bit about how frequently customers have to go to multiple channels to get their issues resolved.  

Now what the COPC research team then looked at, and some of what I’m going to share today is about those multi-contact journeys, multi-channel journeys. And the first one I wanted to look at was self-service technology, because that’s obviously a big part of the journey. The reported use of self-service technologies, [00:03:30] such as chatbots, IVRs web self service, mobile apps, et cetera, has increased year over year with almost twice as many consumers stating they tried to use self-service technology last year compared to the previous years. The adoption has grown, but have the self-service technologies delivered what we would hope, which is issue resolution? 

Well, issue resolution [00:04:00] rates are still pretty low. There are about 69% issue resolution, total resolution. This is not first contact. This is total resolution. If you think that a human assisted channel like a contact center would have a 95% total resolution rate, then 69 is pretty low. What is good is that, that rate is increasing. Now we dug into the data to find that well, why is the resolution rates [00:04:30] increasing and our data didn’t give us a definitive answer to why? But the increase in issue resolution may be due to factors such as customers becoming increasingly comfortable with using the self-service technologies or potentially, organizations taking more time and care to design better self-service customer experiences and using knowledge management systems as an example, to be able to plug into self-service as well as the [00:05:00] contact center.  

We wanted to dig in more into issue resolution in self-service technologies and have a look at what an impact resolution had. And what we found was that issue resolution is vital in driving customer satisfaction with self-service technologies. In fact, the biggest determinant of satisfaction was the ability to resolve the issue. Customers who reported having their issue [00:05:30] resolved were seven and a half times more satisfied with the self-service technology than customers who did not have their issue resolved. You can see that. That’s based on us asking a set of questions. One of which is, overall, how satisfied were you with the self-service technology you use to try to resolve your issue? And there was a few 1,000 respondents were able to, on a five-point scale, [00:06:00] people that gave a five or four, which was very satisfied or satisfied. That’s what we’ve included in here. 82% were satisfied with self-service technology if their issue was resolved. Only 11% were satisfied with it if their issue was not resolved.  

Now, issue resolution is also important in keeping people using that self-service technology. Customers who did not have their issue resolved [00:06:30] were 15 times more likely to say that they wouldn’t want to use it in the future. This is important, because repeated use of self-service technology drives consumers’ acceptance and comfort with the channel. Think about self-service kiosks at an airport or self checkout in the grocery store. At the beginning, a lot of people were uncomfortable with those, but then as people got used to them, they became the norm. [00:07:00] If they didn’t work, people wouldn’t want to keep using them.  

It’s the same thing with the customer experience industry. If we’re putting out mobile apps, or we’re putting out chatbots, or IVRs that are not able to answer customer’s questions. They’re not able to resolve issues. If customers have a bad experience and their issue is not resolved, then organizations need to spend more time, more money and [00:07:30] more effort in seducing customers back to using self-service technologies for future issues. A lot of the investment in the chatbot, for example, is lost because people tried it, they didn’t like it. They go back to the human assisted channels. 

Satisfaction with self-service technologies, when you looked at all the customers who had used it, overall, [00:08:00] we’d say that customer satisfaction with self-service technology is low. Only 60% of respondents, overall, said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the self-service technology they used. And more scarily, one in 10 respondents said they were very dissatisfied and this dissatisfaction has a big impact on future usage of self-service technology. What we [00:08:30] are looking for in the industry is to try and take cost out and try to drive customers to self-service technology because the closer we move the answer to the customer, the more satisfied they are. At the moment, it looks like we’re not doing a great job. Across the board, there are a number of organizations that clearly do a terrific job, but across the board, there’s a number of organizations who are not doing a great job with self-service technology. 

[00:09:00] Let’s move on into the broader multi-channel/multi-contact service journey to have a look at what sort of an impact issue resolution, in fact, what sort of an impact first contact resolution has. It’s very clear from the data that we have, the longer it takes or the more touch points involved to resolve an issue, the less satisfied the consumer [00:09:30] is at the end of their journey. From this data that I’m sharing here, if the customer’s issue was resolved in one contact, it’s 93%, Top 2 Box satisfaction. If it then takes two contacts to resolve an issue that drops to 79%, Top 2 Box satisfaction. If it takes three or more contacts that drops to 49%, Top 2 Box satisfaction. This reinforces the importance of first contact resolution, not just from a customer experience [00:10:00] point of view, but also from a cost point of view.  

If you can design your service to give the answer to the customer as quickly as possible, not only does that stop the repeat contact, but it drives up customer satisfaction. Now we showed this data on a number of occasions and some of the criticism as well. That’s just using customer satisfaction. That’s an old fashioned metric, [00:10:30] which I disagree with, by the way. People said, what about Net Promoter Score? What about customer effort score? Well, fortunately, we have that information. And no matter which metric is used to measure the customer experience, they all show the same pattern, performance degrades as the number of contacts increases towards resolution. And actually, if the issue isn’t resolved at all, then that’s when the customer is the most unhappy.  

[00:11:00] What you can see from the customer effort score, which again, that’s just a survey question. That’s like Net Promoter Score. There’s a specific question that you ask and then they get a seven point scale to agree, disagree, seven point scale. And the customer effort score we have here is the percent to agree or strongly agree that the company makes it easy to do business with. [00:11:30] If that’s resolved in one contact, that was 79%. Resolved in two contacts, that dropped down to 64%. Resolved in three plus contacts, that drops down to 56%. Not resolved at all, that drops down to 30%.  

The Top 2 Box satisfaction, we’ve gone through that. The Net Promoter Score, which is a slightly different question, it’s about how likely are you to recommend the company to a friend or [00:12:00] colleague. And that’s not on an 11 point scale. That’s calculated by taking away the bottom six boxes from the Top 2 Boxes. If it’s resolved in one contact, it’s plus 28. Resolved in two contacts, that drops down to plus three. Resolved in three or more contacts that goes to a minus Net Promoter Score. And if it’s not resolved at all, that dropped down to minus 53.  

Now [00:12:30] the interesting thing about using Net Promoter Score, a rewind. When you’re measuring customer satisfaction with a specific experience, you obviously can’t compare that with people who have not had the experience. If I haven’t phoned your call center, you can’t measure me in how satisfied I was with the experience with the call center. Net Promoter Score though, [00:13:00] allows you to measure equally using the same question to your customers, whether they have contacted you or not contacted you. And so what we did across a multi-industry survey in the US was this allowed us to understand, well, what is the resting heartbeat for a number of different industries? 

We looked at banking and health insurance, [00:13:30] utilities, things like that. And what we called the resting heartbeat was, what is the Net Promoter Score for customers who did not have to contact the organization? Okay. The resting heartbeat across, it was a couple of 1,000 consumers we looked at, the resting heartbeat was plus three, a Net Promoter Score of plus three, which is pretty average. They’re not super happy. They’re not unhappy. It’s [00:14:00] normal. We wanted to test, well, what impact does customer contact have on that resting heartbeat? And so the customer contact is like an adrenaline shot. Well, it is if you resolve the issue, first of all. If someone doesn’t contact you, they’re resting heartbeats, plus three. If you resolve it on the first contact that [00:14:30] jumped up to plus 28. If it wasn’t resolved after two contacts that came back down to the same level as though they hadn’t contacted you at all. 

You have destroyed that. You’ve taken away that high that you could have given them from resolving their issue first time. Then if it takes three or more contacts, you’ve actually destroyed via your contact center or your different channels, self-service [00:15:00] channels, as well as human assisted channels have brought the Net Promoter Score down less, not because we were rude, not because the staff were not professional, not because the chatbot was written in such a way that the language was slightly odd, merely because we didn’t resolve the issues. And if we don’t resolve issues at all, the Net Promoter Score [00:15:30] moved to minus 53. This resting heartbeat might be different in your organization. The numbers change from company to company and they slightly change from industry to industry, but the pattern stays the same.  

We’ve now done this about 15 times, and we’ve seen that the pattern stays the same. Customer contact, whether that is through a human or through self service technology has the potential [00:16:00] to drive up the Net Promoter Score, drive up the level of satisfaction if it’s done right through being able to give the correct answers to the customers as soon as possible. First contact resolution has a big impact on that. Now, you might also say, Net Promoter Score, it’s just what people say they’re going to recommend. That’s true. But what we also looked at recently was [00:16:30] people who… This was specifically from a banking industry survey that we were commissioned to do. And customers who have their issue resolved in one contact are less likely to say they will switch banks than those who have had no contact with the bank. But the more contacts it takes to resolve the issue, the more likely the customer is to consider switching. This first contact resolution not only [00:17:00] increases the Net Promoter Score, which has people saying they will recommend you, it stops people feeling like they want to leave.  

Now, these numbers in the banking industry I think are much higher than the reality. I don’t think that, that many people do actually leave, but at the moment, if they have a bad experience, they’re willing to say, that’s it, I’m going to go. And if a good offer comes in, they might leave. We were also able to test [00:17:30] the difference in these promoters and detractors about whether they actually had recommended the bank. Promoters who had not contacted the bank, 58% of them had actually made a recommendation. Promoters who had, had some customer contacts, 85% of them actually had a recommendation. Even the customers who say they like you as an organization, customer contact makes them do [00:18:00] a little bit more. 

Issue resolution is very important in driving satisfaction, in driving customer attention and driving overall emotions around their feelings about an organization. What is it that can actually drive that in an organization? Well, we can see that I could have kept building the slide at [00:18:30] a million branches to this tree, but let’s say the channel choice and when it’s a human interaction, how you interact, those are two of the key aspects which can drive issue resolution, which then drive satisfaction, which has an impact on retaining customers, repeat purchases, recommending the company. The real important aspect that you need to look at based on all our key driver analysis is not the efficiency of the contact, [00:19:00] or even the empathy or the communications ability of the staff member, the professionalism. Although if those are missing, customers will be dissatisfied, but the most important things to look at to drive issue resolution was being able to provide the correct answer and being able to provide correct accurate information, no matter which channel that customer goes through.  

What we [00:19:30] have used with understanding all that information is, how does that fit into what’s called the COPC CX Standard? The COPC Standard is a rigorous management system or a quality management framework for CX operations, like contact centers. One of the items in there, one of the important items in there, and there’s about 35 to 40 different items. Some of these are [00:20:00] relevant to some operations, not relevant to others, that focuses on leadership and planning, processes, people. And the key thing about the COPC Standard is it focuses on performance. One of the processes that we think is really important is item 2.10, which is about managing knowledge and content. And the reason that’s been included in the standards and it’s been there for years is that we want to make sure that each organization has a structured approach [00:20:30] for managing content to ensure that customers and their staff are provided with consistent and up-to-date information across all channels.  

And for about 20 years, we used to go in and just be able to, what we call audit that. We would look at, what are they doing? And a lot of them have a homegrown knowledge management system. Some of them were purchasing external knowledge management systems, like ones from livepro. [00:21:00] This got us thinking that we should be able to recognize our approved technology providers, which support items of the standard. And that’s why this year we launched the Approved Technology Provider program. And livepro, actually, went through this process this year. The process itself involves the technology firm in consultation with COPC. It selects [00:21:30] what categories its solution provides. And for a knowledge management firm like livepro, it was clearly going to be the knowledge management items. COPC then puts its staff on to do a lot of data gathering about the tool, understand the specifications of the tool. And then we evaluate the tool. But the evaluation, although part of that is driven by, I’ll use livepro’s name in here, livepro [00:22:00] gave us an assessment, gave us a demo of the tool. 

That’s not enough for COPC. We had to go onsite, well, as onsite as you can in COVID time so much of it was done remotely. But we go onsite to livepro clients to understand the deployment. The deployment is like the execution, how well it’s being used to meet the requirements of the COPC Standard. We went onsite to three different clients, an insurance company, [00:22:30] a government organization, couple of insurance companies to find out, how were they actually using the knowledge management? How was that fitting into the way that they run their business? And does the tool support the requirements of the COPC Standard? 

We got to the final determination, which I’ll share in a minute. But what I wanted to also share that was interesting was parallel to this, [00:23:00] COPC was running. We do our annual industry research into different countries. We’re the research partner for Malaysia, for Australia, for Singapore, and we do some in the US as well. And one of the things that we were asked to do was to do the annual evaluation of all sorts of different call center technologies, the telephony systems and the workforce management systems, [00:23:30] et cetera. Anyway, one of the things was the knowledge management solutions. And this was quite coincidentally as we were going through the Approved Technology Provider at the same time, livepro in Australia was by far the leader in satisfaction. It was about 30% higher. The contact centers were at 30% higher satisfaction with livepro than with any other solution that we saw. Plus, [00:24:00] as an organization, they had the single most market share in Australia. In fact, livepro had no dissatisfied customers amongst respondents who reported using it. It led significantly in both penetration and satisfaction.  

Now, that in itself does not give you the ATP designation, the Approved Technology Provider designation. It was the in- [00:24:30] depth work that we did with clients to find out how was livepro being used. And one of the things I liked was that livepro wasn’t called livepro in each organization. They had their own name for their knowledge management system. Anyway, following the rigorous assessment process, livepro became the first technology provider in Asia-Pacific region to achieve ATP status. And this was really [00:25:00] good. The clients that we looked at had really high issue resolution rates, which as we know, from what we know and I’ve shared through this webinar has a huge impact on satisfaction. 

We interviewed the managers, we interviewed team leaders, we interviewed the knowledge managers. We interviewed frontline staff. And I loved one of the quotes from one of the frontline staff who said, “livepro’s our go-to knowledge management system. It’s the one source of truth [00:25:30] that we use.” And I think that is so important to have one source of truth. When customers want answers, they need to just go one place to get those answers. And that doesn’t matter which channel they go through. They’ve got to find the same answer, whether they’re online or whether they talked to someone in the contact center. And so that is just explaining a little bit about how we are so happy [00:26:00] to be able to approve livepro as a technology provider, because of the support, the requirements of the COPC Standard. Christian, although I can say this, we actually now have an opportunity for some questions. 

Christian Erickson:
Yes. Thank you very much. All right. I had also a quick question. I [00:26:30] thought of when you were talking. What would you say is the greatest challenge for organizations in a multi-channel customer experience? Multichannel CX. 

Ian Aitchison:
Brad, can you take that?  

Brad Shaw:
Yeah. Well, first of all, the toughest challenge is the simplest thing to realize. And that is that an organization has only got one set of products. They’ve only got one set of procedures. They’ve only got one [00:27:00] set of processes, and yet they’ve got so many channels that they can communicate that with to the client. And the unfortunate thing is most of those channels are owned by different groups. The website is owned by one group. The contact center knowledge management is owned by another group. And then they get a chat bot and it [00:27:30] has its own knowledge system.  

And so, unfortunately, while I have one set of products, they’ve got four or five databases and knowledge bases holding knowledge, and trying to get something that’s consistent right across the board where you don’t have a person calling a contact center [inaudible 00:27:50]. But that’s not what it says on that, on your website. It is a big challenge. And a lot of organizations are [00:28:00] struggling with that silo. And as soon as they realize that if they can keep that one central source of truth and deliver the answer through whatever channel the customer wants to ask the question, things will improve, but it is something that organizations are really struggling with. 

Christian Erickson:
Thank you very much. We’re getting a few questions coming in here. Want to ask this one that came up, why do you think livepro has such a high satisfaction [00:28:30] rate compared to other KM providers? 

Brad Shaw:
Okay. I think that must’ve been from my mom. Thanks mom. I am convinced it’s because we don’t believe we sell software. We help people change the way they do their business and we are not happy. And we don’t believe that anything’s been implemented unless we have full engagement. And [00:29:00] so it’s all about making sure that the customer is actually introducing livepro for a reason. We want to understand what that reason is, and we work towards achieving that reason rather than installing it, closing the door and walking away. 

Christian Erickson:
Okay. This is a question that was asked by someone in the group and they’re with a [00:29:30] health system organization. And so there is an acronym in here that I’m not familiar with, but how does this presentation contribute to knowledge management in an NGG? 

Brad Shaw:
NGG? Yeah, I’m not familiar with that data. But I think knowledge management is about being able to deliver the answer to the customer through whatever channel the customer wants to ask the question. And [00:30:00] the importance of everything behind that, to ensure that the knowledge is the most up-to-date and approved knowledge that’s delivered in a way that the person is consuming it and understand it, is vital. It doesn’t matter what organization you are in, that is vital line. Therefore, the knowledge has to be controlled.  

Ian’s memory of the [00:30:30] approved technology program process is a little different to mine. I remember the interrogation that we had two and a half hours with him saying, okay, well, you’ve demoed the system, now necessarily how it does this. Now show me how the organization’s going to be able to improve their knowledge going forward. And he just kept on going deeper and deeper into it. And what that showed me is that [00:31:00] the understanding of what it takes to make sure that the answer is correct and up to date and easy to consume is understood by COPC, but it’s also a more complex thing than a standard document management system can deliver. 

Christian Erickson:
Okay. I did have some clarification from the person asking the question, and it is an NGO, so a non-government organization, and [00:31:30] they must be within that healthcare space of an NGO. Would that change the answer any? 

Brad Shaw:
No. The organizations, particularly, those who are highly governed need to have a knowledge management system that basically is controlled knowledge. It’s not about knowledge sourcing to get everybody’s opinion. It’s about only delivering the answer once everybody knows and [00:32:00] has approved that that is the true answer. And so we worked with a number of not-for-profit organizations, and it depends on what their application is. But they have a lot of volunteers and a lot of people that come in to help. And you can’t afford to have a really in-depth induction program and a training session with people that [00:32:30] are in that circumstance. You need a system that can make somebody an expert very, very quickly, because the answer is at their fingertips. We’ve had banks reduce the induction program, six weeks down to three days. 

Christian Erickson:
Wow! 

Brad Shaw:
Well, [inaudible 00:32:49] government, they [inaudible 00:32:49] do the same thing because they stopped training people to memorize things. And as soon as you stop training people to memorize things and give them the confidence that they can go into [00:33:00] the knowledge base and find the answer, not something that they have to rate through and interpret, but the answer, it gives everybody more confidence. The customer is more confident because they’re talking to an agent that sounds like they are an expert. The agent is confident because the final answer is at their fingertips and they’re not going to create another unhappy customer. And so I think with the NGOs, that might be [00:33:30] a big challenge, and that’s how it would help eliminate it. The volunteers can have the app on their phone, on their tablet, on their laptop, so that when they are confronted with something, they’re not certain of they can get easy access to it. 

Christian Erickson:
This one came in from an anonymous attendee which we allow people to ask anonymously, but this is, would you be willing to share your view on knowledge management [00:34:00] standards? Do you follow, support ISO KM standards, or do you have a different approach? 

Brad Shaw:
We’ve been in the knowledge management world 20 years. And the general knowledge management community had been not so enthusiastic about systems and technology, and I’ve said a lot of things about [00:34:30] the fact that knowledge management is not a system. Well, it’s not, but you need these days to have a system. But the thing that we learned when we were understanding the knowledge management community and the qualifications is that customer experience, knowledge management is different. Customer experience, knowledge management is about controlled knowledge. True knowledge management in the broader sense [00:35:00] is about getting some of that latent knowledge and sharing with everybody. It’s about making sure that the IP in every single department is actually recorded and optimized, whereas customer experience, knowledge management is single-minded. It’s about, how do we deliver the answer to a customer’s question [00:35:30] through whatever channel they ask. And it doesn’t encapsulate the broad the version of knowledge management. No, we’re not accredited in that sense. That’s why we hold ourselves up to independent organizations like COPC, who actually understand customer experience. Who then can say, as [inaudible 00:35:59], [00:36:00] okay, now show me how you do this. Now, prove that the assistant can do that. That’s half the secret information we’re looking for. And 98% satisfaction that we get from our customer. 

Ian Aitchison:
[crosstalk 00:36:11] Right. If I can jump in, one of the things that I always find interesting when talking to your clients through this process and through talking to you, is that there’s a big difference between knowledge and answers. [00:36:30] And our customers are our customers. The industry itself, people are not calling a contact center or going to an IVR to get knowledge. They’re going to get answers. How do you think that livepro’s better at providing answers? You just gave that answer about whether you’re ISO certified and looking at the broader knowledge management industry. I like that you’re focusing more on answers, but what do you do differently to focus on [00:37:00] answers rather than knowledge? 

Brad Shaw:
It does take a little bit of work. A lot of organizations come to livepro and say, well, we’ve got SharePoint or we’ve got Salesforce, and it’s not working. Can we just take the things from there and dump it into livepro? We can. You’ll get a better search experience, you’ll get some things improved, but it’s about taking those complex documents and turning them into consumable [00:37:30] amounts. And it’s also about, we understood because we’ve been in the customer experience knowledge management system for 20 years, that knowledge is consumed in different ways. You’ve got knowledge or answers that are urgent. Something’s happened now, everybody needs to know about it. Well, it needs to be delivered in a different way. Then you’ve got the knowledge where you have to follow a process and having those PDFs [00:38:00] that are eight to ten pages that say, if the answer is yes, jump to question 34. And if the answer is no, go to 38 and having to interpret all that. 

You’ve got to take that and make it into a nice, simple consumable lot of answers that is suitable for somebody who only started today, and also an agent that’s been there for 10 years, but just [00:38:30] wants to check this one little thing.  The other thing is that if you’re working full time, like livepro is at finding ways to deliver answers faster, then you find the techniques that you need to have be able to deliver those answers. It’s not just a knowledge base. We have a triage feature that allows the agent just to ask certain questions to determine [00:39:00] what the client’s problem is so they can solve it.  

That a knowledge base that just has documents doesn’t actually deliver. It’s about delivering consumable pieces of answers rather than a knowledge article that somebody has to read and interpret or a PDF that you’ve tediously had to consume and understand. And [00:39:30] I know that some of my friends like researching. Personally, if I have a question, I want to get an answer. I’m a little bit more impatient with that. And certainly, if I bring up the contact center what I’m hoping is that I’m talking to somebody that can answer my question. And that’s why I loved the COPC focus on resolution. It’s so intuitively simple, and yet people seem to turn [00:40:00] things that are so intuitively simple into too much of a complex process. Let’s just find a way to answer that question. I hope that answer yours. 

Ian Aitchison:
COPC’s approach is that an entity has CX operation, a contact center has to measure a 360 degree suite of metrics. [00:40:30] It’s got to look at cost metrics, efficiency metrics, speed metrics, quality metrics, issue resolution, satisfaction, et cetera. When you’re putting livepro into an organization, I know you said it’s only there once the engagement’s complete, type of thing, but how do you measure the success of the implementation? How do companies who get it, how do they determine whether it’s [00:41:00] been successfully implemented? 

Brad Shaw:
That is a really easy question to answer. The first thing we do is ask them why they want to install it. And then from that, we take the benchmarks. They want to improve customer satisfaction. They want to improve staff engagement. They want to improve their governance. They want to improve or cut costs. What we start with is, where [00:41:30] are you now and what is it that you want to improve? And that’s what we focus on when we’re installing the system. When we’re actually training the people that are actually going to be using the system at how to optimize their knowledge, we’re focusing on how we’re going to help them achieve what they’re setting out to do. And it is pretty simple. You’ve got to really understand why they’re getting the system and [00:42:00] understand then that it’s not just installing a system. It’s how do we actually help them achieve that?  

And one of the things that really picked up along the way is there are so many funny techniques to be able to improve engagement. But because in the contact center, for instance, the success is, does the agent trust livepro? [00:42:30] Are they going to go to livepro? And if you are actually going to launch a system or a change in the way you’re doing something, then there’s a change management process involved. And so we’ve done so many, we’ve got so many techniques now that we help clients with that just make the process seamless and look it’s hard to believe, but it’s universal. Once we install livepro that the agents celebrate how [00:43:00] easy it is now. And it’s because we focus on getting that engagement and the system is focused on delivering an answer to them. 

Ian Aitchison:
Yeah. I know from a whole lot of other works COPC does, but particularly when we were talking to the three client companies that went to the ATP process, when we talked to the frontline staff, that they were more enthusiastic [00:43:30] about using a knowledge management system, maybe they’d been handpicked as the enthusiastic people, but they loved how easy it made their life. And I hadn’t thought going into this ATP process, I’d thought, okay, we’ll focus on issue resolution and we’ll focus on customer satisfaction. I just hadn’t even considered something that can suddenly change for staff to make it so easy for them, that they could [00:44:00] actually be enthusiastic about a knowledge management tool. And I was quite surprised. 

Brad Shaw:
Yeah. Well, I’m pleased to be able to prove that you weren’t given hand picked clients because 98% of our customers are happy.  

Ian Aitchison:
Yeah.  

Brad Shaw:
When you did the process, we can [inaudible 00:44:22], I’m sure it’s 100% that somebody was having a bad day. When you said [00:44:30] we want some customers, I said, well, you pick. But I think people have to really just empathize with the agent. You don’t know what the next telephone call’s going to be about. And we service a lot of councils and local councils. And can you imagine having to be an expert at potholes, garbages, rakes, barking dogs, all of those different things [00:45:00] that they [inaudible 00:45:00] need to be able to answer questions on all of those. And the anxiety of what the next question’s going to be, or the frustration of the angry customer that just hang up on you, because you didn’t have the answer at your fingertips. You actually had to put them on hold, put your hand up and wait for a subject matter expert to come and help you answer the question.  

Once they get a tool where they don’t need that anymore, a [00:45:30] lot of that anxiety just goes. And we had [inaudible 00:45:36] who had five people in Fluro Vests on their contact center floor that were the subject matter experts. And when you didn’t know an answer, you put the customer on hold and put your hand up and waited for the Fluro Vest person to come. When they installed livepro, six weeks later, they redeployed those people in Fluro Vest [00:46:00] because you didn’t need to, because the answer was at their fingertips. Can you imagine having somebody in a Fluro Vest knocking on your door at home because you’re working from home now. I mean, you don’t have those buddies next to you or the subject matter experts if you are in a work from anywhere environment. And I can’t imagine what it’d be like working in the contact center or as an agent and not having [00:46:30] that access to those answers in such a simple way. And also not having a buddy next to you, to be able to ask if you are correct with the answer. 

Ian Aitchison:
Well, there are still a lot of contact centers around the world that we have worked with, which have those floor walkers or subject matter experts. And some of them are very big, well known brands. I mean, apart from that, [00:47:00] I think it’s a pretty poor experience. It’s a massive cost to organizations to have those floor walkers.  

Brad Shaw:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:47:08]. I hate being put on. Floor walkers mean that I’m going to be put on hold if I ask a relatively difficult question and I’m not going to ring a contact center unless I have a relatively difficult question. And I know the agent doesn’t want to put them on hold either.  

Ian Aitchison:
[00:47:30] Yeah.  

Brad Shaw:
The unfortunate thing is that you have organizations that aren’t quite sure of the answer anyway. We had one insurance company had to spend two weeks workshopping the answer to a question that the agents had been answering for six months. That doesn’t happen if you have a knowledge management system, particularly, if it’s customer experience one. The agents love it as well because they own it. There’s so [00:48:00] many simple ways to deliver feedback in a good customer experience knowledge management system. That the agents can have so much influence over how the knowledge is delivered to them, because you can make a nice, simple piece of feedback, send it off, and then you can track who’s responding to it, what the answer was and what they’ve done to change it. And so the agents really do feel like they [00:48:30] have so much influence on it. And we actually tell the authors at the start, don’t try and make your knowledge perfect because you don’t know what perfect is. The agents and the customers know what perfect is, that will help you refine it to the way [inaudible 00:48:45]. 

Christian Erickson:
Brad, that actually rolls into a question that Beth was asking. Beth actually has several questions. But she does ask this one, do the agents have the ability to update the article in the workflow? 

Brad Shaw:
[00:49:00] The people in the contact center own the knowledge, we train the authors, but it is a very controlled system so that the organization can choose who is allowed to author knowledge and then choose the workflow process to determine who has to review it and who can publish it. It’s not crowdsourcing for knowledge because you can’t [00:49:30] take the chance that somebody’s opinion on the answer is shared with everybody else when it’s not necessarily certified that it is the answer. You can get feedback from the agents and get input from the agents, but unless they have the authority to change the knowledge, they can’t change it. 

Christian Erickson:
That may be the answer to another question she had, which is, [00:50:00] are new roles for approval and does your product enable easy approval of the content for fast release to the customer? 

Brad Shaw:
Absolutely. An organization can choose for you to have the authority to author and publish immediately, or you can choose to have an individual that is allowed to author and then a reviewer who is only allowed to provide reviews. And then a compliance department [00:50:30] who does their review to make sure it fits the standards and then sent off to somebody who can publish it. And each one of those times, there’s a record kept of any amendments or changes. And there’s a workflow process, so there’s email. Christian, if you are only reviewing one knowledge article per month, you’re not going to be logging into livepro all the time. [00:51:00] I’ll send you an email to let you know there’s something there to review. The organization, the people that are looking after the knowledge have absolute control on what you can see, what you can do and high levels of control on what it looks like. I think Ian mentioned that nearly all of our customers have given their system a name. [00:51:30] And it’s another part of the engagement with the agents. The agents, actually, vote for the name and there’s some really fun ones out as well. A lot of it is customizable, but it’s a cloud based system that is managed by the business, not by IT.  

Christian Erickson:
Okay. I just want everyone to see the email address on your screen right now. If you do have questions that come up after the webinar, we only have a few minutes left and I do have one more question. But [00:52:00] please note the email address on your slide right now, and definitely email them directly if you have any questions. Brad, you answered this question, but I want to ask it again anyway, what group does the work to make the content ready for consumption and how is this continued in a sustainable process? 

Brad Shaw:
Yeah. First of all, let me comment that I would be flattered if somebody reaches out to me via email, if you have any questions. It shows that people stay [00:52:30] right to the end. Sorry, Christian, you know what? I’ve said that, and I forgot your question. I’m going to ask you to repeat. 

Christian Erickson:
Let me go back because I already… What group does the work to make the content you for consumption? How is this continued in a sustainable process? And we did get one more question. I just want to let you know there’s one on deck as well. 

Brad Shaw:
Yeah. A part of the enablement process that we go through, [00:53:00] we actually come in and help set up the system the way you want it. It’s easily configured that you can make changes, but we like to walk through and help you think about how the knowledge should be structured. Because often, organizations are looking at it from an internal perspective and not an external perspective. We also help set up the templates where there’s a big focus on consistency. If I’m in a contact center, I want to be able to intuitively [00:53:30] find the answer because the knowledge is delivered in one consistent format and process. We help the organizations identify what process and what format they’re going to have their knowledge in. And then we help them, therefore, set the standards. Those standards then are used by all of the authors. So if you’ve got an author in Spain and you’ve got an author [00:54:00] in New York and you’ve got an author in the UK, they’re all using the same standard, they’re all using the same templates. And so it doesn’t matter who sees the knowledge, you can’t tell a certain individual authored it because it’s standard. I hope that answers the question. 

Ian Aitchison:
Brad, [crosstalk  00:54:19]. Sorry, just link to that question. I know Christian, we’re just about to finish. But the most organizations having knowledge management team, you’re talking [00:54:30] about authors, but what does that mean? 

Brad Shaw:
It does depend on how you want to structure it. We have some organizations that have a distributed knowledge authoring team. There’s a number of them in different departments. And then there’s others that actually have it more centralized.  

Ian Aitchison:
Okay.  

Brad Shaw:
If you’ve got an organization that has four or 500 people, you are going to need [00:55:00] somebody dedicated to managing your knowledge system to make sure the answers are consistent. And the feedback is responded to the analytics of what knowledge is getting rated highly, what knowledge is getting rated lowly and poorly and how to improve it. There’s a lot of insights that the organization gets from the knowledge management system and the knowledge manager is the one that delivers those insights to the organization as well. [00:55:30] Generally in large organizations, you do have a knowledge manager. And sometimes with where I was talking to a client recently, who said, Brad, we got such great results with one knowledge manager. I’m actually going to put in another one because I believe if I get another dedicated knowledge manager in there, I can get even greater results. 

Ian Aitchison:
Okay.  

Brad Shaw: Yeah. And was there another question, Christian, just before we finish? 

Christian Erickson:
Yeah. And I’m afraid we actually got a couple of questions. [00:56:00] Both of these are without names, but I think the first will be pretty quick. What type of KM governance model do you recommend when managing a knowledge base? 

Brad Shaw:
I think I’ll go back to the controlled word that I use. The governance really needs to go through the rigor that the organization believes it needs to, particularly in certain areas. You don’t need to go through governance [00:56:30] to advise everybody in the contact center that there’s an outage between 10 and 12 today in a certain area. If customers call let them, but you do need to go through governance and make sure that you have the correct approvals if you’re changing product information, if you’re actually changing a process or you’re giving your company information.  

The governance tool or the feature within [00:57:00] the knowledge management tool needs to be able to demonstrate that the processes have been followed and there must be version control. And you must be able to always review what version was available at what time on what day so that if there’s ever a review or if the customer says, well, that’s not you told me, then you can actually go back [00:57:30] and have a look to see what was actually available, and even what knowledge was that agent looking at at that point in time? That the governance should be able to review all of that. 

Christian Erickson:
I’m getting quite a few, thank you, I have to jump off for a meeting. Thank you. Please email the answers. I did have one more question. I know we’re up on the hour. We will be posting this information to our website, and then we’ll [00:58:00] share that with all the attendees. But if you have one more minute, Brad, this question is, do you recommend identifying process owners throughout the organization to be responsible for the content? 

Brad Shaw:
Yes. And a good knowledge management system will have ownership put onto the knowledge. The person that actually author it owns it. That more importantly, there’s some knowledge that should be reviewed [00:58:30] at certain intervals. And so a product price changes on certain date every year or the government, some sort of the legislation changes at a certain time, or you have a policy that every policy needs to be reviewed every two years. A good system will actually flag that. And with livepro, when you’re authoring [00:59:00] a piece of knowledge, you can choose to have a review date, either on a date that is, might be the 30th of December every year or every three months or every six months or every two months. The owners then don’t need to remember when they need to review it because they get an alert. And it can’t be missed. Yes, there has to be an owner because they’re the ones that created it. They can hand off the ownership to somebody else, but there will always be an [00:59:30] owner. 

Christian Erickson:
Well, thank you. And we’re just a little bit past our time that we promised the attendees. We’d have quite a few that are still here though, which is nice. Everyone have a wonderful Thursday, a nice weekend. And thank you for joining us today.  

Brad Shaw:
Same. And thanks again. I appreciate it.  

Ian Aitchison:
Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Christian.  

Christian Erickson:
Thank you.  

Brad Shaw:
Thank you across.