A friend of mine, a librarian, just changed jobs. At her old place of employment, she spent her last few weeks updating 
guidelines and refreshing handbooks, training her replacement so the transition would be seamless. But, several weeks into her new job she still gets e-mails from her replacement asking questions (“What’s our inter-library book sharing policy for new books?” or “What if I get a request for a publication we don’t get?”) She shared her frustrations with me, and wondered if there was anything she should have done differently to upskill her replacement before she left.
My answer? More or less, no. The answer wasn’t a better transition plan, it’s a better knowledge management approach. My biggest clue here was that she manually updated everything before she left – trying to cram all her tribal knowledge into the handbook after the fact, rather than updating the handbooks and guidelines in real time as things changed. Of course she forgot to include things, especially if they weren’t everyday occurrences.
The same can be said for the contact center. There’s so much knowledge floating around about the latest product or the best way to handle a customer issue, but it’s not always in our frontline rep-facing knowledge base. Or perhaps the information is in there, but is not up-to-date or is poorly written.
The answer for many service organization is to invest in the latest knowledge management technology. And while technology plays an important role, I’ve come to believe the emphasis should be placed on the people and processes of knowledge management. I’ve seen highly sophisticated knowledge management technologies fall short of their goals because the company had poor processes to support the technology.
So, what do sound knowledge management people and processes look like? It’s not a linear process of imputing in new knowledge and then using it, as that often leads to information that isn’t ever updated. Instead, effective knowledge management processes revolve around continuous knowledge improvement. Knowledge flows through the organization, and everyone is responsible for helping to evolve and refresh that knowledge.
This chart shows the system in place. It has four process steps, including:
Source: Customer Contact Council
- Raw Knowledge Generation: The starting point of new or updated knowledge
- Knowledge Refinement: This is where raw knowledge is edited and formatted for frontline staff (and even customer) consumption
- Knowledge Feedback: As knowledge gets used, feedback on knowledge points to improvement areas or knowledge gaps
- Articulation of Knowledge Need: Knowledge feedback is then mined to help prioritize where limited knowledge management resources should be spent
These process steps are carried out by three primary stakeholders (and it’s important to note that these roles aren’t mutually exclusive, so one individual could play multiple roles):
- Knowledge Originators: Responsible for raw knowledge generation and updating knowledge
- Knowledge Adaptors: Responsible for knowledge refinement to ensure knowledge usability, plus responsible for ensuring knowledge feedback is passed on and followed up on
- Knowledge Users: Responsible for using the knowledge and providing knowledge feedback that articulates improvement areas
Given these four critical process steps carried out by three stakeholders, two things become clear: all key knowledge stakeholders must participate in the system and any gap in participation/failure in a process step has downstream consequences that quickly break down the entire system.
Next time, I’ll talk about what the four top failure points look like and how to avoid them. But I’d love to hear from you – what’s your take on this system? Do you do something similar or would it work for you?
CCC Members – take a look at our work on knowledge management that outlines this system as well as leading member examples to create usable knowledge and encourage continuous knowledge improvements.
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on August 26, 2010
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A very nice graphic – fitting that its patterned after the symbol for infinity.
on August 26, 2010
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Amen! I wholeheartedly believe in having a solid base of people & processes. There is a long history of organizations seemingly solving for a tool – thinking that this will be the answer to all their prayers. But it never fails that we see time and time again that this never happens. But wait there’s more… it’s not just the people and the process – it’s the underlying mindset of care that must be present. I believe that what must flow along the continous path outlined in the diagram is a caring approach where answers are ‘bear hugged” and knowledge stakeholders deeply care for the customer’s outcomes. Without that you have people going through the motions.
on August 26, 2010
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This is a model that we have adapted within our company processes. We were able to get the technology that assisted a great deal with functionally thus improving adoption of the system. However, getting the frontline agents involved and held accountable to participating in THEIR knowledgebase has really taken knowledge management to be one of the top focuses in our company.
on August 29, 2010
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Very good post!
The challenge is embedding it into the processes of the organisation, which is something we are working on at the moment in my ‘day job’. This is very difficult in a large organisation with many legacy systems and unclear lines of responsibility for a large range of products and services…
But thanks for setting us up with the goal line!
on September 29, 2010
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[...] time, I talked about knowledge management processes and people that lead to a sustainable knowledge management approach. Thanks to all who commented and moved the conversation forward! Now, a good [...]
on August 3, 2011
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[...] talked about how knowledge management processes and people—not just the technology—lead to sustainable knowledge management. She followed up the post with a write up on failure points in knowledge management efforts. A [...]