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  John Chmaj 06:25:48 pm on September 18, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: best practices, KM, Knowledge Management, search, Self-Service

  Why Support Search CAN’T Be “Just Like Google”

  Google is on my homepage.  I use it every day.  It’s an indispensable part of my access to Internet resources, and usually the first place I look to find something. But Google is NOT the tool I recommend for most support & service organizations to use for customer self-help.  Many organizations ask “why can’t support search be just like Google?”  Here’s what they WANT, and what they actually NEED:

  Why We Like Google

  • Google WORKS:  it’s fast, easy to enter whatever text you want, results always seem relevant
  • Google appears FLEXIBLE and FORGIVING:  even if you enter in text that isn’t quite what you meant usually something useful comes back
  • Google is SIMPLE:  type two words and go – what could be easier?

  These are all desirable aspects of finding good information quickly, and self-help should aspire to reflect all these capabilities.  So what’s the issue?

  THE ISSUES are the issues:  Google is geared towards worldwide access to the most popular or important resources for anything and everything.  Support & service inquiries are focused on very specific questions, applying to only a tiny subset of worldwide information.

  Most importantly, support & service self-help is a negotiation, a set of back and forth transactions by users and services resources to:

  • Define the real need (the users’ query is just a guess or vote for what that might be)
  • Explore the available resources to see what types of information is best suited
  • Bring back the specific tasks, data gathering, processes and steps required to achieve the services outcome

  All of this goes far beyond a simple two-word query.  If I enter “Sprint handset upgrade” into Google I might get all manner of interesting information, but I really haven’t defined my need yet.  Do I want a new handset?  Do I have one and want to activate it?  Do I want to know the programs I’m entitled to?  Do I have a billing question?  Furthermore, even if I could identify that in my query, do I REALLY want all the resources of the world returned as the answer to my question, or even all the resources of a large company like Sprint?

  At the end of the day an effective support & service self-service system needs to help users with these three critical phases of the support process.  Beyond just bringing back information from a query, the whole point of KM tools & technologies is to create a fast, intuitive, effective session with users to help them get quickly to the best answer for their services need at the moment.  So additional capabilities are needed beyond basic text query processing and results:

  1. Defining the Question:  helping users navigate the topics, top issues, terminology and overall way to think about the company’s products and services, so they can effectively express what they need in relationship to how support can help.  This may include additional field selection to narrow the focus, scripts that guide users to define their issue specifically, guided search interactions, filters, etc.  to help users refine and focus their need.

  2. Exploring Resources: giving clear feedback and quick navigation through the various information that is available.  All content is not the same when it comes to fulfilling a specific support request.  The answer to a question on “handset upgrade” may come from pricing tables, program offerings, technical support articles, documentation, etc.  Users need feedback from the system on what’s going to meet their need as it becomes more clear.  In many organizations the next step is not content related, it’s to generate email or even to call based on the customer and the issue.  So the support outcome is a function of the overall need, the user, and the organizational business model, not just a query and its results.

  3. Content Fit to Task:  Just finding “relevant information” is not the goal of a service inquiry.  It may be interesting to know all the Mexican restaurants in my town, but figuring out the dial-out codes to get proper roaming access internationally from my phone while in Sweden is not a casual question.  Almost WON’T count.  Support & services information itself must be written with the users in mind and with a focus on helping them navigate towards the answer without the benefit of any more details about their products than they need to get the job done.

  In the final analysis Google has performed an enormous service to the world, and to the support industry:  it’s made the Internet searchable, and provided a clear value proposition for getting good information online.  EVERYONE is interested in achieving more, better self-help.  But searching is only PART of the information definition, access and usage tasks associated with support transactions.

  Google is neither good nor bad – it just is what it is!  Beware of trying to make it more than it should be – a great search tool – and be sure to think through what service actually means and model those processes as best you can in your online tools.  We’re always searching for something better aren’t we?

  John Chmaj
  “The Knowledge Advocate”

   

• John Chmaj 04:50:27 pm on September 10, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: best practices, customer service, KM, Knowledge Management

  In Search of LEADERSHIP!

  OK, so your organization has committed to expanding self-service, building a new knowledge base, initiating a new comprehensive approach to knowledge management, or all of the above.  Who will lead the charge?  Where does the momentum, focus and just plain tenacity of purpose come from to see it all through?  Who owns the result and is accountable to produce success?  Arguably the most important factor in successful knowledge management initiatives is LEADERSHIP.

  “Leadership” is one of those terms that’s often used but hard to pinpoint in relation to knowledge management.  Everyone understands formal leadership – the executive chain of command, heads of departments and groups, and their ownership of some area of the business.  But the challenge in KM is precisely the inter-disciplinary nature of it:  KM crosses and blurs neat lines of responsibility and coordination between IT, Call Center operations, content groups, product groups, website owners, support partners, and many other stakeholder groups. Who is ultimately responsible, then?  Rarely do these groups fall under just one executive or group.

  Furthermore, these groups have varying and sometimes competing purposes:  IT is often focused on enterprise tool standardization & efficiency, product groups are driven by releases and marketing targets, support is continually trying to do more with less and has enough of a challenge just synchronizing content and tools to meet user and business demand. It can almost appear as if “KM leadership” is an oxymoron!

  Often times the answer is not defining “who” but “what” it is that is the lead focus. The most successful organizations I’ve worked with have the ability to define strategic goals and assign elements of them across key groups, such that each group remains accountable to the larger goals of the initiative, and its own role in driving the outcome.

  There’s still no substitute for evangelism:  SOMEWHERE in your organization people with passion and clear purpose are needed to strategize and plan for new knowledge-enabled capabilities.  But the #1 aspect of an effective KM plan is that it can define what success means, and who is accountable to it, in each critical facet of a KM program:

  • Who owns the content, how it will be updated and managed, who owns content communications and coordination
  • Who owns the KM toolset, what commitments need to be made to achieve new levels of functionality and performance
  • Who will drive knowledge to a new channel, such as web, email and/or chat, and what their targets are
  • What success looks like, who will measure it, and what the consequences of meeting, succeeding or failing to meet the measures are

  Then somewhere in the business there needs to be a sign-off that rolls up to someone capable of monitoring progress and keeping any lagging parts moving forward.

  Looking for leaders?  Start with the people who have the biggest pain, and/or who would benefit the most, from new tools, content or services driven by support & services information.  People who will get their own group goals best met through new KM capabilities should be the most obvious co-owners, if not outright sponsors of a renewed KM program. Figure out who else must be involved, what their scope of activity and accountability would be in the overall program, and where and how they can COMMIT to specific actions within their job function to make these things happen.  You might be surprised who your allies are, especially if you can articulate the KM program in relation to what THEIR group is trying to accomplish.

  At the end of the day leadership is a state of mind. I’ve seen middle managers and even PM’s drive a whole enterprise-wide initiative successfully over periods of years when they have clarity of purpose, communications and motivation skills to bring all the necessary groups on board with specific goals, and alignment with larger executive sponsorship to assure that each group plays its part.  But more often leadership comes as a ‘joint venture’ through mutually agreed-upon goals that groups commit to together.

  In a way KM is a great opportunity for the organization to learn new capabilities by collaborating and coordinating.  Just start with the pain and possibility and work inward from there.  Someone is waiting to listen and help in each group in your organization!

  John Chmaj
  “The Knowledge Advocate”

   

• John Chmaj 08:00:51 am on July 8, 2008 | 0 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer service, Customer Support, Experience, KM, knowledge, Knowledge Management, support

  Most support organizations have resources related to knowledge management: webmaster, KB administrator, and content manager among others.  They are the ingredients of a well managed program, not the recipe for success.  Ask yourself a few simple questions to expose where you may need to improve:

  • Who OWNS all the content on internal and external knowledge bases?
  • Who UPDATES all that content? (Not necessarily the same!)
  • What is the process for communicating new product information forward to support, both prior to major launches and during the ongoing support life cycle?
  • Who owns the schema (metadata, keywords, etc.) for all content? Is there someone responsible that it all fits together when it hits the search and browse websites?
  • Who ensures all the content available is relevant, up to date, and consumable?
  • What is the agreed-upon mechanism for resolving conflicts between new and old content?

  If the answer to any of these is “no”, “I’m not sure” or “we figure that out on a case by case basis” then you’re probably spending too much time managing your KM initiative without really managing your program!  Count up the number of meetings, disconnects, customization and one-off projects you need to keep things in line.  You will see that coordinating content, schema and tools REQUIRES time even if your organization chooses to manage these areas as separate functions.  The results of not managing your program are at best incremental, time-consuming improvements, at worst a continual stream of errors, adjustments and just plain bad user experience for your sites.

  Developing an effective KM Program starts by thinking about the WHOLE objective: a great user experience, driven by an intuitive UI, effective user interactions, and quality content.  With that as your guiding goal, consider organizing around the core processes, including:

  • Identifying, prioritizing and normalizing content from across the organization to a common, high-quality user experience
  • Managing policies and communications from the ‘front’ (websites & tools) to the ‘back’ (product and content groups), and all constituents in between, to achieve a common set of rules and standards around how information is developed and organized.
  • Establishing a Steering Committee or Center of Excellence that can serve as a clearinghouse for all ongoing questions and issues around content ownership, commitments, policy and deadlines
  • Developing a ‘product life cycle’ view of information, that engages everyone from products, support, and IT to commit to a common process for evolving KM tools and capabilities

  A KM Program is not a ‘nice to have’ – you have one already, the question is:  do you know it?  And if you don’t, what is it costing your business in time, effort, money and customers?  There IS a better way, just commit to KM as a critical business process and the approach becomes clear.

  Are you committed?

   
• 

  Andrew Cohen 03:41:56 am on April 16, 2008 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Collaboration, IBM, Jive, Kana, KM

  While meeting with the folks at Jive (very interesting company, more on that later) they pointed me to IBM’s Future trends that will drive unified communications (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0377261.htm).

  The IBM article was mostly about recent technology trends.  Take a look … However, I think the trend that forces unified communications has little to do with technology itself, but is related to the comfort level people have developed sharing presence and awareness info and in making the social part of their lives public. Ten years ago at IBM we proposed sharing search paths and histories to help others find similar info and all we heard were privacy concerns. Today, most of us are all too willing to share presence and awareness info and to post incomplete thoughts in the form of blogs and in forums. This intersection of social and task focus will eventually drive unification and interoperability between presence and awareness, blogging/wikis and tight collaboration on work product, that later being the most difficult problem. With regard to IBM, the interesting ones are 3 and 4. The integration of business processes (collaborative or otherwise) with line-of-business applications are key.  I’d add knowledge to the mix.

  Knowledge enabled business processes, with collaborative and social opportunities empowering the completion work product are the goal. Interoperability and open standards are simply a necessary step for all this to happen. It’s in line with Kana’s mission in our upcoming product line and what is exciting about our partnership with Jive. Kana integrates knowledge into customer experiences and business processes and Jive enables the collaboration to empower the teams.

  Thoughts, comments?

  Andrew Cohen

   

   

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