In today's fast-paced digital landscape, a healthy knowledge management (KM) program is essential for enabling effective support channels and empowering both human and artificial intelligence agents to deliver efficient service. According to a recent survey, 76 percent of service and support leaders believe KM systems will be highly valuable to their organizations in the next two years, largely due to their role in powering AI solutions.
By systematically capturing solutions to customer issues as they arise, support organizations create a robust knowledge base that can do the following:
- Reduce time to productivity for new agents.
- Help other agents resolve similar issues more quickly.
- Enable customers to find answers and solve problems independently.
Despite these advantages, many KM programs fail, even when the right technology and processes are in place. Common pitfalls include lack of investment in dedicated roles, ineffective top-down communication, focusing on the wrong metrics, and rewarding activities rather than recognizing meaningful behavior.
Customer service and support leaders can drive knowledge program adoption and establish a knowledge-centric culture through proper staffing, communication, and recognition.
Allocate Staffing
Less than half of organizations have dedicated roles for knowledge management, yet successful KM programs require intentional investment in staffing, communication, reporting, and recognition. In large organizations, a range of roles, including program managers, communication managers, knowledge trainers, IT liaisons, front-line managers, business analysts, and service leaders, are crucial to fuel adoption and continuous improvement.
Middle managers and supervisors are especially pivotal. They must guide their teams through the KM workflow, helping agents understand new metrics and expectations. During the initial adoption of a KM program, some of their existing responsibilities might need to be deprioritized to focus on supporting their teams.
Leaders at all levels should continually reinforce the value of the KM program, recognizing progress and advocating for ongoing resource investment.
Plan Communication
Clear and consistent communication is vital for a sustainable knowledge program. When engaging with leadership, emphasize the program's impact on business outcomes. For managers and team members, ensure that process changes are clearly understood and celebrate progress along the way.
Every role within the KM program has a responsibility to communicate effectively, ensuring alignment and engagement across the organization.
Recognize Progress
Recognition is a powerful motivator, more effective than transactional rewards, which can be gamed or lose meaning over time. Recognize agents who actively contribute to capturing and updating knowledge in their daily workflows. Recognition fosters intrinsic motivation by making employees feel valued and appreciated. When, for example, an agent documents a solution while resolving a customer issue, she experiences a sense of accomplishment: satisfaction from helping a customer and pride in knowing her contribution will assist others in the future.
Recognition programs are especially important in the early stages of a KM program, generating excitement and building momentum. As the program matures, especially in organizations with low turnover, shift the focus to recognizing outcomes rather than activities and phase out rewards as knowledge sharing becomes a routine part of the workday.
In the process, though, there are a number of recognition pitfalls to avoid. They include the following:
- Don't create awards for high article usage. This often reflects the frequency of an issue, not the agent's contribution.
- Don't spotlight an article or agents publicly without first notifying them. Not everyone enjoys public attention.
- Don't focus recognition on a narrow set of skills or roles. This can send the wrong message about what is valued.
Developing reusable, efficient solutions to customer issues requires a strategic investment in knowledge management. By focusing on dedicated staffing, clear communication, and meaningful recognition, service and support leaders can build a thriving knowledge management culture that drives customer satisfaction, empowers employees, and supports organizational growth.
Patrick Quinlan is a senior director analyst in Gartner's Customer Service & Support Practice.