Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) are a crucial aspect of any contact center’s operations. Without one, your agents and customers will be left in the dark.
In fact, 92% of Contact Center Managers’ report their Knowledge Management System is ‘extremely or very’ important to the running of their contact center*.
To truly empower your agents, a comprehensive KMS is a must. With the right information at the right time, your company can more easily enhance customer experiences and improve agent productivity.
Implementing a new KMS along with building a comprehensive repository of articles may seem overwhelming, but it can be done. By adopting an Agile Project Methodology, organizations can streamline this process to ensure a successful implementation.
In this article, we explore how Agile principles can be used to efficiently build out hundreds of articles for a contact center’s KMS:
1. Understand the Agile Project Methodology
Agile Project Methodology embodies flexibility, collaboration, and iterative development. It provides a framework that allows teams to break projects into phases (sprints), quickly adapt to changing needs, and deliver outcomes at a steady pace.
2. Form an Agile Knowledge Management Team
Assemble a cross-functional team of subject matter experts, content creators, content approvers, and contact center representatives (end users). This diverse team will ensure comprehensive input and expertise throughout the project, enabling a holistic and engaging approach to knowledge management (KM).
3. Define Clear Objectives
At the onset, clearly define the objectives and scope of your KMS implementation project. To do this, you should first identify key measurable pain points— like customer issues requiring escalation, complaint reasons, quality issues, and agent knowledge gaps—that the KMS should address. Then, set measurable goals that align with the organization’s broader knowledge management or operational strategy.
Make sure you note the starting metrics prior to starting the project. Otherwise, you won’t have anything to compare your results to.
4. Break Down the KMS Project into Sprints
Divide the project into manageable sprints based on the available content creators and information. Your sprints should typically run for 1-4 weeks and have specific deliverables and milestones. Each one of these should focus on the delivery of a set of articles, content topics, or team specific content.
This approach allows for continuous feedback, adjustment, and course correction throughout the KMS implementation process.
5. Prioritize and Create a KM Content Backlog
Work with your team to prioritize the knowledge management content backlog. This consists of content that needs to be workshopped or created by a subject matter expert. Identify and prioritize articles that have the most significant impact on agent efficiency and customer satisfaction.
6. Collaborate and Iterate
Promote a culture of collaboration and iteration within your KM team. Encourage regular meetings, such as daily stand-ups, to discuss progress, challenges, learnings, and updates. Leverage tools like Kanban boards, project management software, or a simple spreadsheet to visualize and track the progress of each article’s development.
7. Adopt User-Centric Design Principles
To ensure articles are user-friendly, easy to navigate, and simple to follow, employ user-centric design principles and information mapping. Keep the language simple, provide multiple navigation methods, ensure the design and structure is consistent and the system does not distract agents from their tasks.
8. Conduct Regular Retrospectives
After each sprint, conduct retrospective meetings to evaluate the team’s performance, identify areas for improvement, and celebrate achievements. This reflective practice enables continuous learning and refinement of the knowledge management process.
9. Empower and Engage Agents with Regular Updates
As the KMS implementation progresses, keep agents informed and engaged through regular communications and content updates. Encouraging and welcoming their feedback and ideas from the start goes a long way to maintaining continuous KM improvement and building collaborative culture.
10. Monitor, Evaluate, and Optimize
Once the KMS is in use, continually monitor and evaluate its usage, content creation / maintenance, and overall effectiveness. Analyze usage patterns, agent feedback, content quality and relevance, and report on key performance indicators to identify improvement areas. Use this data to optimize the articles, enhance search capabilities, and address evolving needs.
Conclusion
By adopting an Agile Project Methodology like this one for implementing your Knowledge Management System, you can build out countless articles, empower and engage your agents, and create a knowledge management system people want to use. With an Agile approach to knowledge, your organization can enhance agent productivity, improve customer experiences, and establish a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration.
*Smaart Recruitment’s 2023 Contact Centre Best Practice Report