So much of what we do every day here at RightAnswers is around how knowledge management (KM) can improve the customer experience. I’d like to share a recent experience I had with a company in which KM could have certainly improved the outcome. Living and working in New Jersey, we were, of course, impacted by Hurricane Sandy and the Nor’easter that followed. I am going to preface this by noting that my family was minimally impacted and we continue to pray for and assist those who have lost so much.
During Sandy, we had several large branches fall from trees and skim our house which took out power and cable lines. The worst of Sandy occurred on Monday night, prompting me to call both providers on Tuesday morning. My cable provider arrived the next day and informed me that the power lines needed to be reconnected before they could restore service. Since safety always comes first, I thought that this was a fair response. The power company showed up about 20 minutes later and took care of everything. So far, so good, I thought.
After the power company left, I called the cable provider to schedule another appointment. This is where the fun began. I spoke to a service agent who went through the normal protocol as if I were calling for a cable box that wasn’t functioning even though I told him the wires were on my front lawn. When he could not ping my cable box, he set an appointment for the next day between 8:00 and 10:00am and told me the technician would call before they’d arrive. At 10:30am, when no one had come and no phone call had been received, I called customer service yet again.
This time around, I received the response that I initially expected. They were not making standard appointments with two-hour windows, and she didn’t know why the other agent gave me such information. The service agent I spoke with that morning was extremely apologetic that someone gave me bad information, because there was no record of an appointment being made. They added me on the list for a repair, and the technicians would show up when time permitted since the problem was on the exterior of my home. However, I was told they would not be able to come for a week.
A week goes by and the day the cable company was scheduled to come arrives – the day after the Nor’easter. I called once again to see how much my appointment would be delayed due to the new damage from the snow storm. The agent tells me I have no appointment and there is no record of anyone being sent to my home. At this point, I became frustrated, to say the least, and the next appointment they could schedule would be 10 days out. After speaking to a supervisor to share my story and frustration at being told three different stories by three different people, he put me on the schedule and they were at my home doing the repair within 48 hours.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not about my inconvenience, but rather about the service I received. If this company was using a knowledge management solution, the agents would have all had the same and correct information about how to deal with outages from the storm and how to set expectations for their customers. One of the great values of having a KM solution is that you can easily push new information to your agents to ensure your customers are getting the best and most accurate information available.
At RightAnswers, we take knowledge management seriously and through it have helped so many of our clients be prepared for the changes and the unexpected events that affect their customers. It continues to amaze me that so many organizations do not take knowledge seriously and I wonder if they realize how to costly it is to do business otherwise.
Author: Veronica Mathieson