Entries Tagged 'Ask InQuira' ↓

To keep up with the latest trends in customer service, collaboration and search tools, I am always scouring the Web to soak up as much information as I can. In no particular order, here are just some of the blogs that I read on a regular basis – the list is a combination of knowledge management, customer service, collaboration, search, and CRM sites, because the nature of our business means we need to stay on top all these issues. This is only some of the great information that is available from some of the smartest people who are working in the trenches every day. Let me know what sites you read to stay informed and I will add it to my growing list!

1. KM Edge: The American Productivity & Quality Center’s (APQC) Knowledge Management blog- Carla O’Dell and Lauren Trees and some insightful commentary to news and trends.

2. John Ragsdale’s Eye on Service: VP of of Technology Research at Service and Support Professionals Assocation (SSPA), the Association for Services Management International (AFSMI), and the Technical Professional Services Association (TPSA), shares information, news and analysis on the latest technologies intended to improve customer service.

3. Content Management Connection: George Dearing’s blog combines insight from content management experts with an emphasis on collaboration tools. The blog touches on content management through various aspects including customer service, Wikis, social networks, search engines, and Web services.

4. Bill Ives’ Blog: Bill Ives’ blog discussing practical applications of portals, blogs, and knowledge management.

5. Enterprise Search Practice Blog: This blog hosted by The Gilbane Group offers analysis and the latest news on enterprise search technologies and implementations

When we think of knowledge management measurement, we tend to focus on ROI and performance measures. How much money have we made or saved because of our investment? Are tasks being completed faster? Are people more productive?

While these are all important metrics that are important in understanding the value you are receiving from your KM efforts, equally as important is being able to measure knowledge contributions, quality and process effectiveness. These measures are the ones that will allow you to understand which content and authors provide the best information, where gaps exist in your knowledge base and what can be done to improve knowledge contributions and use throughout the organization.

We recently caught up with Mark Buckallew, Senior Director of Product Management at InQuira to get a better understanding of how to measure and analyze KM efforts that go beyond the basic ROI metrics.

“Identifying why people are not finding what they need from a self service perspective or not finding what they need from an agent service perspective is focused heavily on the analysis side and taking the high level KPIs and drilling down into the details of what’s going wrong, and what kinds of things can I do then to make changes to improve my system.”

As InQuira’s resident expert on all things KM analytics and reporting related, Buckallew provides very in-depth view into:

• Analyzing support and service KPIs
• Leveraging user activities, feedback, and scoring in KM analysis
• Collecting user feedback and make user comments actionable
• Narrowing and filtering results to pinpoint problems and solutions

To learn more watch “Advanced Measures and Analytics”.

Note: This on-demand webinar is Part 3 of InQuira’s Knowledge Management Measurement series. Get more insights into the metrics that matter when measuring knowledge management. Watch Part 1: The Importance of Measuring KM and Part 2: Basics fro Beginners.

If you are new to knowledge management you are probably wondering what metrics you want to measure to understand the ROI for your investment – that is if you have even thought of measurement at all.

It’s a story all to common with KM, all the focus is put on the implementation – getting the technology deployed, processes and workflows in place, people trained – that no one really thinks about measurement until it’s too little too late (usually when you boss is breathing down your neck to show them the results of your budget spend).

The good thing about knowledge measurement though, is that you don’t need to try to set up every possible measurement out of the gate. Chances are your KM implementation will evolve over time as content creation and user adoption increases, so your measurements can evolve right along with it.

We recently caught up with Mark Buckallew, Senior Director of Product Management at InQuira (and our resident expert on all things KM analytics and reporting related) who provided us with some great measurement strategies for those who are just starting out with KM.

“We have had customers look at things like benchmarking the number of cases that they have compared to others in the industry of similar size and determining whether or not the projected cases are dropping based on the effectiveness of self service. There are other measures that people have used to try to measure self service but really tracking a user session and how effective that session was and identifying problem sessions is something that has a lot of benefit because it then can tell you the problem areas you can focus on making changes.”

In this session, Buckallew is also joined by John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research at the SSPA, who shares knowledge metric benchmarks from this year’s SSPA study. In addition to discussing support and service metrics as they relate to KM, Buckallew provides insights into other measures including:

• Content contributions: usefulness, timeliness, quality
• Community: questions asked / solved by forum, most popular topics, top users
• Trends and Outcomes: activities, desired results

To learn more watch “Basics for Beginners”.

Note: This on-demand webinar is Part 2 of InQuira’s Knowledge Management Measurement series. Get more insights into the metrics that matter when measuring knowledge management. Watch Part 1: The Importance of Measuring KM and Part 3: Advanced Knowledge Measurement.

Based simply on the number of times we are asked “how do you measure knowledge value”, I think it is safe to say that we can all agree on the importance of measuring knowledge and its impact on the business. But if we all agree on the importance, why are so many of us NOT doing it?

We often hear things like “we don’t know where to start” or “we don’t know what we are suppose to measure” as the reasons why knowledge measurement is not happening. And it’s understandable; measuring knowledge can be difficult because it reaches across the entire organization from support agent productivity and interaction channels to customer satisfaction and revenues, knowledge IS making an impact.

Recently we explored the topic “The Importance of Measuring KM” with John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research at the SSPA, who provided tremendous insight into some of the easiest and best places to start measuring knowledge value.

“I definitely learned this first hand when I was running support centers back in the 80s and 90s. When I brought in our first knowledge management solution it really revolutionized the way we trained people, the way we hired people and definitely the way we delivered support.”

As a support expert and innovator, Ragsdale talked to us about his experiences with measuring knowledge including detail around which metrics (some of which you may already be measuring) are best to monitor knowledge usage and value and recommendations on where to begin your measurement efforts. Among his recommendations:

• Invest in metrics: Strong metrics and benchmarking programs are required to understand impacts of technology or process change.
• Look beyond ROI: The impact of KM is much larger than just an ROI, track impacts to satisfaction, loyalty and revenue.

To learn more watch “The Importance of Measuring KM”.

Note: This on-demand webinar is Part 1 of InQuira’s Knowledge Management Measurement series. Get more insights into the metrics that matter when measuring knowledge management. Watch Part 2: Basics for Beginners and Part 3: Advanced Knowledge Measurement.

The most fundamental of human questions is “what’s in it for me?“, or WIIFM.  Good salespeople have known for a long time that a deal is hard to close if the prospect doesn’t know WIIFM.  But the same can be said for any situation where you are trying to motivate someone into action.  When self-interest is at stake, stuff just gets done a whole lot easier.

We are often asked how an organization can maintain momentum and keep users motivated in participating in and contributing to the knowledge management process.  We took that question head on in latest addition of our Ask InQuira newsletter.  The answer, of course, is selling all participants on the WIIFM.  

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Many knowledge management initiatives fail because user buy-in is either not there, or not sustainable. For a knowledge-based culture to really take hold, you need an active community of contributors and participants. Mandating desired behavior is destined to fail, as is any effort to co-opt the right behavior by appealing to the individual’s responsibility to serve the ‘greater good’ of the knowledge community.

No, the right way to maintain momentum and build your organization’s knowledge culture is to persuasively answer the question that is on every user’s mind - “What’s in it for me?” (aka WIIFM). Everyone is motivated by something. The trick is to find out what motivates an individual and demonstrate how he/she will benefit by participating in the knowledge community. To be persuasive, you must convince them of the benefits they will gain by embracing knowledge management and incorporating the right behavior into their daily routine.

For contact center users, that could mean demonstrating how the knowledge management system will empower them to resolve even the most complex customer problems in a fraction of the time normally allotted to troubleshooting difficult issues. Or it could be demonstrating how the system could eliminate redundant calls by improving how customers help themselves on the web (contact center agents generally hate answering the same question over and over). Or maybe you outline how the new processes and tools affect the key metrics that determine their variable compensation and bonus pay. There could be dozens of others answers to the WIIFM question, and they will likely vary by group. What motivates the contact center agent is likely to be different from what motivates the product development team, or management, or even customers who participate through discussion forums or other community mechanisms.

Read the full article, Answer WIIFM and Encourage Participation with Recognition, to learn more.