4 ways knowledge management can strengthen your customer services organization in 2023

2022 was a huge year for customer experience leaders. With the rise in self-service, increased mobility and remote working post-COVID, as well as exciting breakthroughs in AI technology, customers’ expectations for exceptional digital experiences have never been higher. According to the 2021 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report from NTT Ltd., 91% of organizations agree that customer experience is a primary differentiator, and leading organizations have recognized that a robust knowledge management strategy is a key component in separating themselves from the pack.

 

And so, with 2023 upon us, this year presents an opportunity for customer service organizations to distinguish themselves through effective knowledge management, by focusing on these four key areas to improve customer services and experiences from beginning to end.

One of the biggest trends in recent years is the shift to self-service. Consumers today are more tech-savvy than previous generations, and often prefer to find their own way to a solution, as opposed to waiting in a call queue or for an email response.

 

A self-service customer portal is one of the most powerful applications for knowledge management. It gives customers quick and easy access to the information and support they need without having to wait for a response from a customer service representative. It can also help improve the efficiency and productivity of customer service teams. By allowing customers to access information and support on their own, self-service can help reduce the workload for customer service representatives, freeing them up to focus on more complex and high-priority tasks.

 

And if that’s not enough, self-service can also help organizations save money. By providing customers with the tools and information they need to solve their own problems, organizations can reduce the number of customer service inquiries they receive, which can help lower operating costs.

NTT’s benchmarking report indicates that customer service teams are accelerating their AI adoption plans, with 52% of organizations expecting a majority of their customer experiences to be managed by AI and robotic solutions within 12 months.

 

A great deal of AI innovation is geared towards improving knowledge management, such as using natural language processing (NLP) to build chatbots that can understand and interpret customer inquiries, questions, and requests. This allows the chatbot to provide quick and accurate responses to customer inquiries, without the need for human intervention. AI can also be used to develop personalized and intelligent search systems that can help users quickly find the information they need. These systems can use user data and previous search history to provide more relevant and useful search results, making it easier for users to access the knowledge they need.

Many customer service organizations might boast that they offer multichannel experiences for their customers, however the key distinction with omnichannel is that all channels are integrated, so that each has visibility into the other. This is vital to creating positive customer interactions – when channels aren’t integrated, your customers may find themselves going round in circles, or repeating the same information again and again but getting nowhere.

 

Creating successful omnichannel support means delivering a seamless experience for customers, whether it’s through your website, mobile app, or social media. A vital component to this is ensuring your knowledge management is centralized and linked to your various channels. This way, no matter what route your customer takes in their knowledge-seeking journey, they will always have access to accurate and up-to-date information about products, services, and policies.

The customers of today expect an on-demand, intuitive and hyper-personalized digital experience. This trend is in many ways linked to the previous one in that a key facet of a personalized customer experience is omnichannel delivery. And from a knowledge management perspective, content personalization is now a corporate imperative for companies of all sizes.

 

According to a study from Infosys, 86% of consumers surveyed indicated that personalized content has some impact on what they purchase and 25% said that personalization plays a large role in their purchases. However, very few organizations have been able to meet the challenge of delivering personalization at scale.

 

In her book, The Personalization Paradox, Val Swisher of Content Rules states that in order to offer personalized customer experiences, you must standardize your knowledge management. This might sound counter-intuitive, but it makes sense. When content is standardized and broken down into components, it becomes much easier to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time, to their chosen device and in the case of global companies, in their native language.

 

Overall, effective knowledge management is essential for customer service teams looking to provide the best possible experience for their customers. By having access to accurate and up-to-date information, customer service teams can respond to inquiries more quickly and accurately, and identify and address common customer issues. This not only improves the customer experience, but it can also help organizations retain customers and build long-term loyalty.

 

To learn more about how Tridion can help you improve your customer experiences through knowledge management, click here.