Daily Learnings: Thu, Sep 14, 2023
To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well. — John Marshall
Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS)
On a recorded prospect call, they mentioned that they’ve fully adopted a “KCS” mentality and want to use systems and products that support that “certification.” They said that Service Cloud & Knowledge Base is “KCS certified.” I wanted to make sure I could speak more to this, so I did a little digging.
- KCS stands for Knowledge-centered service or Knowledge-centered support
- It’s when CX teams provide & maintain documentation & a knowledge center as part of their real-time customer, system, or employee support
Simply put, KCS is about getting the in-depth knowledge of IT teams out of their heads and onto the page, creating detailed documentation that employees, system users, and new or less experienced engineers can use without constantly bombarding the service desk with the same requests. It’s about treating knowledge as a business asset and not relying entirely on memory and experience to resolve problems quickly.
- Metrics for companies that adopt KCS:
- A 30 – 50% increase in first-contact resolution
- 70% faster time-to-proficiency for new analysts
- 20 – 35% improvement in employee retention
- 20 – 40% improvement in employee satisfaction
- 10% fewer reported issues/support requests
- 50 – 60% of KCS adopters also improved time to resolution.
- Challenges to implementing KCS
- Difficult for teams to stop focusing on the “urgent and tactical”
- Takes a while, involves an upfront investment to get it going, and many people are usually really busy
- Often requires a culture shift in the company to adopt these practices
- This is usually the harder thing to do than choosing and implementing a technology solution that supports it
- How does it work?
- Capture Knowledge
- Structure Knowledge
- Reuse Knowledge
- Improve Knowledge
- Use Knowledge to see the big picture