Transform Your Business with Knowledge Management

Modern business is global, scaled, outsourced and diffused. It can be difficult to identify where the center of today’s businesses is located. Yet the most essential relationship businesses have is the one between the organization and its customer, a relationship that must convey immediacy and even intimacy regardless of the distances involved.

So how do organizations resolve the often-decentralized nature of their operations with responsive customer service?

The key is knowledge — the curated store of an organization’s collective data and experience. It can be distributed digitally across any organizational structure, providing quick, reliable answers to both customers and agents wherever they are located.

Knowledge gives modern business its center. With the right tools in place, knowledge can transform a large-scale business by seamlessly joining scattered operations.

Knowledge automation: a single source of truth

By implementing an automated knowledge solution, such as Verint Knowledge Management (KM), companies can store their product and service knowledge in a centralized knowledgebase that serves all customer and agent touchpoints. This means knowledge can be curated in one place by subject matter experts, then distributed across the business to provide accurate answers whenever customers ask a question.

Centralized knowledge provides a single source of truth across the enterprise. When customers use self-service to research their purchases or handle after-sales issues, the system delivers accurate, up-to-date knowledge quickly and intuitively.

If the customer asks a question to a team member, the team member has access to the knowledgebase through their CRM, chat or social media interface. Therefore, they can view information restricted to internal use, as well as the content available through customer self-service.

And, a salesperson can consult the knowledgebase through a showroom terminal or tablet to look up a technical question before closing a sale. One example of a business that successfully transformed their business using Knowledge Management is BMW.

BMW: Transforming customer service with knowledge

BMW, which includes the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, is one of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers. It operates across more than 140 countries, and its contact center receives four million enquiries every year. As a premium brand, BMW seeks to provide a customer service experience that befits the value and reputation of its vehicles.

BMW implemented Verint Knowledge Management (KM) to transform how it served knowledge. The solution uses a central knowledgebase to support three key customer touchpoints: customer self-service, the contact center, and car showroom. The solution was initially rolled out to the 250 agents in BMW’s contact center — and then was subsequently extended to cover customer-facing touchpoints for the company’s brands.

Because the Verint KM knowledgebase can be rolled out to additional touchpoints without additional investment, it could be further extended to new channels such as BMW’s recently implemented Alexa feature — helping to future-proof the knowledge solution.

One of BMW’s goals was to make its knowledge “customer centric,” not “document centric”: to curate knowledge according to users’ real needs and publish it in a form that was effortless to absorb. By implementing a knowledge solution, the enterprise furthered its broader aim of delivering an exceptional customer experience.

A Transformed Business

Knowledge is the center of a business world that no longer has a physical center. Knowledge connects the widespread locations of a multinational enterprise. Knowledge connects remote employees to their employer.

Knowledge provides the means to serve customers at multiple touchpoints, and connects questions with answers regardless of time, place or medium. Knowledge is the new lifeblood of large-scale organizations.

Automating knowledge effectively, so that a centralized knowledge base underpins every point of need, can be disruptive. It takes will, strategy and commitment at all levels of the organization. Once achieved, however, it can quickly realize ROI and pay ongoing dividends in efficiency and goodwill.

This blog was written with Gemma Bristow — reach her at gemma.bristow@verint.com.