The importance of knowledge management for call center

Customer satisfaction and support are fundamental for any business’s success. The businesses that are successful in retaining their customer are the only ones that survive in the highly intensive competition. To achieve this the business needs to clear all the customers’ issues and doubts on time. One effective way of doing so is through the use of knowledge management in call center.

Knowledge management is very crucial for business success. It ensures all the necessary information and data is properly organized and thus is made available when the need arises. The business data and information is of no use until and unless it provides valuable insights to provide maximum support. This is what knowledge management helps the business to achieve with so much ease and convenience.

The role of knowledge management becomes more important in call centers. This is because the call centers are a support system for business customers. They play a pivotal role in keeping customer satisfaction on point. In case of any difficulty faced by the customer, they contact the call centers to get more clarity. It is their go-to place for getting their issues solved so the customer care representatives must be provided with all the support and information to carry out their responsibility effectively. Then there’s livepro’s knowledge management, which is designed for contact centers but works across various customer channels and touchpoints. Knowledge management provides the agents with updated information which will ultimately help the business to retain their valuable customers and thus earn a good return on their investments. Knowledge management benefits the call centers on various metrics. Some of these are mentioned below:

• Average handle time: The more time the agents take to provide answers to the customer, the more annoyed the customer becomes. The customers want to get their issue resolved and this can be achieved only when the agent has access to complete and updated information. The agents are provided with complicated information then it will become impossible to crack the problem. This situation can be handled by the use of knowledge management that helps in reducing the average handle time and thus customer agents are in a better position to handle more complaints.
• Customer satisfaction: The right knowledge management software will enable the customer agent to understand the customer behavior pattern and thus help in providing valuable service to them. The customer agents will be able to understand the pre-requirement of their customers and thus lead to better customer satisfaction and experience. Besides this, the knowledge management software enables the call centers to deliver the customer with the right solution quickly thus ensuring they remain engaged with the business-enhancing their loyalty towards the business.
• First call resolution: No customer likes to wait for long to get the solution even to the simplest issue. This is the number one of customer disengagement with the business and thereby shifts to the companies which value their time. Hence care must be taken to provide a solution to customer issues at the earliest if a possible business must try delivering the first call resolution. This might seem a big work but with the use of knowledge management in call centers this can effectively happen. Knowledge management helps in the integration of various knowledge points so that customer agents have access to all the information at their ease and thus tackle the customer issue at the first contact only.
• Agent error: Customer is the king and their experience matters the most for the business. One mistake on part of the customer agent in dealing with the customer can cost the business a huge. This error could arise because of a lack of proper communication and skills in customer agents. But the root cause of this situation is the availability of the right knowledge base. This leads to the availability of proper and updated information to handle various customer issues and might lead to the wrong solution that can impact customer experience. Hence the business needs to invest in the right knowledge management that ensures that the customer agents have all the valuable and consistent knowledge available all the time.
• Abandon rate: Every customer is important for the business but sometimes the customer pending request becomes too overwhelming for the customer agents. This increases the abandonment rate which is not what any business would want. But with the use of knowledge management, such a situation will never arise as this system ensures that petty issues are taken care of by the self-service platform whereas complex problems are handled by customer agents. This thus ensures that every customer query is met and no one is left unnoticed.

Hence these are the major benefits that are provided by the use of knowledge management for call center. It will significantly improve their overall productivity and enhance customer satisfaction. Knowledge management provides all the benefits by using various tools that properly keep the data and information. Some of these are mentioned below:

• Decision tree: Decision tree is one of the most valuable tools that knowledge management provides to customer agents. It provides them with step-by-step instructions to deal with the various customers’ problems. Thus this leads to smooth working and simplified communication between the customer agents and the customers.
• Visual-how to guides: This tool provides the agents as well as the customer with a quicker approach to handle various issues. This tool is of great help for self-service and thus customer can handle their small issue by themselves without any delay through this tool.
• AI bots: Knowledge management systems make the AI bot more effective and thus take care of customer need at the ideal time. AI bot knows what issues can be handled by them and thereby in case of complex issues they deflate the calls to customer agents in the best possible team.
• Knowledge base: Knowledge base is the most important component of knowledge management. This is because it all the information about the business as well as the customer in a right manner.

Hence with the use of these tools knowledge management helps in enhancing customer experience. This is a must-use system to enhance customer loyalty for the business brand.