Many organizations share competitive challenges and a need to scaling their business and be at the forefront of their customers’ minds, etc. while having limited staff and budget resources. Organizations that really understand that their most valuable assets are the collective knowledge of their staff, customers and partners can thrive with less effort. In this blog article I will highlight the most important benefits to an organization of implementing a successful Knowledge Management strategy.

1. Operational Efficiency – Knowledge-centered culture and infrastructure

Knowledge Management is about teamwork. Collective experience will always be more accurate and complete than any individual’s knowledge. It is essential to integrate the use of the knowledge base into an organization’s workflow in order to benefit from this collective knowledge. It requires the setting-up of a knowledge-centered culture and infrastructure in the organization that reuses and improves existing knowledge and captures new knowledge where it doesn’t already exist.

The value of reusing collective knowledge is huge. An organization will benefit from the ability to introduce both new people and new work with dramatically less effort and time. Issues or situations will be resolved much faster. By choosing the successful Knowledge Management strategy based, for example, on the Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS®) methodology, you can receive operational benefits such as:

• 20-35% improvement in employee retention
• 20-40% improvement in employee satisfaction
• 50-60% improvement in time to resolution
• 70% improvement in time to proficiency

2. Organizational Learning and Improvement – Share more, learn more

The Irish author George Bernard Shaw said: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” Knowledge is like ideas. Knowledge is intangible whereas physical products are tangible. The more we share knowledge the more we learn.

Use of a knowledge base reveals patterns that help organizations make better decisions. Patterns of article reuse can highlight issues from a financial and customer-impact perspective, providing information for product management and development to act on. Organizations that have implemented the KCS methodology have reported a 10% reduction in issues due to root cause removal. Working with development and product owners to remove those issues results in a better customer experience and cost savings.

3. Customer Success with Self-Service – Findable and usable in the customer context

Setting the right strategy for Knowledge Management in your organization will result in the customer context. When knowledge is in the customer context it will become findable and reusable. For support providers such as service desks and customer service centers, having the majority of simple, recurring questions go through self-service will save time and money and will also improve the customer experience. The cost per resolution in self-service is dramatically less than that of an assisted call. Organizations that have implemented the KCS methodology report case deflection of up to 50% with self-service. Effective self-service allows support providers to focus their energy on new challenges and opportunities that lead to greater employee and customer satisfaction.

4. Summary of benefits: Reducing operating costs

The aggregated impact of these three benefits results in a reduced ratio of service providers’ operating costs (or costs per individual being served) to revenue, while simultaneously improving the success and productivity of those being served.

Your organization’s most valuable asset is knowledge, and you should take care of it.

If you would like to find out more, please contact one of ComAround’s Knowledge Experts.

Thanks for reading this blog article. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts you would like to share.

Therese Walve, Marketing Manager at ComAround & KCS Practices V6 certified.

About ComAround

ComAround is a multinational software company that specializes in Knowledge Management and self-service. The company helps organizations to achieve exceptional support by using intelligent knowledge as part of their digital transformation strategy and by utilizing ComAround’s expertise in Knowledge Management. ComAround’s customers solve problems faster, handle increased volumes of issues in multiple languages much more easily, have lower organizational costs and deliver excellent customer experience. Read about ComAround’s Knowledge Software.

Related links:

Blog article: 4 benefits of choosing a separate and specialized knowledge management software

Whitepaper: Using Self Service and KCS to reduce support cost

On-demand webinar: Building a Business Case for Implementing an Advanced KM Solution