In the previous blog on customer service we discuss the benefit of organizing customer service content around the processes and workflows that agents follow. What follows are some specific steps to get started.
1. Determine the most frequent workflows/customer inquiries that your agents are expected to handle.
2. Take each of these workflows and break them down into a series of sub-steps that explain how the workflow should be handled by the agent. Keep it simple.
3. For each step within each workflow, identify the various types of supporting content, tools, information and guidelines that and agent might need in order to address each specific step. This is your inventory.
4. Now the hard part...which depends a lot on the content management system(s) you use to support your agents. Specific content should be filed in a structure that mimics the workflows and steps that you've outlined. This could be a folder and sub-folder structure, it could be a series of web-pages or it could be metadata that you associate with each piece of content.
In concept this seems pretty easy, and makes plenty of sense. In practice, trying to manipulate your content management system can be a bit more challenging depending on the way(s) in which content is organized in that system.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Corporate Giving: Off topic
Although this blog posting is more than a little off topic, it is timely. Contextware started giving more to non-profit causes the last couple of years for lots of reasons: it’s a good idea, we can afford to, events impacting our own lives compel us to and it there are lots of needs that go unaddressed. In 2008, Americans gave more than $307.65 billion to their favorite causes despite the economy. When adjusted for inflation, giving was down 5.7 percent, the largest drop recorded since it’s been tracked.Corporate giving, tied to corporate profits, decreased 4.5 percent (8 percent when adjusted for inflation) in 2008 to $14.5 billion. So although corporate giving is a smaller percentage of the total, it’s an important and volatile component. And to be fair, that number doesn’t include giving from all of the private (business-like) foundations e.g. the Gates Foundation in the total.
In 2009, it’s likely that giving in total, and corporate giving in particular will be lower. We’re telling as many people that will listen about opportunities to contribute back to the community, sign up for United Way (and other) capital campaigns and donate time to worthy causes. Hope you do the same. It does make a difference.
In 2009, it’s likely that giving in total, and corporate giving in particular will be lower. We’re telling as many people that will listen about opportunities to contribute back to the community, sign up for United Way (and other) capital campaigns and donate time to worthy causes. Hope you do the same. It does make a difference.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Process and Customer Service Content - Part I
(Part 1 of 2)
Providing customer service, whether via self-service, performed through the web, delivered through a call center; outsourced or insourced is a business process...on that everyone can agree. And the specific types of customer inquiries can be grouped into a series of sub-processes related to providing customer service e.g. purchase a product, inquire about a charge, return or repair a product. And most customer service environments have figured out how to create prescriptive work flows (scripts and call aids) that are organized around these sub-processes.
However, most of the supporting content and information designed to support accurate and complete response to customer service questions isn't organized by process. It's categorized in information categories that don't align with the way an agent or a customer would expect to find them. So the most common approach to solving customer service content issues is to use enterprise search or to create a large knowledge base of Q&A that can be...searched. One problem with this approach is that as the body of knowledge and content grows, so do the search results...and instead of helping with productivity, this approach drains it by requiring agents and customers to wade through the mounds of content and Q&A returned in a search result before they can provide a hopefully, correct answer.
An alternative method for categorizing content is to do so around the processes, workflows and types of questions that are typically posed. This approach can reduce agent and customer "search" time by up to 50% on a per incident basis. The impact on quality is intuitively positive. The flow-through impact of answering customers more quickly and accurately is also obvious.
But where to start?
Providing customer service, whether via self-service, performed through the web, delivered through a call center; outsourced or insourced is a business process...on that everyone can agree. And the specific types of customer inquiries can be grouped into a series of sub-processes related to providing customer service e.g. purchase a product, inquire about a charge, return or repair a product. And most customer service environments have figured out how to create prescriptive work flows (scripts and call aids) that are organized around these sub-processes.
However, most of the supporting content and information designed to support accurate and complete response to customer service questions isn't organized by process. It's categorized in information categories that don't align with the way an agent or a customer would expect to find them. So the most common approach to solving customer service content issues is to use enterprise search or to create a large knowledge base of Q&A that can be...searched. One problem with this approach is that as the body of knowledge and content grows, so do the search results...and instead of helping with productivity, this approach drains it by requiring agents and customers to wade through the mounds of content and Q&A returned in a search result before they can provide a hopefully, correct answer.
An alternative method for categorizing content is to do so around the processes, workflows and types of questions that are typically posed. This approach can reduce agent and customer "search" time by up to 50% on a per incident basis. The impact on quality is intuitively positive. The flow-through impact of answering customers more quickly and accurately is also obvious.
But where to start?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Contextware: In the Basex Briefing Room
As often happens, third parties looking from the outside-in find new ways to explain and articulate issues that Contextware addresses, and the article below from Basex, Inc., the world's foremost knowledge economy research and advisory firm is no exception. We think you'll find their review of Contextware interesting.
The article begins:
One of the missing pieces of a puzzle the knowledge worker faces in the course of performing knowledge work is context. Without context, the knowledge worker is looking at isolated bits of information that are, more often than not, of limited value. Most content doesn’t stand on its own; there is always important related and supporting information that completes the picture. Beyond a single document, what else should one read and whom else should one query? Knowing what to read next or which experts to contact completes the puzzle and increases the value of the content exponentially. Click to read the entire piece...
The article begins:
One of the missing pieces of a puzzle the knowledge worker faces in the course of performing knowledge work is context. Without context, the knowledge worker is looking at isolated bits of information that are, more often than not, of limited value. Most content doesn’t stand on its own; there is always important related and supporting information that completes the picture. Beyond a single document, what else should one read and whom else should one query? Knowing what to read next or which experts to contact completes the puzzle and increases the value of the content exponentially. Click to read the entire piece...
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
When do you stop?
Summer in D.C. is usually a slow period...people on vacation, oppressive summer heat and humidity, Congress out of session. But we've never been busier and as a result, we've neglected the blog a bit. Apologies.
I spoke at the SALT learning conference in Arlington, VA the other day and was asked the question by a knowledge manager in the audience, “when do you stop gathering process or business knowledge and implement your solution.” In other words, how do you know you have what you need to deploy?
I answered it this way. When you implement a training solution, you create a class or an instance of that training which is very modular in nature. You might review it annually or on some other schedule, but regardless, the content is not dynamic in nature. When you implement a BPM solution…you go to great lengths to define requirements, create workflows and integrate/code systems. But try to change it? Workflow is very brittle.
But business is ever evolving. Rules and regulations change. Content and templates change. Employees leave, new ones join. But most importantly, someone is always figuring out a better way to perform the job they’ve been told to do. And in Contextware’s world, we made the conscious decision to create a technology that allows for those improvements to be captured and conveyed quickly and efficiently. It is one of the biggest differentiators in the way we approach process improvement, knowledge and performance support.
I spoke at the SALT learning conference in Arlington, VA the other day and was asked the question by a knowledge manager in the audience, “when do you stop gathering process or business knowledge and implement your solution.” In other words, how do you know you have what you need to deploy?
I answered it this way. When you implement a training solution, you create a class or an instance of that training which is very modular in nature. You might review it annually or on some other schedule, but regardless, the content is not dynamic in nature. When you implement a BPM solution…you go to great lengths to define requirements, create workflows and integrate/code systems. But try to change it? Workflow is very brittle.
But business is ever evolving. Rules and regulations change. Content and templates change. Employees leave, new ones join. But most importantly, someone is always figuring out a better way to perform the job they’ve been told to do. And in Contextware’s world, we made the conscious decision to create a technology that allows for those improvements to be captured and conveyed quickly and efficiently. It is one of the biggest differentiators in the way we approach process improvement, knowledge and performance support.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Process documentation for communication and collaboration
Yesterday Contextware announced the award of a new contract from the U.S. Army. The award is for software to help with capturing and codifying manufacturing process knowledge and information. That’s a great new client for us and also serves as a nice lead-in to an important point about process documentation.
There are a lot of software technologies classified as business process management, or process documentation tools. So why Contextware for the Army instead of a more classic (precisely defined) BPM or process documentation software?
The honest answer is that the Army uses plenty of process tools, but in this use-case, the answer lies in a specific Army requirement for this procurement: “the system will also facilitate communication and collaboration to conduct prototype and manufacturing process development efforts.”
The origin of documenting business processes traces back to the need to develop data models, data bases and automation of business rules…resulting in the creation of a common language to document processes. And based on these needs an entire industry of business process management software was developed.
Contextware’s focus is on the non-automated aspects of the business. And early on we determined that process documentation served a useful role, not just as a means to enforce business rules, but more importantly as a means to capture information about the enterprise and the way it does business. And then to serve as a means for communicating it and connecting to content relevant to those processes.
This is why the U.S. Army is working with us…because its challenges related to process have much more to do with understanding, accumulation of knowledge, learning and collaboration then they have to do with automation of specific activities or tasks.
There are a lot of software technologies classified as business process management, or process documentation tools. So why Contextware for the Army instead of a more classic (precisely defined) BPM or process documentation software?
The honest answer is that the Army uses plenty of process tools, but in this use-case, the answer lies in a specific Army requirement for this procurement: “the system will also facilitate communication and collaboration to conduct prototype and manufacturing process development efforts.”
The origin of documenting business processes traces back to the need to develop data models, data bases and automation of business rules…resulting in the creation of a common language to document processes. And based on these needs an entire industry of business process management software was developed.
Contextware’s focus is on the non-automated aspects of the business. And early on we determined that process documentation served a useful role, not just as a means to enforce business rules, but more importantly as a means to capture information about the enterprise and the way it does business. And then to serve as a means for communicating it and connecting to content relevant to those processes.
This is why the U.S. Army is working with us…because its challenges related to process have much more to do with understanding, accumulation of knowledge, learning and collaboration then they have to do with automation of specific activities or tasks.
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