I've been working with and helping to develop Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) best practices for the past several years through the Consortium for Service Innovation. The ultimate goal of all of the work that has gone into it has been to create simplified processes that make creating and managing knowledge easy, impactful, and - dare I say it - fun.
The basic premise of KCS is creating a centralized knowledgebase that supports your overall processes, primarily for customer and technical support. It's extremely empowering to have knowledge available at your fingertips. If you've never had a KCS initiative, it might seem a bit daunting, but all it really takes is the initiative to get started. I've outlined six simple steps to get started with KCS...
1. Create your KCS teams- KCS Manager, Council, Coach, and beta team (to get started)
2. Create your vision and objectives for managing your knowledge with your Council team.
- Example vision: Our vision is to share the best practices and experiences with you to ease your KCS journey by offering the ability to better your experience during implementation of KCS.
- Example objectives: Our objectives are to provide a;
- Basic KCS understanding and ongoing training
- Way to measure success and KCS ROI
- Clear path for KCS implementation
3. Define your knowledge management business requirements.
- What is your agent workflow?
- What is your article workflow?
- Any other requirements you may expect from the tool.
4. Choose your knowledgebase (KB) tool – the vehicle for managing your knowledge.
- Use your business requirements to help select your tool.
- Talk to other people about why they like or dont like their current KB.
5. Pre-populate your KB with your top 10 issues per team. This will allow some search success while getting started using the KB.
6. Provide vision, objective, and tool training for all individuals in the company. Offer refresher and new hire KCS ongoing training.
