There’s an interesting site, serviceinnovation.org, that teaches how to use people and processes to increase productivity. They have the view that to achieve large improvements in productivity, organizations must use new, innovative ways to deliver customer support. To make their point, the home page of their web site uses Einstein’s quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
The core of their innovative approach is the Knowledge-Centered Support management strategy, which “… defines a set of principles and practices that enable organizations to improve service levels…” What’s different about this approach is that it incorporates a cycle of learning from the knowledge that is collected from the customer service process. An example is the development of Just In TIme content as a by-product of solving customer problems. Netcordia tries to do this by adding to an FAQ or contributing to the Netcordia community forum.
The Powerpoint presentation on KCS is very useful in understanding how it can be used to improve the customer support process. One of the key aspects to it is to publish the results of support cases, which allows future customers to self-help by looking through the knowledge base to find solutions to problems that have already been found. The customer support staff also benefits from the publication of collected knowledge, allowing them to resolve new cases much faster. The overall efficiency gains are reported to be 30% – 60%, with an associated increase in support capacity. With the current economic environment, this translates into greater job security for those in support roles because they contribute greater value than without KCS. It helps management, who are looking for ways to save money and doing more with the current staff is a great way to achieve savings.
I highly recommend that you take a look at the KCS process and look at how to use it in your organization.
-Terry
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Re-posted with Permission
NetCraftsmen would like to acknowledge Infoblox for their permission to re-post this article which originally appeared in the Applied Infrastructure blog under http://www.infoblox.com/en/communities/blogs.html
