Introduction

Customer Satisfaction speaks louder for your brand than your other products and services.

Over  95%  of consumers worldwide regard customer support services as an essential factor determining their loyalty to a particular brand.

The importance of building and managing strong customer relations has increased more than ever now and will continue to rise. More than 60% of consumers expect brands to know them based on their past interactions and engage with them accordingly. Businesses compete increasingly based on their customer services and endeavour to retain and engage their customers. Many organizations fail to understand their customers’ expectations and behaviours and face customer churn in the early stages of business.

Contrary to common belief, companies do not lose customers to high production costs but poor customer service. The need of the hour is to make your customers feel welcome and let them know that the time and engagement they dedicate to your brand will be valued.

Why manage customer satisfaction through knowledge management?

Suppose you know your customers, challenges, needs, and expectations with your brand, Kudos! You have got the trick!

But here is a thing, managing your customer knowledge and utilizing it in the right direction is where the real challenge begins.       

Customers do not like it when the waiting times are longer, and customer support agents fail to grasp the urgency of delivering quick solutions to their problems. The customer-facing support agents also get frustrated when they have to pick up just the correct information from a plethora of data scattered in different files and formats and deliver it to the customer, who is already taking count of every second that passes by.

To support your customers through their journey and win their trust, you need to manage your organizational knowledge effectively to be readily available and accessible across all the touchpoints.

What is knowledge management?

As the phrase denotes, Knowledge Management is a system of managing organizational knowledge so that the right information is available to the right people at the right time. It involves creating, curating, and disseminating strategic and systematic knowledge and lays the foundation for elevating the customer experience.

The main aim of Knowledge Management software is to organize the vast amounts of your organization’s knowledge into categories and classifications so that information is accessible by the customer support teams and customers themselves, enabling a healthy customer experience across all touchpoints.

4 ways knowledge management tools enhance customer engagement

The degree of customer engagement with your brand significantly depends upon the space and opportunities you give them to voice out their concerns, dissatisfaction, and feedback. Given the importance of customer engagement and the varying challenges, there is a need for an interactive platform that enables efficient communication between you and your customers.

This is precisely where the knowledge management system for customer service can streamline Customer support services and maximize customer engagement with your brand. Here are the top 4 reasons why Knowledge Management is important for your business.

1. Centralized Knowledge Repository

  • Due to vast amounts of information, it becomes difficult for customer-facing agents to pick up just the right set of information that they need. Given that the time is also limited, agents and customers alike end up getting frustrated when resolutions take longer than expected
  • Knowledge Management tools like a Knowledge base store all the information in one place, preventing data silos. The knowledge in this Knowledge base can be created, curated, and managed by the organization based on their needs. Advanced search capabilities like meta tags enable quick findability of information, both by agents and customers
  • The accessibility of information enables agents to meet customer expectations by delivering them quick and quality resolutions. The meta tags equipped with Articles and FAQs are helpful for customers who want to resolve challenges on their own without agent assistance.

2. Omnichannel Customer Service

  • ​Customers reach out to brands through different channels and expect uniformity of information throughout their journey. They do not like to repeat themselves for the same problem, and over 70% of them expect agents to know them through their previous engagements
  • Knowledge Management tools offer data integrations with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms that auto-traverse customer information and provide agents with customer context. This speeds up the troubleshooting process and enables agents to offer personalized experiences to customers
  • Many customers prefer to help themselves, and the centralized Knowledge base gives them the information they need. Through the Knowledge Management system, the same knowledge will be useful to different digital channels and self-support portals, enhancing customer engagement across all touchpoints

3. Smart Troubleshooting modules

  • Customers expect agents to know everything about their problems and help them through every level of troubleshooting. There are times when customers fail to follow up with agent instructions and end up in dissatisfaction
  • User engagement tools like FAQ maker,  Decision tree software, and picture guides are guided workflows that help agents troubleshoot customer queries. The additional co-browsing features provide safe access to customer devices which agents can leverage to support customers through troubleshooting
  • The micro-segmented analytics supported by employee monitoring software help organizations track agent productivity and update the knowledge base accordingly. This helps track agent efficiency and satisfaction with the current call centre knowledge base for contact centres. These intelligent troubleshooting mechanisms convert agent satisfaction into customer satisfaction

4. 24/7 Customer Support

  • Being there for your customers all the time is one of the most critical aspects of improving customer retention. However, it is practically impossible for agents to provide 24/7 customer support
  • Knowledge Management enables agents to deflect calls to self-service portals. Through intelligent virtual assistants and live chat options, customers can avail of 24/7 support services. Call deflection leaves agents with more time and energy to resolve complex customer challenges while at the same time making customers happy and satisfied
  • AI-powered chatbots use Natural Language Processing (NLP) which understands customer context and offers customized support. Customer engagement naturally increases with a brand that understands its customers, offers personalization, and is available all the time

The difficulty of maximizing customer engagement and retention is well established with businesses that cannot afford to lose customers on account of poor support services. To support their customers and offer the best solutions in real-time, companies need to support themselves with robust Knowledge management systems to utilize their knowledge in the right direction and share it efficiently to deliver maximum customer satisfaction.

Author Bio: Manpreet is a senior digital marketing executive at Knowmax, a knowledge base software for various industries like telecom, banking, healthcare, etc. You can connect with me on LinkedIn & Instagram.