Knowledge Management Best Practices for Distributed Call Centres

KMS Lighthouse present some great tips for sharing knowledge across multiple locations.

Knowledge management in call centres makes it easier for agents to find and use information. Customers expect and demand more timely, personalized service across multiple channels.

Organizations must make sure their call centre agents are empowered with relevant information and technology tools to meet these needs. This is particularly true when applied to knowledge management in distributed call centres.

What’s a Distributed Call Centre?

Once limited to a single physical site, today’s call centres often distribute agents across multiple locations and devices. Using distributed call centre agents helps businesses:

• Employ the best staff no matter where they are in the global talent pool
• Improve continuity by reducing location dependency
• Offer 24/7 support by employing agents in multiple time zones

A distributed call centre’s benefits are clear, but success is only possible if all agents – no matter where they are located – have access to the same information.

And if they want to deliver a consistent level of service, agents must share knowledge and work together to make sure that knowledge is helpful and current.

According to ClearAction Continuum’s Lynn Hunsaker, there are significant, measurable rewards when call centre agents practise teamwork. Not only does it “…improve the agent experience, it improves the customer experience and ultimately leads to stronger customer loyalty and increase in ROI.”

Technology has helped make the successful distributed call centre model work by:

• Analysing calls, identifying training requirements, and sharing best practices as part of a regular improvement program
• Empowering agents with dashboards and data tools that make it possible to access real-time and historical information with one click
• Integrating CRM systems into the call centre experience so agents have easy, automated access to a customer’s profile, purchasing history, preferences, and more
• Making it easy for management to pinpoint problem areas and target corrective training
• Unifying communications and collaboration so staff are able to make better decisions based on verified information

Distributed Workforce Management

“Businesses must find ways to help customers have experiences that border on the extraordinary,” says Jim Iyoob, CCO Etech Global Services.

Managing a distributed workforce depends on investing in the right technology, putting extra effort into team-building, encouraging collaboration, and setting specific expectations. The process goes far beyond offering customers a good experience.

What does that mean for managing agents working in distributed call centres? It means they must be given the tools to have smarter, more personalized interactions with customers. Here are three ways leadership can ensure that happens:

1. Keep Knowledge Relevant

There’s no glory in finding the “right” knowledge article that has outdated information. Feedback from agents and customers should be used to improve existing knowledge.

Subject-matter experts should be identified and their knowledge tapped for newer, more applicable information. Agents should be encouraged to suggest changes to existing knowledge articles.

2. Use Third-Party Tools for a Better Knowledge Experience

As agents search your knowledge base for a solution, they should find the information most relevant to the current caller. For example, if a customer has a problem with a newly purchased Bluetooth speaker, the knowledge presented first should be on that specific model.

If the customer’s issue is a more general one, agents should know which questions to ask to guide them to the next most relevant step.

3. Walk in Your Agents’ Shoes

The more quickly agents can access useful information, the more successful they’ll be and the better experience the customer will have. Don’t make agents browse through multiple articles to find what they need.

Instead, create smaller, easier references. Don’t forget to include knowledge gleaned from resolved tickets on similar issues.

Distributed Call Centres and Knowledge Management

Most organizations struggle with call centre knowledge management and it’s easy to understand why. Up-to-date information on products, processes, policies, issues, and more must be collected, reviewed, and constantly revised.

And the data from which that information is culled comes from many different users spread out across multiple locations.

Empowering your distributed call centre agents with relevant and timely insights while keeping them informed of contact centre best practices takes significant time and resources. But the resultant better customer experiences will drive revenue, growth, and superior agent productivity.

It’s one investment that’s always worth making.