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Companies are discovering that a Knowledge Management System (KMS) has grown from a "nice to have" concept, to a "must have" asset in customer facing departments. Providing immediate answers to customers requires easy access to the important product and business knowledge of an organization. KMS makes that possible. From help desk through marketing and sales, organizations are learning the true value of aggregating and providing access to collective business memory.
Soffront KMS in combination with Soffront CRM helps companies automate customer interaction, provide answers to customer facing employees, and can reveal new opportunities for business. KMS provides employees with instant access to the knowledge gained throughout an organization in an efficient way. Aggregating employee knowledge about business practices, products and customers over time may point to new ways to turbo charge old habits and turn them into productive new ones.
Putting Your Firm's Shared Knowledge to Work for You
Today, customers want an answer from your company, as soon as they think of a question. They call, they email, and they look to the web twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for immediate gratification. Today's successful companies appreciate the opportunity of this constant contact with customers and turn it into a huge advantage in growing brand loyalty and customer retention. The price of this success is often staff overload because they can't handle the huge volume of communication. Additionally, if these communications are not handled effectively and to their fullest potential, the result is missed up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
Many experts believe that tomorrows main source of competitive advantage will be a firm's ability to leverage corporate knowledge and to learn faster than others in their field. The management of collective corporate intelligence and its distribution becomes an even more powerful tool in global organizations. Giving employees access to knowledge in a widespread distribution can shorten time to market and help resolve many everyday issues throughout an organization.
Companies feel the impact of knowledge loss as they lose employees. All employees possess company knowledge to varying degrees. Each and every day that an employee walks out the door of a company, the knowledge that employee has about products and procedures may not be returning. In good economies and bad, employees change jobs frequently or companies are forced to change staffing through reductions in force. With the right systems in place, a loss of employees should not mean a loss of company information or expertise.
Soffront KMS is a fully web based, self-help and information management system for customers, employees and partners. It is a platform where diverse departments can build a common knowledge warehouse. Externally this information can then be accessed through Website search to solve customer problems, disperse product knowledge and lower the costs of customer touch points. Internally this information can help you build on competitive intelligence, reduce redundant employee research and establish best practices across an organization.
Through the web, customers can find automated resolutions to questions, problems and new product options. This quick resolution to customer needs enhances customer loyalty and brand preference. Self-help also greatly increases conversion of web visitors into customers while at the same time lowering the cost of customer interaction.
The same power can help customer-facing employees such as technical support teams locate and utilize information faster to resolve issues over the phone. Employees can get rapid access to correct solutions shortening average call length and lowering the percentage of escalated calls. Once knowledge is gained through a resolution of problems, the new knowledge is aggregated into the KMS and reduces the price of repeated efforts.
With Soffront KMS in place, companies can nearly eliminate knowledge erosion. As a company creates a true "organizational memory process" wherein personal knowledge is transformed into validated group information, it can be combined with external knowledge added to the system from customers and partners. Through this process, a company can develop intellectual property above and beyond the traditional definitions.
How Organizational Behaviors Contribute To KMS Success
There are many ways in which an organization's interaction with a knowledge management solution will turn into a sustainable competitive advantage.
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