This blog explores how Universal Knowledge can help businesses enable inter and cross departmental collaboration by discussing three areas where forums within knowledge bases can add benefit for internal organisations.

By developing the collaborative feature of discussion forums, Universal Knowledge is expanding its functional capabilities and providing additional business value. Knowledge users can now collaborate and connect more effectively and have a place within Universal to capture and track new ideas. By including an online platform for conversation between its user base, Universal Knowledge can assist organisations to enhance effective communication surrounding knowledge within their information estate. The inclusion of discussion forums confirms Universal Knowledge as a core tool within internal organisations, strengthening the existing collaboration features, such as the existing communications platform, expert escalation of questions and feedback features.

Forums As A Tool To Begin The Process Of Knowledge Creation

Forums are a powerful tool to help teams work together to publish new documents. What started off as a simple discussion around new ideas, can often evolve into valuable knowledge which could be used to the benefit of the whole business. For instance, early discussions may end up guiding the creation of a new product and/or services.

Using forums as an aid to create content may significantly improve the quality of knowledge documents produced. Recently, in a Deloitte White-Paper it was established in the department of operations research, knowledge experts created content based on various biases. For instance, when an operations employee needed to generate new knowledge to solve a problem, they often tended only seek information that confirmed their initial assumption and ignore all other contrary evidence that disagreed with their held beliefs.

The use of Universal’s forum feature can help mitigate any bias problem that many businesses face when dealing with the creation of new knowledge. Instead of letting employees become insular, Universal Knowledge’s experts are encouraged to actively communicate with each other when in the process of creating new knowledge. They become motivated to react in a collaborative manner, to one another’s perspectives and experiences, and thus use forums as a springboard to negotiate the construction of new ‘unbiased’ content.

Forums As A Tool To Discuss How To Improve Existing Content

Knowledge users can utilise Universal Knowledge’s forum feature as a suggestion box on existing knowledge items to discuss improvements on live documents. Used in this way, a forum can let teams share thoughts on crucial issues on a piece of content already in existence which may be outdated and in need of revising.

By allowing users to collaborate to quickly validate the merits of an idea on existing sources through the use of forums, Universal Knowledge can help speed up the process of iterative thinking and thus has potential to speed up the innovation process. A study by the Department of Industry found that companies that make use of collaborative technology are more likely to innovate in comparison to businesses that do not collaborate. In concurrence, the heavyweight accounting firm PWC states that using a collaborative approach can be remarkably effective as it increases the levels of motivations and participation, pulls teams together and therefore provides a fertile ground for knowledge capture, resulting in more innovative results.

By utilising forums within Universal Knowledge, users will have access to open-minded employees who can quickly validate any ideas or changes that need to be made on existing knowledge articles, which will in turn help speed the process for innovation. In this way users have the ability to collaborate around different ideas deciding whether suggestions have any merits or alternatively, can help save time by burning through bad ideas.

Help All Users Within The Knowledge Base Seek Assistance And Support

Universal Knowledge’s new discussion board feature is a great way for members of a group within the Knowledge Base to seek assistance and support. The forums within Universal Knowledge allow employees to locate and discuss ideas with the right people (e.g. from proposal writing to sales prospecting) who are outside the employee’s explicit network, enabling the right conversations to happen irrespective of geographic location.

In this light, Universal’s forum feature can act as an intranet help desk within your business. This outcome will negate the repetition of tasks across the organisation and can therefore lead to productivity gains and cost savings. For instance, employees may ask a question on a particular topic and receive a helpful answer. By using Universal Knowledge’s forum, employee answers can be recycled so next time an employee has a similar question they can first search the forums section and see previously discussed conversations on any given topic relevant to their initial query. Using this self-service culture within an organisation can be invaluable and lead to substantial profitability benefits, since employees within an organisation with relevant expertise only have to complete an answer once for the benefit to be realised across the entire business.

Creating A Return On Investment For Knowledge Base Discussion Forums

A key consideration for making discussion forums effective for a knowledge base solution is having the right strategy. This is because the return on investment from collaboration tools is complicated by the fact, that even if the company deploys the world’s best collaboration tool, it does not necessarily mean that adoption will follow. A successful deployment almost always depends on effective user education and fundamentally changing user behaviours.

To help make the project a success, we will run workshops with you to uncover critical success factors before anything is implemented. For instance, we will work with you to help convey to your employees that there is a clear purpose to the use of discussion forums.  We will run training sessions to help staff realise their posts will have a direct impact on a particular issue or will provide some tangible benefit (for the organisation, or for other staff). For more information on KPS’ training and consultation services please click here.

In summary, the nature of collaboration through the use of discussion forums within Universal Knowledge has the power to enable collective innovation, reduce bias issues and allow for productivity gains and cost savings.

It goes without saying that the number one priority for any healthcare organisation and its staff, is patient care and delivering a successful patient experience. Close behind patient care as a priority is also to establish efficient processes throughout the organisation, which will optimise operations and enhance a healthcare organisation’s standing when providing premium levels of patient care. 

The simple answer is anywhere, but the area of most importance is the first point of contact – the call centre. Like any call centre, patients expect to be provided with the highest level of customer service and add to that the fact that health and wellbeing could be on the line, the process of delivering exceptional customer service just became that much more important.

The first step in the experience of what could be a scared or emotional patient is a call to the call centre and how this call is handled is paramount to the success of a healthcare organisation

So where does a knowledge management system fit into patient care?

These calls could span a wide range of queries, from insurance coverage and claims to clinic times and patient enrolment, there is an abundance of information that needs to be correctly communicated to the patient and if the information is unavailable a correct pointer of where to go next is just as important.

Failure to get the right information at the right time can lead to patient dissatisfaction and seeking help from a rival institution.

How can knowledge base software help to alleviate these issues?

A comprehensive knowledge management system enables any organisation to harvest their knowledge from any location and presents it to those who need it as quickly as possible. A key problem within a healthcare organisation’s call centre, is that this knowledge is frequently changing on a daily basis, therefore necessitating the need for quick and effortless content creation and maintenance from a wide range of authors.

Content changes and creation not only need to be made but they must also be conveyed to the agent with a clear notification of these changes.  Notifying agents of recent updates throughout the day within a single system, is a powerful tool to streamline the activities of the agent and allows them to quickly and accurately transmit the correct information to a patient during a potentially complex call scenario.

In addition to notifying call centre staff of recent updates, agents must have the ability to readily find the information they are looking for from a vast amount of broad and varied information. Providing agents with the ability to search a knowledgebase system with Natural Language Search and using the customer’s own terminology, not only presents them with an accurate result first time, but also captures both the topic and context of patient queries, which is invaluable when looking at areas to strengthen your healthcare organisation’s knowledge.

Who else can these knowledgebase tools assist?

With functionally sound knowledge base software and the right culture in place to adopt a knowledge management system, the importance of knowledge management and its benefits can be appreciated across the whole healthcare institution.

Provided that they have the privileges to do so, anybody within the organisation from consultant physicians to call centre agents, has the ability to contribute their tacit and experiential knowledge into a knowledge management system. This enables you to hone in on one of the most valuable assets of any organisation and place it at the forefront of activities when providing excellent patient care and making key business decisions.

Having this knowledge at every point of call ensures that patient satisfaction is enhanced, but also that patient retention and acquisition is maximised. This comes as a close second place to patient care when evaluating the role of knowledge management in business operations and maximising healthcare growth and innovation.

To discover a ‘Strategy to Enhance Patient Care’ in your Healthcare organisation, click the links below to contact us or to request a demonstration:

Another great year for KPS has been marked by being named in the 2016 top 10 for knowledge management software providers by Media & Entertainment Tech Outlook Magazine. Being recognized by media outlets such as Media & Entertainment Tech Outlook Magazine underpins the praise that KPS and the Universal Knowledge product receives from so many of our current customers.

KPS is and always has put market trends at the forefront of our operations and this year has been no exception, leading to exciting developments in this years’ new release of Version 5 of our knowledgebase platform.

Our knowledgebase software has undergone significant changes over the last year to ensure that KPS keeps up with the ever increasing trend of keeping both internal and external customers at the heart of every organisations’ decision making process.

By harnessing the knowledge of those who have it and capturing the issues of those who need it, Universal Knowledge ensures no matter the channel or how large and disperse your information estate is your knowledge is instantly placed into the hands of those who need it.

Why not see for yourself what our knowledge management system can do for you or your customers and request a demonstration? Or if you would like any further information, please contact us and a member of our team would be happy to help.

Today there is an abundance in the variety of CRM systems available for organisations to purchase and implement within their environment, environment, suitable for use across multiple industries, and with the ability to record many different forms of customer interaction.  Interactions with customers at an individual level presents a key challenge to customer service agents – how do we effectively capture these interactions whilst also finding the time to process them to provide a satisfactory resolution? Effective customer Knowledge Management could hold the key.

Regardless of the vertical market, all organisations implement CRM systems to achieve the same goal – improve the customer experience and thus improve satisfaction and retention of these customers. Within each a CRM may be utilised for many different channels such as web self-service or customer contact centres, and it is through these channels that CRM and Knowledge Management tools are increasing in synergy.

The world of CRM is no longer confined to call centre enquiries, as more and more customers are choosing a multi-channel approach for their enquiries. This requires the need for the ability to search customer related information from a multitude of inbound channels such as web self-service, email, social media, chat and telephone. No matter the chosen channel, in order to respond to customer enquiries effectively, the knowledge must be stored and accessible from one single repository.

You Are Currently in the Queue…

A pet hate of the modern day customer is having to wait for up to as long as 10 minutes just to speak to an advisor, only to find that the information that they are given isn’t of a satisfactory standard. Through no fault of their own, agents find it increasingly difficult to provide customers with the right information at the right time, whilst also recording interactions within their CRM systems.

Chopping and changing between different systems and information sources during a call not only leads to an increased time to resolution but also a great deal of confusion for an otherwise competent agent and the customer on the call. The result? Low satisfaction and reduced customer retention.

Repeated Queries – Repeating Answers

Many customer service agents often find that customer queries are generally directed around the same topic of interest, topics such as returns policies or how to update their current account. Whilst frequently resolved by agents, there is no history of a previous solution within the CRM to these recurrent questions and so no fast way to address them.

As a result of this, customers and staff alike can find themselves unhappy at the speed of which queries are resolved and more irritatingly for the staff, there is no easy way to record these interactions but to repeatedly input the same query and resolution for every interaction into the CRM system, resulting in plummeting productivity levels.

CRM Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is increasingly becoming a key solution within the world of CRM, helping customers, agents and businesses all achieve their main targets; increase customer satisfaction, improve agent productivity, reduce costs and ultimately sustain and increase customer retention.

By working alongside and integrating with CRM systems, Knowledge Management is a powerful tool that searches customer relevant information making this information accessible on the front-line. This significantly increases efficiency through every step of the customer journey

The key benefits of a CRM Knowledge Management synergy are:

• Increase speed to resolution by up to 30%– information is readily available to agents and resolutions are provided swiftly
• More consistent and accurate answers– once a customer query has been resolved, this interaction can be made available to help answer future interactions, providing consistency and accuracy of resolutions
• Reduced escalations– whether it be via an online customer self-service knowledgebase portal, dynamic FAQs or front-line customer service, customer enquiries can be resolved by easy access to accurate information at first-contact. The time taken to find an answer is reduced by more than 50%
• Reduced training times and increased productivity– customer service agents have the tools to become competent in half the time and spend more time resolving issues rather than carrying out the same processes repeatedly

Universal Knowledge – Effective Customer Knowledge Management

When choosing a Knowledge Management system to work alongside and within your CRM system, a versatile and adaptable tool is required to ensure that your CRM Knowledge Management processes run as smoothly as possible. The KPS Universal Knowledge system is able to integrate with CRM systems to deliver the above benefits via the following key features:

• Comprehensive set of APIs: Integrate with a host of CRM systems including those such as Salesforce to ensure that customer data and knowledge is accessible on one page.
• Self-service portal and dynamic FAQs: Through creating a web-portal or by providing a dynamic set of FAQs, customers have direct access to the knowledge that you choose to be available to them.
• Natural Language Search: Understand the context of customer queries either by phone or web self-service and answer questions with accurate and relevant information.
• Self-learning: As your customer base grows, so does your knowledge, Universal Knowledge is self-learning to improve the quality of future resolutions.
• Reports: Understand your customers and monitor inbound enquiries to ensure that customer queries are always answered to exceptional standards.
• Integrate with social media: Push information from the knowledgebase to your customer base through channels such as Twitter or Facebook to broaden your customer support.

For more information on CRM Knowledge Management and how Universal Knowledge can benefit you and your customers, click the links below to contact us or to request a demonstration: