Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” the “Great and Powerful Oz” stammers as his true identity is revealed.
In one of the final scenes of the iconic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends discover that the “all-knowing” Wizard of Oz is actually a mortal man who creates the perception of being so much more.
As service leaders, are we creating a similar illusion between our customers and our service agents?
With almost twenty years of customer service under my belt, I have witnessed significant changes in the service world, but possibly the biggest transformation is the shrinking of the knowledge gap between customers and agents. With the advent of and proclivity to use Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, and other information sources, customers seemingly have as much (or more!) available information about our company’s products, services, and solutions as our agents.
Yet many customers still land in our agents’ queue expecting them to have better or more complete answers than what they’ve already found by poking around online. And our agents are left to “reveal” themselves, like the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, as being no more powerful or all-knowing than the customer.
So how can we decrease the frequency of this awkward experience? It’s easy: Make internal knowledge customer-facing.
Revealing information from the *most trusted source*, the internal company knowledge base, has gained in popularity as more companies begin to make this transition.
So what are the steps you need to take to move from the Wizard of Oz to greater transparency?
1. Evaluate Your Current Knowledge Management Approach
CEB’s brand new Ignition Diagnostic gives insight into your current Knowledge Management performance (and 24 other activities!) and also gives step-by-step guidance to improve from current state to the next level of achievement.
2. Empower Your Staff to Add, Modify, (and Delete!) Knowledge
Ownership of knowledge creation and modification provides frontline agents with a greater sense of engagement. Use this infinity graphic to create sustainable Knowledge Management.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
3. Use Your Knowledge Management Articles to Populate FAQs
As a first step to revealing your internal knowledge to your customers, you should align your FAQ responses to your knowledge articles to gauge receptivity and usefulness. Simple, straightforward surveying of customers will help determine your success with this step.
4. Peel Back the Curtain on Your Knowledge Management!
Now that you’ve evaluated the success of using internal knowledge in a customer-facing capacity it’s time to reveal the rest of the knowledge to your customers via your customer support site.
Don’t forget, though, whether you open internal knowledge to customers or keep it internally-facing, the key to successful knowledge management is regular hygiene in order to ensure accurate, up-to-date information is delivered.
And we can’t conclude this post without reminding you of the (almost) final scene of the Wizard of Oz.
***Spoiler Alert*** (and let’s be honest … if you haven’t seen the movie by now, are you ever going to see it?!)
Just in case you don’t remember, the Wizard ultimately does show that he’s “all powerful”: he bestows upon Dorothy and her companions gifts that bring them solutions to their challenges … kind of like what your agents do for your customers!
And by making your Internal Knowledge available to your customers, more customers will resolve in self-service and you’ll help reduce the number of times your agents have to tell customers to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”.
CEB Resources
- CEB Ignition Diagnostic
- Knowledge Management Topic Center
- Involve Frontline Staff in Knowledge Management
- Creating Consumable FAQs
- Measuring the Modern Customer Experience