The year 2022 marked a significant milestone for those in charge of customer experience.
With the emergence of self-service, the increased use of mobile devices, and remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with noteworthy advancements in AI technology, customers have come to expect exceptional digital experiences like never before.
As stated in NTT Ltd.’s 2021 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report, 91% of organizations believe that customer experience is a crucial differentiating factor, and successful organizations have recognized that a robust knowledge management strategy is crucial in setting themselves apart from the competition.
As we enter the third month of 2023, customer service organizations have the chance to differentiate themselves from the competition through effective knowledge management. By honing in on four key areas, these organizations can enhance the customer service and experience from start to finish.
Customer-initiated service
In recent years, a prominent trend has been the transition towards self-service. Unlike previous generations, modern consumers are typically tech-savvy and prefer to find solutions on their own rather than wait in a call queue or for an email response.
A customer portal designed for self-service is an essential application for knowledge management. It offers customers a quick and effortless way to obtain the information and support they require without having to wait for a customer service representative’s response. In addition, it can boost the efficiency and productivity of customer service teams. Self-service allows customers to access information and support autonomously, which can reduce the workload for customer service representatives, freeing them up to tackle more complex and high-priority tasks.
Furthermore, self-service has the added advantage of helping organizations reduce costs. By providing customers with the necessary tools and information to resolve their own issues, companies can decrease the number of customer service inquiries they receive, resulting in lower operating costs.
Advancements in artificial intelligence technology
NTT’s benchmarking report reveals that customer service teams are hastening their plans to adopt AI, with 52% of organizations anticipating that most of their customer interactions will be handled by AI and robotic solutions within a year.
A significant portion of AI innovation is aimed at enhancing knowledge management, particularly through the use of natural language processing (NLP) to create chatbots that can comprehend and interpret customer queries, inquiries, and requests. As a result, chatbots can respond quickly and accurately to customer inquiries without human intervention. AI can also help create personalized and intelligent search systems that assist users in quickly locating the information they require. These systems can leverage user data and previous search history to deliver more pertinent and valuable search results, making it easier for users to access the information they need.
Multichannel
While many customer service organizations claim to provide multichannel experiences for their customers, the crucial distinction with omnichannel is that all channels are connected, giving each channel visibility into the others. This is critical for fostering positive customer interactions, as disconnected channels can cause customers to become frustrated or feel like they’re going around in circles, repeating the same information over and over again without making progress.
Creating successful omnichannel support necessitates delivering a seamless experience for customers, whether they are using your website, mobile app, or social media. A critical aspect of achieving this is ensuring that your knowledge management is centralized and linked to your various channels. By doing so, customers will always have access to accurate and up-to-date information about your products, services, and policies, regardless of the path they take in their knowledge-seeking journey.
Tailored experiences
The modern customer demands a digital experience that is not only intuitive and on-demand, but also hyper-personalized. Achieving this requires an omnichannel delivery approach, where all channels are seamlessly integrated to deliver a consistent experience. From a knowledge management standpoint, personalizing content has become a crucial business imperative for companies of all sizes.
A study by Infosys found that 86% of consumers surveyed said that personalized content had an impact on their purchasing decisions, with 25% indicating that personalization played a significant role. However, despite the clear benefits, only a few organizations have been able to achieve personalization at scale.
Val Swisher, author of The Personalization Paradox, argues that to offer personalized customer experiences, companies must first standardize their knowledge management. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it is crucial for delivering the right content to the right people at the right time, on their preferred device, and in their preferred language – particularly for global companies. Standardization also makes it easier to break down content into components for easier delivery.
In summary, knowledge management plays a crucial role in enabling customer service teams to deliver exceptional customer experiences. With reliable and current information at their fingertips, customer service representatives can provide timely and precise responses, identify recurring customer concerns, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
If you want to discover how Tridion can assist you in elevating your customer experiences through effective knowledge management, please click here.
About the Author
Fraser Doig is Associate Product Marketing Manager at RWS.
About RWS
RWS is the global leader in content management and translation technology and services. 90 of the top 100 global companies work with RWS. Tridion Docs provides streamlined end-to-end component content management. It includes easy web-based authoring, reviewing, versioning, translation, and publication management, underpinned by the DITA XML standard. As a true collaborative environment with a familiar Microsoft Word-style interface, subject matter experts (SMEs) in your organization can contribute their knowledge.
Authors and reviewers can work simultaneously in the same document providing comments to each other, tracking and merging changes. Tridion Docs supports global enterprise use cases including single sourcing, product documentation, learning and training, policies and procedures, and efficient translations with delivery to multiple end points such as documents, PDFs, knowledge portals, Intranet, customer facing websites, apps, chatbots, and IoT devices.
Contact RWS here or visit their website at rws.com. Twitter:@rwsgroup, Linkedin: RWSGroup.
