Why Knowledge Management?
One of the worst labels that is often stuck on help desks at many companies is, "helpless desk." This name is a reaction to what end users feel when they call. Too often they get an analyst who knows less than they themselves know about supporting the product. As a result, the analyst takes up some of the end user's valuable time, only to create a ticket and assign it to a more specialized support team.
First call resolution and resolution within the help desk are two measurements that will show you how you're doing. If your first call resolution is as low as 50%, you'll find frustrated users, since one in two don't get the help they need as quickly as they should. Some of the best help desks have first call resolution that exceeds 85%.
Since many help desks have high employee turn over, the learning curve to prepare an analyst for optimal performance is costly and requires a lot of time. This also reinforces the "helpless" stigma.
If you find yourself on the low side of first call resolution, you may need an efficient knowledge database for creating, auditing, and using standardized solutions to end user problems. This will not only help boost first call resolution, but will also help reduce the detrimental effects of turn over.
There are several keys to successfully implementing a knowledge base for boosting first call resolution:
- Make sure it's very easy for your analysts to use. If it takes more time accessing the database than trying to figure out the problem on their own, your analysts won't use it. Having a search engine and browseable categories can help with this tremendously.
- Define a process for expanding the knowledge base. Defining roles for who authors, who approves, who edits, who audits, and who uses the database is crucial. Making these roles part of annual objectives can go a long way to ensure success.
- Create an annual review process. Have an auditor regularly look at solution articles that are used infrequently as well as commonly used articles. Create data fields that track the audit date of the articles so you can ensure that your analysts are using good information.
- Gain support from support teams to which tickets are escalated. Support teams don't like repeatedly solving the same problem. You can help them to win by having them look at repeated requests and asking them to contribute solution articles for the knowledge base. The more you can get involved, the quicker you'll see results.
- Assign someone the role of editor to ensure consistency and to create and maintain the classification structure.
Get started now, and watch your end users' perspectives change for the better.
