Extending KCS beyond Support
If you have a thriving KCS setup for your Support team, you may be tempted to invite other teams to contribute to it: Professional Services, Solution Engineering, Customer Success, even Engineering and the Product team all have precious expertise to share. But can it work? Here are four challenges you can expect to encounter, and how to overcome them.
Challenge #1: Incentive alignment
The principles of KCS perfect align with the strategic goals of Support: the more we create (good) articles, the more customers can help themselves, and the better we can help them when they can’t. It’s very clear that more, better knowledge benefits the team.
For other groups, the benefits are murkier. If the Professional Services team shares more tricks and tips for implementing products, will that cut into their revenue? If the Customer Success team posts industry best practices for all to see, can it justify its premium services to top-end customers?
Similar dilemmas exist at the individual level. If a support engineer creates a useful article, they can be rewarded through link counts (as well as through quality scores). If a solution engineer creates an article, they may feel that they are taking time away from important pre-sales calls and getting little personal benefit from it.
What to do? Spend time with the leaders to explore how they can design the right incentives and recognition to encourage adoption beyond a few isolated enthusiasts.
Challenge #2: In-flow creation mechanics
KCS was designed to perfectly integrate into the support process: as support engineers resolve cases, they identify new pieces of knowledge, which they can capture on the spot–and which get validated through reuse. For other teams, that structure is lacking. Sure, an implementation consultant can create knowledge as they close out a project, but it’s an extra effort that’s disconnected from their “real” work, and with no clear path to improvement through reuse.
What to do? Work with the leaders to create an integrated knowledge creation flow. For instance, knowledge creation can be a part of implementation project close-outs; onboarding sessions can be recorded and posted to the knowledge base; requests escalated to the Engineering team can become new articles (written by the engineer or the support engineer). Push to make knowledge management a routine step in the normal process rather than a heroic action that’s disconnected from routine work.
Challenge #3: Technology access
With Support as the main or at least original user, the knowledge management system is either part of the case-tracking tool or integrated with it. Since other teams do not routinely use or even have access to the case-tracking system, extra effort is required to access the knowledge tool. And of course there may be additional license costs.
What to do? Do all you can to simplify access to the knowledge tool for all participants. Streamline the interface to the bare minimum and provide self-training tools. Create metrics that allow all teams to manage their contributions and contributors.
Challenge #: Sharing ownership of the knowledge base
Since the goal is for everyone to share the knowledge base, you can’t create categories that are meaningful only for Support. You may need to create custom templates that fit the needs of non-Support users, and perhaps custom categories of knowledge, too. You will need to find ways to share strategic decisions for the knowledge base, for the licensing system, for publishing articles, for culling obsolete articles.
What to do? Establish a KCS council with representation from all major teams that participate in knowledge management. Expect to run all major decisions by the council, even if the Support team is often the lead player. Listen carefully to the needs of minority users: having more active contributors adds to the quality of the knowledge base so don’t shut them out.
Have you successfully extended your knowledge management system beyond Support? What advice can you share?
(And if you need help, do reach out and we can help you chart your way to success.)
