Process-Driven Knowledge Management

Transcription

1 Process-Driven Knowledge Management Right Content, Right Time Every Time A Pega ebook By: Steve Kraus, Senior Director, Product Marketing Pegasystems

2 Knowledge Management and Surgery Imagine You are lying on operating table, waiting for the surgeon. He arrives with 5 bags of surgical tools, pulls up a gurney and dumps the contents in all the bags on top of it. Then he starts rummaging through the pile, picking up various instruments: Do I need this scalpel? I wonder if this clamp will be useful? Would these be the right forceps? Might be best to get yourself up off that table and walk away before you let this guy near you. Fortunately, surgeons do not operate like this. Skilled medical staff stand at their sides, knowing just what the surgeon will need and handing off the exact right tool at the exact right moment often before the surgeon even needs to ask for it. Knowledge-Driven Processes or Process-Driven Knowledge? It may seem a far-fetched analogy, but the best way to implement knowledge management (KM) is not a lot different from how surgical teams organize and use their tools. The goal of KM is to present the right content to the right person at the right time. But too often, customer service representatives (CSRs) and self-service customers on your website are left to rummage around. They must guess at what search terms might produce the most relevant answer and pick through vast results lists to find something useful. It is an inefficient, frustrating and unsatisfying experience that leads customers to walk away from your company just like you would walk away from the disorganized surgeon. The problem is that the conventional view is to implement knowledge-driven processes, which is the opposite of what you really need. With process-driven knowledge, content is tied directly to the process, enabling the right content to be delivered at the right moment without the user having to search around or guess what might work best. Process-driven knowledge provides three keys to maximizing the business return on KM: It removes search from the equation by pushing contextual content to users. It eliminates wasting time and money to migrate content to a single repository by accessing and leveraging content in its native repository. It directly ties content to process rather than bolting it onto the side so that users can access, create and modify content within context of the service process. 2

3 Push Content to Optimize Productivity What s the Problem? Conventional wisdom says that optimizing search is the key to improving productivity. In fact, presenting a CSR or selfservice customer with an extensive list of potential solutions via search even a well-executed search does not improve productivity and can actually inhibit it. Search relies on the erroneous assumption that users know what they should search for to find the right answer. It often requires domain expertise to pick the right search terms something that only experienced CSRs may have and customers mostly likely do not. The less precise the search, the longer the results list, requiring time and effort on the part of the user to sift through many irrelevant answers to find the right one. This is not to say that search is not a useful tool. It is just not the key to productivity. How Do You Solve It? Productivity improves when the right information is pushed at the right moment. Instead of asking the CSR or customer to initiate a search, effective KM understands the context of the interaction and proactively delivers the right content at the exact moment it is needed. This intent-driven KM does more than simply deliver the right information. It considers both the available channel and the presentation to deliver the content in a way that is the most useful and easily consumed. How to Improve Productivity with Intent-Driven KM When a customer is opening an account online, automatically display the policies and procedures associated with that specific account type. When a customer needs service for their mobile device, automatically present the configuration guidance associated with the exact equipment There is another benefit to proactively delivering content, which is that it increases the consistency of interactions, ensuring CSRs and self-service customers get the same content and answer across every channel. By proactively delivering content in its appropriate context, you eliminate the time-wasting burden of searching and increase consistency to maximize productivity and business results. 3

4 Streamline the Process of Putting Content into the Hands of the User What s the Problem? Typically, a great deal of time is spent on the activity of migrating content to a single centralized repository during a KM deployment. For many large enterprises, centralizing knowledge content can be as difficult and costly as centralizing customer data. It also limits the available content and ignores a lot of useful knowledge that is generated every day, especially as the use of social channels continues to increase exponentially in the business environment. How Do You Solve It? Useful content is everywhere on internal and external websites, maintained in your internal systems and content repositories, on social media sites and even on systems managed by your business partners. Rather than migrating this content from one repository to another, the far more effective solution is simply to access it where it lives. This means your KM solution must be capable of wrapping and renewing existing content by accessing and presenting it when needed from any source. Time lags also occur as users must wait for content to be updated, which means that CSRs and customers are not always getting the most recent or accurate information. The fact of the matter is that building a single repository takes considerable time and money and does not produce a better return. When content can reside in its native source, it not only becomes more available, but can also be improved and made more accurate at a lower cost. You can let users rate and report on content usefulness as they use it regardless of its location. This provides the dual benefit of eliminating the time lag for issuing updated content and reducing costs as content can be improved as a byproduct of day-to-day work processes. X Knowledge Repository Of course, there are cases where it is appropriate to maintain content in a separate repository in order to ensure vetted, corporate-approved answers are available. With a solution that includes creating and managing content in a designated repository while seamlessly accessing wrapped and renewed content from external sources, you gain the best of both worlds, accelerating time to deployment and maximizing content usage during service interactions. 4

5 Make Content Actionable to Maximize Efficiency and Consistency What s the Problem? Standalone KM solutions create an artificial gap between information and action as content is isolated from the very processes it is supposed to support. Using content becomes an independent activity which bears no relationship to the process and all the points within the process that could benefit from the application of knowledge. This creates multiple problems: When content and process are not synchronized, the customer experience suffers. For example, content that explains how to replace a cell phone is useless if it is not directly tied to the process of ordering the phone. Content and processes quickly get out of synch. Content cannot be incorporated as a process is created or modified because the KM system must be updated separately something that is easily overlooked and forgotten. It becomes difficult to implement and maintain rolebased presentation because configuration requirements, such as entitlements, must be maintained in the disconnected KM system as well as the process application. Reaping the Benefits of the Process-Driven Experience Using Pega solutions, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island now deliver higher quality, more efficient service to members, employers and physicians. With faster information retrieval and improved accuracy, the healthcare payer has reduced call handle times by 26 percent in its HMO business and 17 percent in its PPO business. How Do You Solve It? Every customer interaction is a combination of providing information and taking an action. When knowledge is process-driven, content and process are in synch so that information and action are interchangeable. With content directly infused into the process, guidance on what to say and do, critical policies and procedures, appropriate offers and treatments are proactively delivered at the right moment and directly linked to the action. In this environment, the CSR has content that explains how to replace a cell phone explicitly linked to each step from capturing the customer s information and selecting the phone to helping the customer choose accessories and clicking the button for fulfillment. Process-driven knowledge enables content to be integrated into a process as it is created or changed rather than requiring a separate KM system to be updated. With an easy, one-stop method for linking content and process, business users simply pick the right document, file, form, image whatever content is needed to support a discrete step as they create and modify the process. The result is a far more efficient, consistent and effective service experience in which content becomes actionable because it is truly a part of the process. 5

6 Pega s Process-Driven Approach to Knowledge Management At Pega we have combined our market-leading business process and customer relationship management capabilities with sophisticated KM to enable true process-driven knowledge management. Pega ensures a successful outcome to each customer interaction with the ability to: Make sure the CSR or self-service customer gets the right tool by leveraging the context and intent of the interaction to push the right information at the right moment. Use content from any source, making real-time information available while reducing the time and costs for creating and maintaining useful knowledge. Enable knowledge to become actionable with the ability to rapidly and easily associate specific content to discrete steps as a process is created and changed. The Benefits of Pega Process-Driven Knowledge Management Maximize time-to-value by focusing on delivering the right content and not migrating content. Increase first contact resolution and productivity by pushing the right content at the right moment in the context of each specific situation. Increase customer satisfaction by automating processes to rapidly, correctly and consistently fulfill requests regardless of channel or CSR. Improve self-service adoption and success with relevant content and guidance built into the process. 6

7 Real-World Results with Pega Process-Driven Knowledge Of course, it is easy to claim Pega process-driven knowledge can deliver measurable business value, but the real proof lies in the experiences of our customers. Here are just a couple of examples of how our customers are benefitting from the power of Pega. Consumer electronic cataloger enhances customer satisfaction with self-guided online knowledge despite constantly changing products and configurations. The Business Issue A leading electronics catalog retailer was concerned about the quality of its customer experience. With constantly changing products and configuration packages, it was difficult to provide consistent and correct answers. A variety of sometimes contradictory information sources turned simple service calls into a complicated process that undermined the retailer s brand. The Solution Pega delivered a smart solution for contact center and customer self-service that provides a single source of information with automatic surveys to measure customer satisfaction. Merchandisers can quickly and easily update product information, increasing the accuracy of answers. Results The single source of up-to-date information increases accuracy and consistency. Situational rules enable selfservice customers to quickly and easily research product capabilities and configurations to find solutions that meet their needs. In the contact center, new CSRs have gained a valuable training tool as they use the Pega solution to rapidly come up-to-speed on product capabilities. Customer questions are now answered before they dissolve into complaints and the company has achieved a 60 % increase in customer satisfaction. One of the largest health plans in the U.S. serving over 8 million members relies on Pega to power its desktop in call centers across the country. The Business Issue With more than 30 contact centers, the health plan provider needed greater standardization to meet the increasing expectations of its members a difficult task given the fact that CSRs had to interact with 50 distinct entities and more than 30 systems, leading to inconsistent interactions.. The Solution A full-featured CSR desktop provides intelligent inquiry case management, integrated knowledge, automated work handoffs, data integration and CTI functionality to optimize the customer experience. The solution guides the case completion process so that call resolution is now a standardized process that no longer requires CSRs to make judgment calls. Results With the Pega solution guiding interactions, CSRs can now provide the right information at the right time, turning information into knowledge that enables real-time, personalized health care. The health plan has achieved a 20 percent improvement in average handle time, a 20 percent reduction in CSR training time and expects the value of the solution to be more than $100M over 10 years. 7

8 About the Author: Steve Kraus has more than ten years of experience designing and implementing CRM solutions for some of the world s largest customer focused enterprises. As Senior Director, Product Marketing, Steve leads Pegasystems CRM product marketing initiatives. Prior to joining Pega, Steve held leadership positions in professional services, marketing and sales with Cap Gemini, KANA Software and Chordiant Software. About Pegasystems: Pegasystems is the recognized industry leader in business process management (BPM) and a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. We help some of the world s largest companies achieve new levels of agility, enhance customer loyalty, generate new business and improve productivity. Our patented SmartBPM technology makes enterprise applications easy to build and change by directly capturing business objectives and eliminating manual programming. SmartBPM unifies business rules and processes into composite applications that leverage existing systems empowering businesspeople and IT staff to Build for Change, deliver value quickly and outperform their competitors. Pegasystems suite is complemented by best-practice frameworks designed for leaders in financial services, insurance, healthcare, government, life sciences, communications, manufacturing and other industries. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Pegasystems has offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Visit us at Copyright 2011 Pegasystems Inc. All rights reserved. PegaRules, Process Commander, SmartBPM and the Pegasystems logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pegasystems Inc. All other product names, logos and symbols may be registered trademarks of their respective owners. To learn more about Pega and engage with other CRM professionals click on the Links Below: 8 About Pega CRM CRM Community