Collaborative Knowledge Management

When social networking and collaboration tools and media first emerged as a cultural phenomenon, many companies had a predictable reaction: ignore a new form of communication that, at first glance, could not be influenced, much less controlled. 

However, as social media channels have matured, the most progressive brand stewards recognized that embracing social networks and collaboration tools can enhance customers’ relationships with a brand, and be an invaluable resource for serving those customers better.

Social media’s role in the knowledge economy is evolving rapidly, both within and external to an organization. Let's look at the best practices that can help companies to embrace social media, harvest knowledge from the conversations in their user communities, and apply that knowledge to deliver better customer service:

1. Recognize and reward contributions from the user community.

2. Promote community conversations into knowledge assets.

3. Integrate discussion forums into a seamless support experience.

4. Allow customers to self-direct how they participate in the community.

5. Moderate by exception.

Best Practice 1: Recognize and reward contributions from the user community.

When customers engage with the discussion forums on your support portal, they join a community, just like any other social network. Online communities thrive on recognition and reward. With discussion forums, recognition takes on added importance because the contributions from the community have potential to add value well beyond the forums themselves. Finding high-value contributors, recognizing their efforts and encouraging continued participation is essential to leveraging user-generated content for customer service. 

Recognizing individuals’ contributions to the forums often identifies the relevant information critical to resolving customer issues. Participation in these community conversations often exposes developing trends and needs that feed into product and service enhancements.

The challenge, of course, is volume. Many discussion threads will yield few insights that can be repurposed. 

The answer lies in reputation models and ratings systems that allow community participants, including company moderators, to rate or otherwise identify high-value content and translate those ratings into a points program that build a reputation for each contributor. As points accrue and reputation grows, "experts" are recognized and granted additional functionality on the forums. Over time, valued contributors are promoted to higher status levels.

You can complement recognition with tangible reward programs to further convey status and deepen the customer’s brand experience.

Best Practice #2: Promote community conversations into knowledge assets.

Reputation models can serve another function. As participants build reputation, you may grant them the right to recommend solutions from forum threads, in essence extending the reach of the company moderators, and permitting the most valued community participants to help determine which content can be harvested into more structured knowledgebase content. 

This content can then be exposed to the company’s call center agents and published on the company’s support websites. The "expert"-recommended solution would trigger a workflow to ensure the appropriate parties validate the solution information and rework it into the appropriate formats. It is not uncommon for companies to then withhold broader publication to the Web until the new knowledge content has achieved a reuse count in the call center or high access count in the forums.

Community conversations are not always external-facing. Many companies use discussion forums and other collaboration tools within the enterprise to foster communication and knowledge sharing across groups that might otherwise be disconnected. 

For example, problem escalation processes may be managed entirely through collaborative forums. Agents may pose the unsolved problem on an internal forum that reaches across support tiers and geographies. Relevant experts, which may include individuals outside of the support organization, are automatically alerted (via topic subscriptions) and directed to the conversation, where they collaborate to resolve the issue. Managing escalations through forums potentially involves more individuals than a phone escalation, and the discussion thread provides the content that can be harvested into a solution article. As above, participation can be encouraged with incentives tied to a dynamic reputation model that awards points based on issue complexity, timeliness of response, reuse counts and any number of other variables.

Best Practice #3: Integrate discussion forums into a seamless support experience.

Collaboration goes beyond the facilitation of conversations. To be truly transformational for the company, the knowledge emanating from those conversations must be captured and presented external to the forums themselves.

Customers who visit a company’s website to resolve a problem will typically take one of three actions: they will submit a service request for the problem, often through email; or they will search the knowledgebase for information to resolve the problem on their own; or they will search the discussion forums to validate they are not alone in having the problem and to find solutions to that problem. They may do all three. Companies should endeavor to provide a seamless support experience, regardless of which path a customer chooses. One way to do this is to incorporate relevant discussion forum content throughout the experience.

Customers that search the knowledgebase for answers should be presented with relevant discussion topics, specifically those threads that have been marked as solutions by the original poster or moderator.

And those customers who go direct to the discussion forums should be presented with relevant knowledgebase articles when they search the forums. Visitors who search discussion forums should be presented with both discussion forum content and solution articles from the knowledgebase as part of the search results. 

Posting a new question to the forum will automatically trigger a semantic search on existing knowledgebase content which may then deflect the topic from even being posted. This could be a particularly effective mechanism for addressing the duplication problem common in discussion forums. And if the knowledge content that deflects the intended post originated from a discussion thread in the first place, you are presenting harvested knowledge in formats that are both accessible to, and consumable by, the people you are trying to serve.

Even if the customer goes directly to the portion of the site where he can either submit a service request through an online form, or initiate a chat session with an agent, the initial problem description can trigger a search across all knowledgebase and forum content, returning potential solutions before the email is sent, or the chat session is joined by an agent effectively eliminating a costly interaction with an agent.

Taken one step further, discussion forum threads represent an ideal opportunity to present targeted online marketing or other relevant information, such as available product upgrades. Every customer support agent or customer service representative would cross-sell or upsell a customer engaged on the telephone; online, the same rules can be applied to questions posed to the knowledgebase and posted to the discussion forums.

This level of seamlessness is consistent with best practices for any kind of collaborative knowledge management. The ultimate goal is to deliver a consistent customer experience that spans all interaction channels, from phone support to Web self-service to discussion forums and beyond.

Best Practice #4: Allow customers to self-direct how they participate in the community.

The rapid evolution of social media has created new expectations for personalization and flexibility in the way people interact with online content. Users expect "anywhere access" (including mobile access from devices of all kinds) to contextually relevant information through methods of their choosing such as email subscriptions, RSS feeds, shared bookmarks, saved history and more.

Applying granular levels of personalization in collaborative knowledge environments encourages customer participation simply by making desired information more accessible. In customer service scenarios where users are more directed and specific with their objectives, every second saved boosts customer satisfaction with the support experience.

Suggest topics to your users, based on the products they use, and interests they have identified in the past. Save "My Topics" list for user-initiated discussions and highlight which threads have been updated since the user’s last visit, eliminating the need to manually check the site for new posts. Allow the user to define email alerts to content subscriptions to notify the subscriber when new responses are posted. Extend subscriptions across discussion forums and the knowledgebase, and allow flexibility to subscribe by topic or content category, by author and by discussion.

Provide custom RSS feeds for each subscription, and for searches containing specific phrases or keywords. Track user participation in the forums and maintain an access history so customers can quickly revisit forums and topics that interested them in the past, and highlight which information has been read, not read, or posted new since the last visit.

Focus not on how to push content to your customer community, but more on how to enable that community to pull the information they need in the way that makes the most sense to each individual participant.

Best Practice #5: Moderate by exception.

Even as social media has become more widespread and integrated into popular and corporate culture, brand stewards’ fear of potential damage persists. Influence and control remains a concern for most large organizations. But moderating and reviewing every post before it’s published on a discussion forum is not only resource-intensive; it robs users of the very value of the collaborative knowledge environment.

Finding the right balance will vary by company, but in general, to ensure a vibrant and collaborative community, organizations should moderate by exception, e.g., allowing users to post and publish freely, with moderators receiving notices from users reporting abuse, or from filters that identify inappropriate or undesirable behavior, such as mentions of a competitor or the use of objectionable or inflammatory language.

Reputation models, in particular, can help companies achieve that balance between freedom and control, by assigning more rights and functionality to users that have earned the trust of both the community and the company. Advanced search technology can add more power to the filtering mechanism by allowing companies to search on specific concepts so even if there is not a direct keyword or phrase match, semantic analysis will identify discussions that may be objectionable.

Moderating a community by exception, coupled with the ability to ban users, unpublish or edit posts or replies, or close forum topics, creates a positive environment that supports both customers’ need for fast, easy knowledge sharing, and companies’ need for an online community that reflects appropriate values and behavior.

Taken together and implemented correctly, these best practices will help you develop an online community that extends a company’s knowledge culture beyond its own walls, and into the domain of customers, improving customer service and reinforcing brand affinity.

Social Media Management and Information Governance

The social media landscape today has ballooned to include several different types of platforms from video or photo sharing to microblogs to short posts and activity feeds for all. With all of this newly introduced communication software, there becomes an increasing amount of data and data risk.

There are three layers of information governance involved with social media use within official organizations. Read on to learn what these layers are and what can be implemented within your organization to keep data compliant with legal, organizational and regulatory policies and procedures, as well as keeping data safe and free of risk.

Social Media Security

Organizations, including small and midsize businesses, non-profits, corporate enterprises, even governments, are no doubt being inundated with automatic cyber-attacks, hacks, spam, phishing scams, DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks and other forms of electronic malware. Much of this malware also no doubt comes from social media use. Interestingly though, many organizations are not prepared or putting effort into scanning this content for malware stemming from social media use.

Short links distributed through tweets, wall posts and other forms of communication are generated by bots that are designed to appear human online, though they are not. The information gathered through deploying these bots can be devastating for an organization. Imagine that employee clicks on one of these links and critical business information becomes vulnerable to automated information harvesting.

This information can be used in a variety of ways including business or government espionage, theft of important customer or internal financial information, theft or distribution of important trade secrets like research or prototypes and illegal or compromising use of other critical data.

There are tools that can scan this content and monitor user behavior to ensure secure communications. One of the tools that can manage social media is HootSuite.

Social Information Archival

The archival of information is obviously important for any kind of enterprise or organization. Data can become stockpiled or deleted immediately on social media sites, depending on their own policies for data retention.

If an employee or member creates a piece of content that was deleted, there must be a way to retrieve when and why the content was removed. It may come up in a legal matter at some point (continue reading to see Social Media Information Policy).

Screenshots of content or documentation of social media activity are a couple of ways that this information may be monitored or recorded. Some kind of record needs to exist. A simple log may not suffice, depending on policy or regulations. Businesses with a supply chain, product or other third party scenario may need to refer to this information for business practices or other reasons effecting third parties or partners.

Social media insights can also be gained through tracking content and activity over long periods of time. Research into social use over time can enable organizations to become adaptable to market conditions, laws, disruptions, customer expectations, business practices and a broad range of other areas important to organizations using social tools and sites.

Social Media Information Policy

Organizations are more heavily burdened by legislation, regulation and threat of legal action or litigation than ever before. To complicate matters, the amount of information is growing ever more rapidly. As old data becomes archived, exponentially larger volumes of data are being produced. This trend is not going to slow down anytime soon. Just take a look at the massively growing market of cloud storage and computing services on the market. So how can we ensure that social media use follows guidelines?

It starts with auditing content, campaigns and procedures to ensure legal, regulatory and organizational compliance. Look at content to see if there are vulnerabilities. You don’t want users posting content that can lead to insider trading, for example. Trade secrets and confidential customer or supplier information must also not be distributed to the public, for another example.

These are just a couple of ways that this kind of media use can harm or injure the credibility, profitability and even viability of an entire enterprise. Information handling policies must be both set in stone for things that will not change (corporate responsibility, for example) and things that will change or evolve over time (product marketing, for example). Some things will in fact change quite rapidly, while others will be a little slower moving.

After the audit, the next step is to ensure enforcement. Not only management, but every single member of the organization must first understand that these policies are important and then see to it that they are being followed. Monitor all onsite or virtual network use and the use of social on those systems. Let users know that their activity is being monitored to dissuade them from engaging in the risky behavior to start with. Remember that the average employee spends nearly an hour engaging in social media use at work.

There are various risks associated with this activity. Employees must both know the risks associated but also understand that there will be no tolerance for non-compliance with these policies. Disciplinary action is at the discretion of each organization.

Implement the Layers Proactively

Remember that the sooner your organization starts implementing these layered tasks, the better. You don’t want to be comfortable today and sorry tomorrow for not realizing the mistake of complacency. Make sure that everyone is on-board at all levels to ensure the smoothest possible transition into security protocols, policies, procedures and use of tools and software.

People are often afraid of change or resistant to do things that require patience or more work on their end. You may be able to alleviate some of those pains from them, but ultimately everyone must be responsible for the information they produce, gather and distribute.

All this being said, social media is a great tool for boosting productivity as well as marketing efforts for most organizations, so don’t be afraid to use social media, just use these precaution measures first.

Meeting the Social Media Challenge

When social media volume is low, it is typically handled manually by one or more people in a company. These people are assigned to check Facebook and/or Twitter a couple of times a day and respond when appropriate.

As the volume of inquiries grows, it becomes expensive to respond manually to the posts and comments, and nearly impossible to do it on a timely basis. After a while, it becomes clear that automation is necessary to respond to the large number of social media comments in appropriate time frames.

During the next few years, organizations of all sizes will need to build a social media technology servicing framework to handle an increasing volume of inquiries, complaints, and comments. As social media is conceptually just another channel, it should be incorporated into the enterprise's overall servicing framework. However, the unique characteristics and demands of social media interactions require specialized solutions and processes, even though the responses should be consistent in all channels.

There are many applications to help organizations handle their social media servicing challenges, and new ones are constantly being introduced. However, currently, there is no single solution that addresses all necessary requirements. Enterprises that want a complete solution need to purchase several applications and integrate them. They should also merge these applications with their existing servicing infrastructure to ensure an excellent customer experience.

The underlying technical components required to build a social media servicing infrastructure are:

• Tools for monitoring social media sites for brand and company mentions.
• Data acquisition/capture tools to identify and gather relevant social media interactions for the company.
• Data extraction tools that separate "noise" from interactions that require immediate or timely responses.
• An engine for defining business rules that generates alerts, messages, pop-ups, alarms, and events.
• Integration tools to facilitate application-to-application communication, typically using open protocols such as Web services. Prebuilt integration tools, along with published application programming interfaces, should be provided for contact center applications.
• Storage to house and access large volumes of historical data, and an automated process to retain and purge both online and archived data. Additional capabilities may include the ability to access archived data via other media, such as a CD-ROM, and the ability to store and retrieve data in a corporate storage facility, such as a network-attached storage or storage area network.
• Database software for managing large volumes of information.
• Work flow tools to automate business processes by systematically passing information, documents, tasks, notifications, or alerts to another business process (or person) for additional or supplementary action, follow-up, or expertise.

The core administrative tools needed are:

• User administration capability with prebuilt tools to facilitate system access, user set-up, user identification and rights (privileges), password administration, and security.
• Alert management capability that allows thresholds to be set so that alarms, alerts, or notifications can be enabled when predefined levels or time frames are triggered when violations or achievements occur (examples include alerts to signal changes in topics, emerging issues, and sentiment).
• Metrics management, including the ability to enter, create, and define key performance indicators (KPIs) and associated metrics.
• System configuration with an integrated environment for managing application set-up, and parameters for contact routing, skill groups, business rules, etc.

The core servicing functionality includes:

• Skills-based routing tools to deliver identified interactions to agents or other employees with the proficiency to address them.
• The ability to queue and route transactions (calls, emails, chat/IM, and social media posts) to the appropriate agent, employee, or team.
• Text analytics software that uses a combination of statistical or linguistic modeling methods to extract information from unstructured textual data.
• Filtering tools that separate "noise" from social media customer interactions that require immediate or timely responses.
• Topic categorization software that identifies themes and trends within social media interactions.
• Root cause analysis, a problem-solving tool that enables users to strip away layers of symptoms to identify the underlying reasons for problems or issues.
• Search and retrieval abilities that allow large volumes of data to be searched, based on user-defined queries, to retrieve specific instances.
• Sentiment analysis capability that can identify positive or negative sentiment about a company, person, or product, and assign a numerical score based on linguistic and statistical analysis.
• A social CRM servicing solution that logs and tracks received social media interactions so that agents or employees can view the post/comment, create a customized response, and issue or post it.
• Response templates that comprise a library of customizable responses to common social media posts.
• A social media publishing tool that enables users to publish posts to social media sites.
• Reporting functionality in which reports can be set up based on collected data, metrics, or KPIs in a preferred presentation format (chart or graph); this should also include the ability to create custom reports based on ad hoc queries.
• Scorecards/dashboards for all constituents in an organization - agents, supervisors, managers, other departments, and executives.
• An analytics tool that conducts multidimensional analyses of social media data, used to look for trends and data relationships over time, identify emerging issues and root causes, etc.
• Recording software to capture social media inputs and responses.

Organizations also need a number of management applications to ensure that their social media teams or departments are properly trained and staffed. These tools are:

• Quality assurance functionality to measure the quality of social media comments and posts by agents, to ensure that they are adhering to the organization's guidelines.
• Coaching and e-learning software to deliver appropriate training courses and best practice clips to agents and other employees involved in responding to social media interactions.
• A workforce management solution to forecast the expected volume of social media interactions that will require agent/employee assistance, and to identify and create optimal schedules (this also tracks adherence to service levels for each inquiry type).
• Surveying software to determine if customers/comments were satisfied with the company's responses.
• Desktop analytics to provide an automated and systematic approach to monitor, capture, structure, analyze, report, and react to all agent/employee desktop activity and process workflows.
• An analytics-oriented performance management module that creates scorecards and dashboards to help contact center and other managers measure performance against preset goals.

Social media is going to change the servicing landscape for many organizations within the next five to eight years. This is because the volume of social media comments and posts is expected to grow rapidly, comprising 50 percent of all service interactions. Companies that build a servicing strategy incorporating social media will have a major advantage over their competitors.

Companies do not need all of the solutions identified above, they need to select the ones that allow them to incorporate social media into their servicing strategy and infrastructure so that customers can interact with them in their preferred channel.