Collaborative Customer Care

Forums are popular among technology-based products offerings with hardware manufacturers (e.g., Dell computers), software houses ( e.g., Intuit, maker of QuickBooks accounting software), and service providers (e.g., Comcast) getting in on the action. Tech companies don’t have the capacity to explore (or even be aware of) every possible use of their offerings or integrations with other offerings. Fortunately, someone, somewhere has been there, done that and gladly shares the story with details on the solution. It’s a win-win scenario. Customers gain a comprehensive resource for problem solving while companies gain a host of volunteers who reduce cycle time on customer inquiries and divert volume from traditional contact channels.

Retail shoppers increasingly lean on product ratings and commentaries when making purchase decisions, especially when buying online. Does this shirt size run small or large? They’re also increasingly open to advice. Which 32-inch HDTV performs best given multiple angles of viewing? Customers like to get some words of wisdom before they head for the electronic shopping cart or a local store. Some companies encourage their employees to get in on the action. For example, Best Buy has a 2,500+ member “Twelpforce” that monitors customer tweets on a Twitter site and provides considered opinions on Best Buy products.

Forums aren’t just for customers and prospects. You can create an in-house community that lets your customer service representatives share knowledge and experience to improve one another’s skills. Let’s face it, service reps struggle to retain all of the good information they received during their formal training. Some have the luxury of tapping an experienced peer who happens to sit in a nearby cubicle. Others aren’t so fortunate. A forum removes the distance between inquiring reps and their expert peers. These “teachers” take pride in their work and find satisfaction helping others. The online community is also a place to share news and upcoming events, or provide hints and tips that impact all reps. It’s “eLearning,” community-style.

As for the enabling technology, the market is rife with social collaboration capabilities. You could start with a SharePoint infrastructure, tap one of your core vendors (e.g., ACD, CTI, CRM), or seek a new provider. Be sure to define your requirements, explore the options, and assess the trade-offs before you make a commitment. (See the text box below.)

Let Wikis Break Barriers to Knowledge Sharing

Take a tour around a typical contact center, and you’ll likely see a cornucopia of resources that customer service representatives use to respond to caller needs. Along with the usual complement of software applications, they’ll have loose-leaf binders, a few typed and handwritten notes, assorted “yellow stickies” and personalized lists of subject-matter experts. Knowledge management (KM) was supposed to be the “white knight” that brought order to chaos by retrieving and cataloging information from a myriad of resources. Many centers struggle to afford the princely sum that most implementations require. Few have the patience and resources to tackle the design, process change and integration work to reap the value from KM. Then along came wikis…