!(WIP)Improvements via KCS(WIP)!
Overview
NWEA’s service department had created a multitude of knowledge repositories that had duplicative information, disparate information, and no central standards for updating and maintaining information. This created several challenges for customers and staff.
Customers periodically received misinformation due to out-of-date articles referenced by support staff and those articles being public-facing.
Team members didn’t know which knowledge repository to use for what information and the information was unreliable due to information being out of date or not using the knowledge bases at all due to trust.
Lack of data to inform which knowledge articles were used most by staff and customers for promotion via NWEA’s community.
As a majority of the service departments teams were knowledge workers we needed a solution to rectify these problems for customers and team members.
The Approach
To tackle the challenge we explored deploying components from Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS). We spent time exploring the principles and concepts of KCS to identify the areas we needed to prioritize initially. After evaluating the framework we landed on 4 areas that needed to be addressed immediately to resolve the challenges we were facing our support and service teams grew.
Make knowledge article maintenance, updating, and expansion owned by all customer-facing service teams in partnership with the organization.
Deploy a smaller team focused on developing Knowledge Article and Knowledge Base standards, structure, and management.
Reduce the number of knowledge repositories and clearly define where information should live. Such as product functionality information in X locations, role processes and procedures in Y location, and internal company expectations and policies in Z location.
Implement practices of tracking Knowledge Article usage to inform what to push to customers when and opportunities for product enhancement back to the Product Management team.
Next was a significant focus on change management as we were going to be disrupting many existing workflows while implementing processes and procedures for information maintenance and management.
Biggest Challenge
KCS is not simply a framework or program you deploy and it takes care of itself it is a way of working and isn’t a single team’s or department’s responsibility to make it successful. In order for KCS to sustain and continue adding value there needs to be buy-in from the organization, its leadership, and those working with the Knowledge repositories daily.
To accomplish the goal we deployed a two-pronged approach to provide insight into the value KCS creates. The plan was to implement top-down buy-in while creating a grassroots movement among the individual contributors and their teams. Value propositions, business cases, and data were provided to leadership to show the organization monetary gains through efficiency and enhanced customer and employee experiences. Group meetings with individual contributors were held to share how KCS can make their lives easier once we made it past the pain of change and to gather concerns and socialize about the upcoming change.
This process helped create greater adoption, build a culture of done with versus done to, and provided early insights into where extra effort in the change management cycle would be needed.
In addition, this project evolved over several years as more teams adopted the KCS methodology and consolidated their content into fewer repositories.
Outcomes
Initiative Leads: Austin Christian, Amanda Jennewein
Project Leads: Austin Christian, Amanda Jennewein
Knowledge Base Architect: Denise Riffle
Project Members: Shannon Ryan, Ryan Leppert, Thomas Wells, Caty McMahon, Cris Kent, Caleb Phillips, Danielle Kerns, Jonathan Batalas, Elliot Aughenbaugh, Linda Meiwes