Automating Technical Support Knowledge
Overview
1.0 The Challenge of Delivering Expert Technical Support
The increasing complexity and variety of IT, Internet, Telecom and
technology products and services being offered to customers
and the rapid
pace of change of these products and services is increasing
the demand for expert customer
service. This involves the timely and effective diagnosis and
resolution of customer queries / problems that is vital to
customer satisfaction
and retention. Delivering such support requires an increasing
number of highly trained customer service agents. In a commercial
environment of increased competition and reduced profit margins,
the challenge
is
how to reconcile the seemingly conflicting objectives of reducing
customer support costs while maintaining / improving support
quality. The challenges
can be summarised as follows:
- Products and services are getting more complex, have more variants
and change very rapidly over time.
- Customers are demanding high quality service over multiple contact
channels (telephone, email, chat and web self-service).
- Customer Service agents need extensive and regular training and
are difficult to retain.
- Pressure to improve customer service and at the same time to reduce
its cost.
1.1 CRM / Call Tracking Systems Do Not Improve Customer
Service
Investment in CRM (customer relationship management) software has done little
to improve customer loyalty according to the latest research
from IT services company Accenture. A survey of 2,000 customers
in both the
UK and US found that 61 percent identified poor service or
product quality as the main reason for moving between companies.
Almost one-fifth of
respondents cited technology problems as a reason for their
dissatisfaction.
Although CRM / call tracking systems are intended to improve customer relations,
over one-third of customers complained of being forwarded through
multiple company representatives before problems were adequately
resolved. "Customers
expect the first customer service representative they talk
with to have the knowledge, tools and capabilities required
to address their needs," according
to Robert Wollan, managing partner of Accenture's customer
contact unit. Customers spend an average of six minutes on
hold while waiting for
help on the telephone and speak to an average of 2.6 service
representatives before their query is resolved.1.2 Knowledge Management Delivers Limited Benefits to Customer Service
CRM systems are being supplemented by Knowledge Management Systems in an effort
to improve customer service. The majority of the current generation of Knowledge
Management solutions for customer service involve the managing of unstructured
knowledge. By managing unstructured knowledge we mean managing content such as
documents of various formats, web pages, and similar (emails, textual description
of solutions to problems) using search engine like technology. The knowledge
management technology normally involves the indexing of these documents (content)
and allowing the subsequent search for the relevant documents through keywords
search, natural language query or browsing simple hierarchical categories. Other
extensions to managing unstructured knowledge include:
- Showing a list of the current most searched for documents.
- Allowing the users of the search system to give their feedback about the relevance of the found documents to their query. This feedback is then used to improve future search results.
The limitations of using this type of technology are firstly that the solutions
found depend very much on the way the query is phrased and secondly that ultimately
the customer service agent is interpreting the recommendation, advice and problem
resolution knowledge in the found documents. For this reason, if the knowledge
becomes moderately complex, the quality of customer support will start to depend
critically on the interrogation and interpretative skills and experience of the
agent thereby eroding most of the benefits expected from the introduction of
knowledge management. Similarly, this approach to knowledge management can be
of little benefit in offering effective technical support over email, chat or
web self-help. Therefore knowledge management can, in effect, increase the skill
requirements (and therefore cost) of an agent because the job becomes akin to
a technical help desk.
1.3 Automation of Support Knowledge Improves Customer
Service
Support Knowledge Automation (also called Service Resolution Management) captures
structured support knowledge such as diagnostic trees, trouble-shoot flows and
related service resolution procedures. Once captured, the deployment of such
automated knowledge almost eliminates the reliance on the skills of agents in
interpreting the knowledge. The agent is guided by the system to ask the right
sequence of questions in order to achieve problem resolution in the most efficient
and direct way. Support Knowledge Automation can therefore enable agents with
minimal training to answer complex queries and problems. The resulting benefits
are:
- Increase first call resolution and reduce call duration. Agents assisted
by Automated Support Knowledge can resolve queries during the first call and
can do so in the most direct and efficient manner.
- Deliver consistent and high quality customer support through every agent. Every agent when supported by Automated Support Knowledge becomes more effective and knowledgeable.
- Empowering agents with knowledge reduces the cost of training agents and
mitigates agent turnover.
- Overcome the issues relating to outsourcing support to places like India.
Support knowledge is deployed consistently regardless of agent or location
and changes in product knowledge can be propagated immediately.
- Increased customer satisfaction resulting from receiving fast, efficient
and consistent support.
The captured customer service knowledge can also be deployed to empower customer
service agents to answer email and chat queries. Finally the same customer service
knowledge can be delivered as a web self-help solution allowing customers
to get the same quality of service while reducing the load on contact centres.
Such technology is no longer "nice to have" but is a critical enabling technology
for customer service.
2.0 XpertRule eService - Integrating Structured and
Unstructured Knowledge
In practice, customer service knowledge is a hybrid combination of structured,
unstructured knowledge and core customer service interaction skills. The solution
to a customer problem/query can be found in a document or in a diagnostic / trouble-shoot
tree or procedure. A Customer Service knowledge base consists of tens of thousands
of such solutions. The technologies required for a hybrid (structured and unstructured)
knowledge management system are illustrated below:
Note that unstructured search results in finding a document
or URL while structured search using diagnostic / classification
trees can lead to a document or other structured knowledge
solutions such as trouble-shoot flows. In other words structured
customer support knowledge can be split into two stages;
the first step is to classify / diagnose the nature of
the query and the second step is the resolution of the
query.
XpertRule eService is a software environment for the capture and maintenance of structured knowledge and for the seamless integration of this knowledge with unstructured knowledge (content). XpertRule eService also delivers the most scalable deployment of structured knowledge on the market today. These breakthrough capabilities are achieved as described in the sections below.
2.1 Knowledge Authoring
Environment
XpertRule allows the capture of customer service / support knowledge using graphical process flows (trees) representing recommendation, advisory, diagnostic, trouble-shooting and problem resolution knowledge. The Enterprise strength knowledge-authoring environment allows authors to collaborate on capturing and maintaining the customer service knowledge working over a network.
The development environment maintains thousands of possible questions and flows (trees). Each knowledge author can work on his/her area of expertise whilst sharing questions and trees with other knowledge authors. The graphical and structured knowledge representation speeds the process of capturing the knowledge and subsequently maintaining the knowledge as the products and services evolve. Extensive technical support knowledge can typically be captured in a few weeks.
Integration between XpertRule and a Content Management System (CMS) is achieved by means of an intermediary API to allow seamless integration between XpertRule resources and resources managed by the CMS.
Customer Service Knowledge centres around the solutions base. Each solution can
have an optional set of attributes. A solution points to a document, or to a
knowledge flow / tree. The knowledge-scripting environment allows the maintenance
of a large number of questions, advisory, diagnostic and classification trees
which are used to narrow down the list of required solutions.
The trouble-shooting knowledge consists of flows and trouble-shoot steps. Flows
can also contain sub-flows representing common trouble-shoot sequences. The knowledge-authoring
environment allows the maintenance of thousands of questions, steps, sub-flows
and flows. Each knowledge author can work on his/her area of expertise
whilst sharing questions, steps and sub-flows with other knowledge authors. The
graphical and structured knowledge representation speeds up the process of capturing
the knowledge and subsequently maintaining the knowledge as the products and
services evolve.
The task of finding the relevant solution(s) that can address the customer question
or query is normally called a classification or diagnostic task. By asking a
sequence of focussed questions, the knowledge flow narrows down the list of suitable
solutions. Below is an example of such knowledge which narrows downs the solution
to one of five possible trouble-shoot sequences.
The knowledge for one of the five trouble-shoot solutions
is shown below:
Solutions can also be assigned attributes (e.g. Windows
Operating System and Internet connection method) that can
act as selection filters that further narrow down the relevant
solutions to a query.
The deployment engine logs all the data from agent sessions to a database. The data captured includes answers to questions, the time taken to capture each answer, trouble-shoot fixes tried and whether problem was resolved. All this logged data is processed by the authoring environment to reveal the statistics for each diagnostic and trouble-shoot flow. This is an important catalyst for improving the knowledge by highlighting "problems" with poor record of resolution rates and identifying which fixes are more effective than others at resolving problems.
2.2 Multi-Channel,
Integrated and Scalable Knowledge Deployment
XpertRule offers a unique technology for deploying customer
service knowledge across all customer contact channels;
telephone, web self-help, email and chat. This is achieved
through XpertRule's pure HTML deployment that does
not require a rules engine on the server or the client.
The classification, diagnostic, advisory and trouble-shoot
knowledge scripted in XpertRule is transformed into a
set of intelligently linked HTML pages which are stored
on a web HTTP server. This unique approach has very many
advantages:
-
It is extremely scalable whereby hundreds of thousands
of agents / customers can access the knowledge base at
the same time. This is particularly important when supporting
large contact centres and web self-service.
- The Knowledge server requires very low maintenance
since there is no knowledge engine to maintain. It is
as easy as maintaining a web site.
- Because the same knowledge base is used for all
contact channels, it becomes possible to switch customers
from telephone, email or chat channels to the web self-help
whereby the customers are allowed to continue the diagnostic
/ trouble-shoot session at their own pace without the
costly and lengthy interactions with the customer service
agents. The current state of a session is stored as a
"bookmark" to
a relevant HTML page within the knowledge base and can
therefore be easily restarted.
- All knowledge flows (e.g. trouble-shoot flows) are
generated as HTML pages which can be treated as and integrated
seamlessly with other unstructured content. This means
that knowledge flows can be searched for using the usual
keyword, natural language and FAQ techniques of unstructured
knowledge management.
The XpertRule HTML Solution can be easily integrated
within any existing CRM system. For telephone agents
and for web self-help, the XpertRule Service Resolution
Knowledge base can be invoked from within the CRM system.
XpertRule will commence the Q&A for problem classification
/ diagnosis followed by the trouble-shooting steps
until resolution is achieved. XpertRule then returns
a string
to the main CRM system containing a list of all questions
answered during the session and trouble-shoot steps
invoked. An XpertRule session can be interrupted before
the end and restarted by the CRM system at a later
date at the same point where it was suspended.
For email service agents, XpertRule can provide an
AutoSuggest feature that prompts the agents for answers
to questions that may be contained in the query email.
XpertRule then suggests an email reply which can either
be a request for more information or a required trouble-shoot
flow which XpertRule can attach as either a graphical
tree or a textual set of trouble-shoot steps. Email
replies can also include a link to web self-help to
continue trouble-shooting.
For chat service agents, again XpertRule can provide
an AutoSuggest capability for the agent to respond to
the customer or alternatively the agent can divert the
customer to web self-help.
2.3 XpertRule eService - Technology
Positioning
The diagram below illustrates the positioning of XpertRule
eService in relation to Content Management (CMS), Knowledge
Management (KM), Service Resolution Management (SRM) and
Customer Interactions Management (CIM) Systems. This can
be summarised as follows:
- XpertRule captures the scripted knowledge (problem
resolution) flows.
- XpertRule can deliver knowledge flows as HTML only solutions to SRM / KM
systems thereby adding seamless scripted knowledge capability.
- XpertRule can deploy the captured scripted knowledge flows directly to CIM
or CRM systems as high performance and easy to integrate HTML knowledge.
- All knowledge objects in XpertRule such as trees, reports and trouble-shoot
flows can reference contents from the CMS.
2.4 Summary
of the Unique Features of XpertRule eService
- A central Knowledge Object Dictionary for questions, trees, flows,
sub-flows, trouble-shoot steps. This allows efficient multi-user knowledge
scripting and maintenance whereby all objects are reusable across the knowledge
base. For example the Question "Windows Version" with answers "2000,
XP Home, XP Professional" can be defined once and used in many diagnostic,
trouble-shoot and recommendation flows. It also allows different knowledge
authors to maintain different scripts.
- A highly graphical and intuitive environment for building a large
hierarchy of trees flows and sub-flows. Flow between trees is very visible,
as is the hierarchies of flows and sub-flows.
- An advanced knowledge representation for trouble-shooting knowledge.
The basic units are questions and trouble-shoot steps. Each trouble-shoot
step can have an "include rule" which allows the deployed knowledge
to include/exclude the step based on other captured data. A common sequence
of steps can be defined as a reusable sub-flow that can be referenced by
other flows.
- A unique method of deploying scripted knowledge consisting of a
set of linked HTML pages. XpertRule offers two deployment modes. The first
mode is a Q&A mode whereby the user is prompted a question at a time
and the flow of questioning flows in a way that follows the scripted trees.
This applies to the flow in diagnostic trees that determine the nature
of the problem and to the trouble-shooting trees that are designed to
find a resolution. This is an ideal mode for novice customer service agents
and
for web self-help. A second mode displays the diagnostic and/or trouble-shoot
flows to the user to allow the user the freedom and speed of knowledge navigation.
This mode is ideal for the experienced customer service agents.
- The HTML deployment strategy allows Scripted Knowledge to be integrated
easily into any CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or CIM (Customer Interaction
Management) system. The HTML deployment strategy delivers high performance
across all customer contact channels (telephone, email, chat and web self-help)
and allows for the easy switching of a support call between channels (e.g.
from telephone to email).
- A unique method of monitoring and reporting the effectiveness
of the deployed support knowledge. By superimposing the logged agents sessions
on the diagnostic and trouble-shoot flows, it is possible to identify graphically
where the gaps in the support knowledge are and which trouble-shoot fixes
are more effective than others. This allows for an effective knowledge
improvement strategy.
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