It’s a competitive world. We compete for attention, for the highest accolade, for positive reinforcement. We compete for a sense of accomplishment and to be the best.
We do this on an individual and organisational level. Performance is measured by the investment you bring into a company, wins on the board, ding, ding, ding! And we all want our names on the leader board - we want the top prize.
So how do we encourage individuals and teams to share the knowledge that enables that success when success is such a precious, competitive notion that your people fight over? How do you break the culture of knowledge hoarding and siloed success and make dispensing knowledge amongst everyone to create a level playing field the new normal?
Create a culture where success is shared, celebrated and attained together
If we measured performance and success by how satisfied our customers were at brand level, rather than how many dollars we could squeeze from them, satisfaction and loyalty would naturally spike. Do you think the culture of sharing would change if we could maintain that spike simply by improving the way we share knowledge?
A shift in emphasis on performance indicators could vastly improve performance itself. By focusing on what’s important and working together, companies thrive and a company that’s competitive in the market is one that empowers each person to strive for the best.
Now that’s not saying sales targets should be thrown out the window – but it begs the question if there aren’t more important targets we should reaching for?
Every member of your organisation has different skills. Some are far better suited to achieving the sale while others find nurture and service delivery more suit their spectrum of assets. That’s why we have different job titles – but it doesn’t mean one team doesn’t benefit from the knowledge and experience of another team – or that we can’t inform each other’s roles better. It also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t benchmark and measure customer experience at the same level that we do sales.
Collaborate and cultivate your company culture
We all have knowledge compiled from years of experience, from interactions with customers, from every conversation with every person. Keeping that knowledge in a vault doesn’t serve anyone – least of all your customers. Encouraging a collaborative approach to sharing knowledge and making it useable and accessible is what Knowledge Management can do.
We believe that knowledge empowers everyone, gives everyone opportunity and improves experience at every level. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being in control because of a lack of access to the knowledge you need. There’s nothing more frustrating for customers than poor service attributed to lack of knowledge on the part of the people they’re paying money too for a service.
Pooling knowledge into a systematic platform that sorts the important from the outdated and learns from all the interactions you have with your customers to personalise and improve experiences is something more and more companies globally are making their priority moving into 2020.
If you work in contact centre or support industries, you know about knowledge management at least to some extent but perhaps you aren’t aware of the cultural shift that it can also help achieve.
If customer experience and satisfaction became the benchmarks for measuring success, then every individual would have the opportunity to contribute to growth and stability within their organisations.
We want every customer support person to benefit from streamlined knowledge management, but this only happens the concept of knowledge as power is filtered through the business.
Start by sharing the knowledge you have now and creating manageable, bite sized projects that give your teams a taste of things could be like. Enable your employees to access company knowledge that can help them grow, up-skill and deliver better service.
If you’re ready to talk about a strategic move to a knowledge based workplace and want to improve your efficiency, productivity and employee retention . Request a discussion with one of our experienced team members today or download our brochure for more information.
Watch our video on how Knosys Knowledge Management helps empower frontline teams and distributed operations.