what is the consortium? - nercomp · for support assisted •the tiered support model becomes...

5/25/16

© 2016 Consortium for Service Innovation 1

Knowledge-Centered Service KCS℠ and Intelligent Swarming

Melissa George Consortium for Service Innovation

www.serviceinnovation.org [email protected]

The KCSsm methodology is service marked by the Consortium for Service Innovation

What is the Consortium?

•  An alliance of internal and external support organizations

•  Focused on innovation – New ways to improve the user experience and

productivity while managing the cost of support – High tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity

•  Member funded, not for profit –  For the benefit of the members

•  The members are the Consortium –  45 member companies –  Staff: 4 people

Consortium Members

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What is KCS?

•  A methodology that drives business value •  A set of principles, practices, and techniques

that focuses on knowledge as an asset •  Captures and reuses the collective

experience of the organization •  Integrates use of the knowledge base into the

workflow •  Promotes collaboration independent of

space and time •  A simple idea, but….requires a culture shift

Why Should We Care About KCS?

Operational efficiency

Enabling self-service success

Improving products, services, and policies

Increase Capacity +20-50% Faster Time to Proficiency 4-6X

Improve Self-Service Success from 45% to 85%

Actionable Feedback for Business Improvements

Why Should We Care About KCS?

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The Bigger Picture

Improve the ratio of support costs/user�� and improve the users’ productivity

$

# of users supported

Time

Expected Support Costs

Actual Support Costs

Reduce Operating Expense

Organize the Support Center into Tiers of Support��

(or help desk)

Assisted

Development/ Engineering

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

• Create levels or tiers of support

• Escalation model • Invest in CRM • Each level solves 80%,

escalates 20%

Product Management

Assisted

Customer Demand for Support

Assisted

Organize the Support Center��Assume 10,000 Incidents/month

Assisted


Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Product Management

Assisted


Assisted

Solve 80%

2,000

400

10,000

Solve 80%

Solve 80% 80

• The funnel is good at filtering out known and simple issues at low cost

•  Level 1 is effective because they are handling mostly known issues

• Of 10,000 incidents a month, 80 come out the bottom of the funnel

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Create a Knowledge Base

Assisted


Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Product Management

Assisted


Assisted • Fix it once, use it often!

• KCS methodology; create and maintain knowledge as we solve issues

• Patterns in KB used to identify product improvements

Self-Service

Enable End User Access to the KB


Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Product Management


Assisted

• KCS creates Just-in-time content in the context of the users (articles)

• Make most of what we know available to the end users

• Success with self-help; solve known issues without calling

• And they will use the web for a lot more issues than they would call about

Self-Service

Self-service Success Changes the Nature of the work in the funnel


Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Product Management


Assisted

• As known issues are solved on through Self-service

• Volume drops in the support center

• The work in the funnel shifts from mostly known to mostly new

• Level 1 becomes less effective; satisfaction declines!

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Self-Service

Re-think how we align people to work? ��Intelligent Swarming replaces Streaming


Product Management

Demand for Support

Assisted • The tiered support

model becomes ineffective

• Move from a tiered, escalation model to a collaboration model

• Intelligent swarming

• More complete view of the end user experience

Communities

and Social Media

Self-Service

Acknowledge the Community


Product Management


Assisted

• Interaction between users – a lot of good content created in the user forums

• More complete view of the experience

Communities

and Social Media

Self-Service

Nurture the Value Creators


Product Management

Demand for Support

Assisted

• By paying attention to (not managing) the community we identify the power users

• Connect the power users with the PM and development

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Communities

and Social Media

Self-Service

Connections based on Relevance


Product Management


Assisted

Connect people based on context, need and legitimacy (reputation)

Communities

and Social Media

Self-Service

It’s a Network!


Product Management


Assisted

Support becomes a network that connects;

• people with content

• people with people

In a highly relevant way

Communities

and Social Media

Self-Service

User Experience Drives Improvement


Product Management


Assisted

The goal - Improve user productivity through optimum response and by reducing demand for support

USER ��EXPERIENCE

Reduce demand for support

Improved products and services Based on user experience

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The Role of Support Changes •  Support becomes

–  Resolution experts for new, complex problems (not known) –  AND the facilitators of connections (the network)

•  Connect people to content for known issues •  Connect people to people new issues •  Based on:

–  Context, Need, Legitimacy (identity and reputation)

•  Knowledge is the enabler –  Articles (the collective experience) –  People profiles, identity, reputation

•  Collaboration is the key •  Customer’s success is the goal

Support is a Network!

Communities

and Social Media

Self-Service

KCS is the Pre-requisite


Product Management


Assisted

KCS captures the collective experience of the support organization

The Principles of KCS KCS is a methodology and a set of practices and

processes that focuses on knowledge as a key asset of the support organization.

KCS seeks to: §  Create articles as a by-product of solving problems §  Evolve content based on demand and usage §  Develop a KB of our collective experience to-date §  Recognize people’s ability to:

learn, collaborate, share and improve

KCS is not something we do in addition to solving problems…

KCS becomes the way we solve problems

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Content is King! •  KCS seeks to create content that is good enough to be findable,

and usable by a specific audience

•  We call the collection of information an article

•  An article is more than just the answer or fix –  Question/Issue/Symptoms (in the customer context) –  Environment (products, versions, release) –  Fix/answer (resolution) –  Cause (optional) –  Information/meta data

•  Articles have a life cycle –  They go through different states; i.e.. WIP, not validated,

validate

•  Articles have visibility •  Articles have governance

•  License model determines permissions

Double Loop Process?

B

B loop: Evolve •  Organization level processes across many events •  Reflective, continuous improvement

A

A

A

A

A loop: Solve •  The event level •  Resolving issues •  Reactive

KCS Practices

Knowledge Article

Capture

Structure

Reuse

Improve

Solve Leadership & Communication

Performance Assessment

Process Integration

Content Health Evolve

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Capture… in the Workflow

•  Articles are created at the moment of interaction, because we must capture the customer context: how they experienced the problem

•  Trying to recreate the customer context after you know the answer to the question or the resolution to the problem…. is nearly impossible

•  Tacit knowledge is captured as it becomes explicit

•  Knowledge is available immediately as the article is being created

Structure for Reuse

•  Simple Structure – improves readability –  Title –  Symptoms, Issues

•  What is the requestor trying to do or asking? •  What is the requestor’s experience that is undesirable?

–  Environment •  Products, model, rev levels involved •  Changes in the environment

–  Analysis (optional) •  What steps were taken to understand the issue? •  What steps were taken to resolve the issue?

–  Resolution •  What is the answer to the question?

–  Cause •  The underlying reason(s) for the question

Complete Thoughts…��Not Complete Sentences

•  You don’t have to be a technical writer! –  Don’t write complete sentences for the article –  Take down main ideas in bullet points –  Phrases that capture a single thought (not

compound or multiple thoughts) –  Keep them in the requestor’s language: use their

words (but not all of them)

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Reuse

•  Reuse implies ….. Searching! •  Search early search often

–  To see if the issue is already know and resolved or to see if some else is currently working on it

–  To benefit from the collective experience of the organization on this type of issue

•  Searching Is Creating –  The words and phrases we use to search become

candidate content to improve and existing article or to create a new article if one doesn’t exist

•  We want the knowledge base to be the first resource people use for problem solving …….not the last.

Improve ��Just-In-Time Article Quality

•  Reuse is review – the people who use the knowledge are responsible for the quality of the knowledge. Flag it or fix it. –  Team ownership of knowledge: it is our collective

experience, the best we know-to-date –  In the moment of use, I am responsible for the quality of

what I am using

•  Constantly improving the quality of articles –  Only spend time on articles that are being used –  Timely availability, no post-call knowledge re-

engineering

Content Health

•  Content Standard tailored to the environment –  Aligns with audience needs –  Defines the structure and what content goes where –  Article quality Index criteria (AQI) –  Article states, metadata

•  Content migration process –  Articles are improved through reuse –  Articles that are being reused are migrated to a larger

audience •  Random sampling of the KB

–  Scoring articles –  Feedback to the players

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Process Integration

•  Structured problem solving –  Ideally starts with the person with the question –  Seek to understand before you seek to solve

•  Be literal first, listen and collect context, search, then move into problem solving

–  Search early, search often

•  Tools/technology must support the structured problem solving process –  Must function at the speed of conversation –  Integration of tools

•  CRM, chat, email, web submit with Knowledge Base

Performance Assessment

•  KCS proficiency model –  License metaphor that links to user rights and privileges –  Performance model –  Performance drivers (motivators) –  Leading indicators (activities) –  Business results (outcomes)

•  Rewards and recognition –  Acknowledge accomplishments –  Acknowledge the creation of value in the KB

•  Pattern of feedback from customers, other users builds a reputation

•  Staff have visibility to results and can see the impact their contribution is having on organizational goals

Leadership & Communication

•  Create a vision, articulate the vision –  A purpose that has emotional appeal: employee engagement

•  Encourage buy-in to vision and values across the organization

•  Model the values through attention and behavior •  Align processes and measures to business objectives •  Define what success looks like and the “what’s in it for

me” to managers and support analysts •  Communicate … why we are doing this •  Communicate •  Communicate

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Self-Service Success?

Context The content must reflect the users’ experience, words and phrases

Ar7cles must be findable and usable by the intended audience

Completeness What we know needs to be available quickly

90/90 rule: 90% of the ar7cles available in 90 min

Access Path of least resistance and best success for the user.

Easy to find: integrate self-‐service into the user interface

Naviga3on No dead ends: click to chat, click to submit

Choices finding informa7on: support browsing as well as searching

Marke3ng Build it and they will come does not work

Overt effort to get users to try self-‐service: Get answers faster

Intelligent Swarming

Intelligent Swarming: Objectives

§  Skills development §  Dynamically create capability and capacity

§  Optimize people’s ability to contribute (create value) §  Increase engagement and loyalty

§  For customers and employees!

§  Improve customer success and realized value through improved problem solving, by increasing: §  Reach (an unbounded network) §  Relevance (based on profiles and reputation) §  Diversity (to increase creativity and innovation)

Every interaction is an opportunity to improve the relevance of the next interaction!

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The Shift…. The Current Model

Streaming

–  Silos and hierarchies –  Directed –  Predefined, linear process –  Escalation based –  Measure activity

The Emerging Model Intelligent Swarming

–  Network –  Opt-in –  Emergent, loopy processes –  Collaboration based –  Measure value creation

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

•  People naturally collaborate on new issues (swarm)…

•  …often in spite of the support processes and structure.

•  Can we optimize collaboration?

Realization

A Few Definitions

• The group of people who could benefit from interaction

A Collaboration Group

• Two or more people working to resolve a request

A Swarm

• “Work is work”, efficiently resolving requests is the goal

Work

•  Facilitating the connections between people with increasing relevance over time

Intelligent Swarming

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Who is Doing Intelligent Swarming?

Case Studies:��Early Adopter Experience

Early Adopters Implementation Spectrum of Automation

Mostly Manual

Highly Automated

BMC Red Hat Microsoft

and

Cisco PTC

For case studies, visit www.serviceinnovation.org/intelligent-swarming

Sage

Early Adopters: Results

•  Improved Resolution –  Reduction in call backs –  Reduction in time to resolve –  Handled more cases with fewer headcount (through attrition) –  Resolved multi-technology issues more quickly

•  Knowledge Workers Love It –  Increased employee satisfaction/loyalty/engagement –  Skills growth, accelerated learning –  Backlog down dramatically –  Reduced new hire training time by up to 50%

•  Customers Love It –  Better customer experience, focused on customer success and value

realization –  Dramatically increased customer satisfaction numbers –  A better way to deliver on company’s brand promise

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What’s Different ��About Swarming?

•  Community of users functions as a single team of people with various skills who collaborate on resolving requests –  No level 1/2/3 –  No escalations within support

•  The first person to respond to the request should be the most likely person to be able to resolve it (intelligent matching)

•  The responder who takes the request owns it until it is resolved –  Eliminate queue bouncing –  Improve learning and skills transfer

•  The responder can find the best available person to help •  The responder can see work that is relevant to them •  Measuring the creation of value (not activity) by individuals and

teams •  Managers as coaches – not judges and not “owners” of the teams

How Does it Work?

•  Variety of ways to facilitate collaboration •  Some common themes:

•  Requires engaged and aligned people •  Incident/case/request ownership is clear •  Best if designed by the people using the process •  Iterating on the process (continuous improvement) •  People profiles and reputations are a key enabler •  Same “taxonomy” for work, people, and content •  Exception detection and management •  Performance assessment: from activity to value

Additional Resources

•  Consortium for Service Innovation •  KCS Practices Guide v6 •  The KCS Academy

what is the consortium? - nercomp · for support assisted •the tiered support model becomes...

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