Knowledge Management

Share knowledge and speed up your service desk

Table of contents

Introduction 3

There has to be a smarter way 4

1. What is knowledge management? 5

2. What is KCS? 6

3. Why invest in knowledge management? 11

4. Calculate how much time you could be saving 14

5. Implementing KCS 16

2
Introduction

Is your service desk dealing with a The e-book also contains an example
lot of simple, recurring calls? Do your that lets you calculate how much time
employees tend to forward too many your organization could be saving.
calls to your second line of support?
And are you wondering how to resolve Happy reading!
calls more effectively? Knowledge
management is the answer. Judith Lumbela and Joost Wapenaar,
Consultants and knowledge
This e-book will help you discover management experts with TOPdesk
what knowledge management can
do for your organization. Read what
knowledge management according
to Knowledge-Centred Service (KCS)
means, and why you should invest in
knowledge management.

3
 ?
There has to be a smarter way

There has to be a
smarter way

?
?
It’s Friday morning; John receives a call saying that
the printer has a paper jam. It’s happened a couple
of times already this week – but who fixed it those
times? And how did they do it? After spending half
an hour asking around and going through old calls,
John finds the answer and emails the customer.
Then, John sits back and wonders: “There has to be
a smarter way to do this, right?”

4
 What is knowledge management?

1. What is knowledge management?

What is knowledge? It’s all information missing? Simply

of the knowledge that exists add any knowledge you’ve
within your service desk, gained while processing the
which extends far beyond customer’s call. Just don’t do
manuals and documentation. this on a Friday afternoon
It also includes answers to when you know you won’t be
frequently asked questions or getting around to it anyway.
step-by-step plans. Knowledge
is often not recorded Does that mean you’re solely
anywhere and exists only in responsible for keeping all
employees’ heads. And when that knowledge up to date?
someone leaves the company, No, of course not! All your co-
they take all of that knowledge workers have knowledge, are
with them, forever. specialized, and responsible for
the knowledge base. Entrust
So, what’s a better way of the team with managing
managing that knowledge? By this wealth of knowledge; let
recording it in a knowledge everyone share and develop
base and sharing it with their knowledge.
your co-workers. Is any

5
 What is KCS?

2. What is KCS?

At many service desks, knowledge management never really

takes off. Why is that? It’s often a case of the knowledge
manager not having enough time. They’ll block out their
Friday afternoons for writing and updating manuals, but end
up spending those afternoons catching up on the growing
list of calls.

KCS*, Knowledge Centered Service, allows you to change

your service desk’s priorities. Recording knowledge becomes
your new objective, instead of processing calls. Why? With a
properly detailed answer, you’ll resolve more than just one
call – you’ll help all customers with the same question in the
future.

* Knowledge Centered Service is a methodology developed by the Consortium for Service Innovation.
Everything contained in this e-book is an interpretation of that methodology and in no way pretends
to be the right interpretation thereof. All rights and leading interpretations belong and will continue to
belong to the Consortium for Service Innovation and can be found on www.serviceinnovation.org.

6
“We receive many of the same
calls. Thanks to KCS, we are able
to solve those kinds of calls with
just a few clicks of a button.”
Ron van der Steen,
All-round network and
system manager, Woonbron.

7
 What is KCS?

KCS consists of two elements:

Solve and Evolve.

Solve
‘Solve’ is about recording or improving
knowledge using the incoming calls.
Here’s how it works.

You receive a call. First, you check the

knowledge base to see whether the
question has been answered before.
If not, record the question and your
answer in the knowledge base and
resolve the call. Does the knowledge
base already contain an answer? Check
whether that answer is correct. If so,
reuse it. If not, edit the answer so that
your co-workers will be able to use it
right away next time around.

8
What is KCS?

Evolve
When you’ve just started KCS, you’ll
have your hands full dealing with the
Solve stage. But once you’ve been using
it for a while, you can start working on
the so-called Evolve stage. The Evolve
stage involves everything you do to
improve your knowledge management.
This is the stage in which you analyse
your knowledge base: which answers
are consulted frequently, and how
can you answer the questions before
they’re asked? The Solve stage also
involves introducing KCS within other
teams.

9
 What is KCS?

Classic knowledge management VS KCS

Round

Recording knowledge after the fact 1 Recording knowledge while

processing calls

Resolving a single call 2 Resolving multiple calls at once

A single person is responsible 3 Everyone is responsible

Offer-oriented: Question-oriented:
4
What do we want to explain? which kinds of questions are we getting?

Winner:

KCS
10
 Why invest in knowledge management?

3. Why invest in knowledge management?

Now you now know what knowledge management and KCS are.
The next question is: why should you invest in these things? Here are 4 reasons:

You spend less time on recurring calls

1 A complete knowledge base lets you process recurring calls much
faster. In our experience, implementing this methodology reduces
the time spent resolving a call by 20%. And by making that knowledge
available to your customers, you can even prevent calls in the first
place by enabling customers to solve their own problems.

You increase your customer satisfaction levels

2 Your customers want the right answer quickly. A knowledge base
enables you to process more questions in your first line of support. It
also guarantees the quality of your answers, because the knowledge
used is based on the collective knowledge of your entire service desk.
One organization where we introduced knowledge management saw
their customer satisfaction go up from a 5 to an 8 out of 10.

11
 Why invest in knowledge management?

New employees are up and running much faster

3 Familiarizing a new co-worker often takes a lot of time, especially at a
skilled service desk. But what if your new co-worker had a complete
knowledge base at their disposal? They would be able to get started
right away and begin processing simple questions.

The work at the service desk becomes more fun

4 Solving things yourself provides a greater sense of satisfaction than
forwarding questions to other people. Working on complex issues
makes for more of a challenge than repetitive work. In short, KCS will
make the work at your service desk more fun. And as for why that’s
important, happy people provide better service! On top of that, it will
decrease staff turnover.

12
“Within a few months, we
have created 600 knowledge
articles. These articles are
frequently used to provide our
customers with solutions.”
Nico Schoenmaker,
Automation Coordinator, Pluryn

13
 Calculate how much time you would be saving

4. Calculate how much time you would be saving

Knowledge management helps you save time. But how much time, exactly?

In our experience, knowledge How many hours a week What percentage of calls
management leads to an do your teams spend on could be resolved faster?
average decrease of 20% in processing calls? This applies to questions,
the time it takes to resolve Estimate this figure. requests, and malfunctions.
recurring calls within 2 to Say you have 4 people Usually, around 60 to 90%
4 months. Around half of working fulltime in your front of all calls could be resolved
that time saved is used for office, and 4 people spend faster. Of course some calls,
supplementing and updating 2 days a week on calls in the such as complaints, can’t be
your knowledge base. This back office. You would then resolved more efficiently. You
means that the net reduction end up with the following will probably be able to see
in the time it takes to resolve calculation: [4 x 40] + [4 x 16] how many calls, requests,
recurring calls is 10%. = 224 hours a week. and malfunctions could be
resolved faster by consulting
To calculate your potential your service management
time savings, look up these tool. If the tool you use
2 figures: doesn’t let you create such
reports, then simply go
through a list of recent calls
and estimate the percentage.

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 Calculate how much time you would be saving

[…] hours a week spent on

Calculation example
calls x […]% of calls could be
Say your teams spend a joint
resolved faster using knowledge
total of 224 hours a week on
management x 0.10 (net time
processing calls, and 75% of
savings) = hours of time saved
your calls could be resolved
each week
faster if you implemented
knowledge management.
That would result in the
following calculation:

224 hours a week x 0.75 of

calls x 0.10 = 16.8 hours of
time saved each week.

This means that one of your

service desk employees could
spend 2 days each week
doing other things!

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 Implementing KCS

5. Implementing KCS
Now you know the advantages of KCS
it’s time to get started. The following
pages feature a step-by-step
approach to implementing KCS.

16
 Implementing KCS

Conditions

Can’t wait to implement KCS at your organization?

Keep the following things in mind:

• Does your manager agree to you spending time on KCS?

The start-up phase will give your team less time for
incoming calls.
• Do you want to give all your team members permission to
create and adjust knowledge items?

Did you answer ‘yes’ to all these questions?

Then let’s get started!

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 Implementing KCS

Step 1: Set your goals

Before you embark on your KCS journey, let’s start with setting some project goals.
How do you find out what management and your team members want?
Write your goals on post-its together with your project group. Then prioritize these goals.

In practice we come across these 6 goals:

• Reduce the call duration

• Do the same work with fewer people
• Improve the quality of service
• Improve the customers’ self-sufficiency
• Shorten the training period for new staff
• Make it easier to transfer work

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 Implementing KCS

Step 2: Determine the benchmark

Are your goals all set? Then it’s time to determine the benchmark.
The benchmark, or zero measurement, lets you discover how you’re currently
doing and where there’s room for improvement.

Make sure your benchmark

1 is based on a good
representation of the types
of calls you get. For instance,
try using all calls you received
last year.

See which calls you can solve

2 more quickly with knowledge
management, and break
this down for each operator
group or team.

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 Implementing KCS

Baseline per goal

Self-sufficiency: Fewer calls: customer satisfaction yet?
Check how many calls are Look at the average number Then we advise you to
logged via your self-service of calls per month for each perform another baseline
portal. After you’ve published operator team. measurement.
your knowledge base in your
self-service portal, it could Shorten average duration: Do your users already rate
happen that the number of Look at the average duration how well you’ve handled their
calls rises before it drops. per call for each operator calls? Check your average
Have you created knowledge group. Keep in mind that the score on processing calls.
items yet? See how often duration will increase after
they’ve been viewed. Keep the initial introduction of KCS,
in mind that a user isn’t because you’ll need time to
necessarily helped after create knowledge items for
they’ve read a knowledge each call you receive.
item.
Improved customer
Transfer fewer calls from experience:
one team to the other: If you want to measure
Look at the number of calls your customer satisfaction
that were transferred once, periodically, take a look at the
or more, from one team to score of your latest customer
another team, for instance satisfaction measurement.
from 1st to 2nd line support. Haven’t measured your

20
 Implementing KCS

Step 3: Design your KCS process

Map your current call process

Which steps do you follow when a call comes in? And do you
already have a knowledge management process in place?
If so, how does this process work? Do you ask colleagues
questions or look for answers in manuals?

In this step, it’s important that you’re realistic. Define how you
currently work, and not how you’d like to work.

Take a look at your KCS process and adjust it

where necessary
There is a standard process for KCS, but that doesn’t mean
that you have to follow that process to the letter. Take a look
at the KCS process and think about whether you want to make
any adjustments. For instance: are there elements from your
current notification process that you’d like to incorporate?

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 Implementing KCS

Step 4: Make a template for knowledge items

Are you wondering what Another advantage? How to create a knowledge

exactly you should write in Standardized forms. The item template? The next two
a knowledge item? It’s likely advantages of a template? pages feature a template,
that your employees don’t Your employees create and a filled in knowledge item
know either. Make it easy for knowledge items more as an example. When writing
your employees and create quickly, and you can be sure a knowledge item, make sure
a template for knowledge that they register all the that you always use your
items. necessary information. customer’s language.
For example, write ‘call’
instead of ‘incident’.

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 Implementing KCS

Template
Name This is the title of the knowledge item. Use a
keyword to start the title, followed by a colon.
Behind the colon you briefly indicate what the
knowledge item is about.

Description Start the description with a heading: ‘question’ or

‘problem’. With a question, the user would like an
answer to a question. In the case of a problem, the
user looks for a solution for a situation.

Content The content starts with a heading: ‘answer’ or

‘solution’. You answer the question or give the
solution to the problem. When solving the problem,
you should also mention the ‘cause’ if possible.
Start with a bold headline and describe the cause.

Explanation for Use this field to write information that the end user
operators doesn’t need to see. For example: a note for fellow
operators.

Keywords In this field you place keywords and synonyms for

previously used words. This way you can easily find
the knowledge item.

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 Implementing KCS

Filled out template

Name Printer: The printer doesn’t have enough paper.

Description Question: The printer indicates that it doesn’t

have enough paper. What should I do?

Content Answer: Normally, a red or flashing light indicates

that the printer is running low on paper. Remove
the paper tray and insert new paper. You will find
new paper in the cupboard next to the printer.

Explanation for Make sure that the paper supply is topped up by

operators facility management.

Keywords Printer, printer does not work, do not print, paper,

run out of paper, facility management

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 Implementing KCS

Step 5. Set up your service management tool to

support the KCS process
Every tool is different, but there are three important steps to take with every tool:

Make the knowledge system accessible to the entire team.

1 Why? Every service desk employee has knowledge that is valuable to share.
By sharing the knowledge in a knowledge item, you help your colleagues process
calls faster and better.

Determine how users can leave a response to knowledge items.

2 For instance: a rating with stars or thumbs, or enable them to leave comments.

Set up reports. The most important report: how many calls do you solve per month
3 with a knowledge item? Do you have other important goals? Make reports of these too.

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 Implementing KCS

Step 6: Train your team

You have a knowledge item template and you’ve set up you service management
tool to support the KCS process. Great! Now it’s time to get started with your team.
Take a couple of hours or a day to prepare your team for the new way of working.
How? With a training session. Here’s how it works.

What do you need?

• Flip chart
• Pens
• Post-its
• Computer or laptop for
each team member

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 Implementing KCS

1
Pinpoint obstacles and frustrations
regarding knowledge management
Take three hours, take a flip chart and ask the team This assignment reveals what you and your team
what problems they run into. Have them identify can improve. Nice work. This will make your team
obstacles and frustrations. Chances are you’ll hear enthusiastic about a new way of working.
the following: “nothing is ever up-to-date”,
and “the knowledge is scattered across the
organization”.

Explain the concept of KCS

2
What is KCS, and where does KCS come from? Talk
about what problems it solves and give practical
examples from other organizations. Do you need
help explaining KCS? Read our blog post about KCS
or watch our ‘What is KCS?’ video.

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 Implementing KCS

3
Explain and get to work
In chapter 4 you determined your KCS process. Now it’s time to start working with this
KCS process.

1 2 3

Step 1: Explain the method Step 2: Give a work Step 3: Getting started in
Tell the team how you will instruction the tool
work according to KCS. Show A message comes in: Let the team get started in
the process flow to make what now? Go through the the tool. If your employees
the KCS process even more process step by step in your walk through the process
transparent for the team. tool and your employees themselves, they’ll remember it
know what to do. better. How do you proceed?

1. Let everyone solve a few calls that often occur in your organization.

2. Have everyone pass on the call to their neighbor. If all goes well, the
neighbor should be able to deal with the report more quickly, because
the previous person has already recorded the necessary knowledge in
the knowledge item.

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 Implementing KCS

4 Set personal goals

The team can now get started in the tool with KCS.
Let everyone in the team set a goal for themselves.
For example: “I want to solve x percent of the calls
with a knowledge item”, “I want my knowledge item
to be viewed x times”, or “I want my knowledge
item to be used x times to solve a call”. Everyone
can get to work with their self-chosen goal.

You set up goals as an extra motivation.

After about a month you check whether the
personal goals have been achieved.

Let’s get started!

Is the training finished? Then the team can get to
work! Starting with knowledge management is
time-consuming. That’s why it’s not always realistic
to start working on knowledge management
immediately, 5 days a week. Start with 2 days a
week. Is this going well? Then you can extend the
number of days.

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 Implementing KCS

Coach the team and monitor progress

Your team now works with KCS. How do you ensure that your team continues to
work this way? Coach the team and monitor progress. In the beginning,
for example, plan weekly KCS meetings. Once your teams are on the right track,
switch to a meeting once a month.

Analyse the knowledge base • Which team member has the most-consulted knowledge
How do you monitor whether your knowledge base is used
items? Check for each per team member whether their
sufficiently and correctly? Together with the team, regularly
knowledge items are consulted frequently. It can happen
look at the following:
that someone creates a lot of knowledge items that a lot of
• What percentage of calls are solved with a knowledge item? people look at. What can other team members learn from
Check this for the entire team and per team member. this person?

• Is the knowledge item template filled in correctly? • Do you have a self-service portal? Check how often your
knowledge items are viewed in the portal.
• Which knowledge items are most frequently used? And
how often? These points are twofold. It lets you discover
whether the team actually consults knowledge items. And it
motivates your team members when they notice that their
knowledge items are being used.

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 Implementing KCS

Evaluate the process

How do you coach the team? Provide a flip chart or a stack
of post-its and go through the following questions with
your team:

• Do you like the new way of working?

• What are you running into? We often hear the following:
“I can’t find the time to write knowledge items”, “I find it
difficult to write a knowledge item”, “I’m afraid I don’t use the
right words when I’m writing a knowledge item”.
• Have we achieved the common goals we set out in advance?
See how things stand for each goal and compare it with the
baseline measurement or the previous month.
• Have you achieved your personal goals?

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Want more inspiration?

Knowledge management helps you to support If you have any questions or

your customers even better. But there are more suggestions after reading this
ways to do so! If you want to know how, subscribe e-book, let us know!
to TOPdesk’s blog, where we put our 25 years of Send an email to
service management experience into practical tips j.lumbela@topdesk.com of
and best practices. j.wapenaar@topdesk.com.

Go to blog.topdesk.com We’d love to hear from you!

Judith Lumbela
Joost Wapenaar