Quelle: CIO USA
WHEN MARCONI WENT ON a shopping spree and acquired 10telecommunications companies over a three-year period, itfaced a serious challenge: How could the $3 billionmanufacturer of telecommunications equipment ensure that itstechnical support agents knew enough about newly acquiredtechnology to provide quick and accurate answers tocustomers on the phone? And how could Marconi bring newagents up to speed on all the company's products?
Marconi's technical support agents – 500 engineersscattered in 14 call centers around the globe – fieldapproximately 10,000 questions every month about thecompany's products. Before the acquisitions, agents hadrelied on Tactics Online, an extranet where they andcustomers could search for frequently asked questions andtext documents. As new agents and products joined thecompany's ranks, Marconi wanted to supplement the websitewith a more comprehensive knowledge management system. Asengineers from the newly acquired companies came on board,however, they were hesitant to share their knowledge aboutthe products they had been supporting. "They felt that theirknowledge was a security blanket that helped guarantee theirjobs," says Dave Breit, director of technology and R&D formanaged services in Warrendale, Pa. "With all of theacquisitions, it was essential that we all avoid hoardingknowledge and share it instead."
At the same time, Marconi wanted to streamline its customerservice organization by making more of its product andsystems information available directly to customers andshortening the length of customer calls. "We wanted toleverage the Web for customer self-service versus increasingthe number of agents," Breit says. "We also wanted toprovide our frontline engineers [who interact directly withcustomers] with more information more quickly so that theycould resolve more calls faster."
Building on a KM Foundation
When Marconi began evaluating knowledge managementtechnologies in the spring of 1998, the concept of sharingknowledge among agents was nothing new. Agents were alreadyaccustomed to working in teams of three or four people,gathering in war room fashion to solve customers' technicalissues. And a year earlier, Marconi had started basing apercentage of agents' quarterly bonuses on the amount ofknowledge they submitted to Tactics Online as well as theirinvolvement with mentoring and training other agents. "Eachagent was expected to teach two training classes and write10 FAQs to earn their full bonus," says Breit. "When webrought new companies online, the new agents received thesame bonus plan. This approach allowed us to build a veryopen knowledge-sharing environment."
To augment Tactics Online, Marconi chose software fromServiceWare Technologies, in part because its technologywould integrate easily with the company's Remedy CRM system,which agents use to log incoming calls from customers andtrack other customer interactions. In addition, says Breit,Marconi wanted its agents to populate its existing Oracledatabase of product information.
Breit's division spent six months implementing the newsystem and training agents. The system – dubbedKnowledgeBase – is linked to the company's CRM system and ispowered by the Oracle database. The integrated view ofMarconi's customers and products provides agents with acomprehensive history of interactions. Technical supportagents can, for example, put markers in the database andimmediately pick up at the point where the customer lastspoke with another agent.
On the Front Line
Tactics Online complements the new system. "The data storedin KnowledgeBase are specific troubleshooting tips and hintson our various product lines," says Zehra Demiral, managerof knowledge management systems. "Tactics Online, on theother hand, is more of a doorway for customers to come intoour customer support organization. From there, customers canaccess KnowledgeBase or their service requests or our onlinetraining manuals."
Technical support agents now rely on KnowledgeBase for thelatest solutions to customers' product and systemsproblems. Level 1 agents answer all incoming calls, solvecustomers' problems when possible, record the calls in thecompany's CRM system and transfer the more difficult callsup the line to Level 2 agents. Level 2 agents, meanwhile,are the heart of the organization, composing about 70percent of the technical support organization. They handlethe more difficult calls and troubleshoot and diagnoseequipment and network problems. "They're the majority of ourknowledge users and contributors," says Breit. "They writeup a synopsis of the call and feed it into KnowledgeBase [onan ongoing basis] so that other agents can refer to thesolution later."
After Level 2 agents submit their knowledge "raw" to aholding queue, Level 3 agents confirm the accuracy of theinformation, make any necessary changes and then submit thedocument to Demiral. (Level 3 agents also act asconsultants, helping Level 2 agents solve problems andserving as intermediaries between the agents and thecompany's engineering departments.) The entire process ofupdating the KnowledgeBase system with a new solutiontypically takes between three days and two weeks.
As Breit anticipated, implementing KnowledgeBase has changedthe agents' roles. Level 1 agents, for example, now do morein-depth troubleshooting because they have more informationavailable at their fingertips. In fact, they solve twice asmany calls themselves (50 percent instead of 25 percent) ina shorter time (10 minutes versus 30 minutes). Since Level 1agents can handle more calls, this group has doubled in sizeduring the past two years.
The transition wasn't quite as painless, however, for theLevel 2 and Level 3 agents. Indeed, their roles changedsignificantly. "Rather than simply submitting HTML pages toTactics Online, they were now asked to analyze the problemsin a very procedural way and create diagnostic 'trees,"says Breit. "That's a more analytical way to think through aproblem. Most of these guys had thought in terms of 'what isthe fastest way to solve a problem' rather than 'what is themost efficient way to solve a problem."
With hundreds of people submitting solutions, Marconi tendedto get a lot of wheel reinvention. "There can be five or sixways to solve the [same] problem, but there's one way that'smost efficient," Breit says. To unearth and disseminate themost efficient solutions, agents were required to flowcharteach of their solutions for the first three months followingKnowledgeBase's launch. "It's amazing how many [agents] wereunconscious of their own methodologies," says Breit. "It wassomewhat painful, but they eventually felt they benefitedbecause they understood how they solve problems."
As a result, agents now create technical solutions forcustomers in the most efficient – and logical –way possible instead of simply offering a "quick and dirty"solution. Think of the difference between simply being toldwhat keys to strike on your PC and being taught how yoursoftware works and the logic behind executing a certainsequence of keystrokes. Once you actually understand how theproduct works, you can use the software more effectively andresolve more problems yourself.
Agents also had to change the way they present the solutionsto customers. "We wanted to provide a collaboration tool foremployees and a library source for our customers," saysDemiral. "Engineers wanted to provide a lot of detailedinformation yet we needed a degree of simplicity forcustomers. Most of the time, the immediate focus is on whata great collaboration tool this is and how it overcomesgeographical distance among agents. Then I have to remind[agents] that this is a tool that we want customers to useand that they'll have to organize, write and present thecontent with customers in mind."
Making It Work
Demiral spent a lot of time working with the Level 3 agentsto make their solutions less complex and streamline thereview process. "We had to go through two iterations of howto organize and present the content," Demiralsays. "Customers tend to think in terms of the product andthen the problem. But engineers often think about theproblem first and then the product."
The result: Customers often wouldn't fully understand thesolution. At the same time, Marconi had to work at easingLevel 3 agents' concerns that making them responsible forreviewing solution content would suddenly turn them intotechnical writers.
Marconi confronted cultural issues as well. "Business needsare different in different parts of the world," saysDemiral. "What may be normal business practice for Americansmay not be common elsewhere." In Europe, for example, thevalue of the KnowledgeBase system was not readilyaccepted. But once employees there saw that customers coulduse the system to solve some of their own problems, they goton board. Such an experience has been incorporated into howMarconi approaches KM. "We sometimes have to introduce theidea of knowledge management over time, validate it, andthen move forward," Demiral says.
To ensure that agents continue contributing new knowledge toKnowledgeBase, Marconi uses rewards. Besides bonuses,knowledge contributors receive recognition during meetingsand in a newsletter. "Rewards help feed this culture," Breitsays. "Peer pressure also plays a role. Everyone wants tocontribute because it's the right thing to do. You also haveto make sure that the system works well and that employeesuse it long enough to see it work. It has to be embedded intraining and fully integrated into daily operations so thatit just becomes part of how you do business."