Know-It-Alls

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 CRMCRM 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. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de

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 OracleOracle 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. Alles zu Oracle auf CIO.de

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."