Know-It-Alls

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."