VoC to the Rescue One of our clients does a fantastic job supporting a critical and complex hardware, software, and wireless networking solution. But, they faced a familiar challenge: since customer satisfaction was so high, the C-suite wondered aloud if they were overinvesting in Support. Support budgets came under increasing scrutiny. Fortunately, this company has […]
KCS Principles Can Fix Content Management
We’re covering a big topic, so this is a longer post than usual. TL;DR: Apply KCS principles to Content Management, too. We’ve written before about the differences between KM and CM (see Knowledge Management vs. Content Management). Briefly, KM focuses on short structured articles that are about one thing, while CM focuses on longer-form content […]
Changing Expectations of Support
The Association of Support Professionals (ASP) recently published a report entitled The Changing Expectations of Support (membership required, and I encourage you to join if you haven’t!). It’s eye-opening. The clear message is, what was good enough no longer is. Here are some of the thoughts I shared with Al when he interviewed me for […]
The Care and Feeding of Taxonomies, Part 3: How to Design Them
Having said why it’s important to get taxonomies right, and what makes a good taxonomy, I should let you know how you can do taxonomy design on your own. In our taxonomy workshops, we facilitate organizations through this design process: Take an inventory. What taxonomies are currently in use by marketing, the marketing website, user communities, […]
KCS Case Study: Extreme Networks Does It Right
The Consortium for Service Innovation just published a new KCS case study we wrote highlighting the success of Extreme Networks in implementing KM, self-service, and communities. I encourage you to read it—there are good lessons for any KCS practitioner. In this blog, I’d like to complement the case study with my perspective as their consultant. […]
The Care and Feeding of Taxonomies, Part 2: What Makes a Good Taxonomy?
Now that we’ve seen why taxonomies are important, it’s time to discover what makes for a good taxonomy. Effective and useful taxonomies have the following properties. Common Across Systems. Many enterprise applications require taxonomies to work properly. Since these enterprise applications are managed by different groups, it’s natural that each taxonomy will start out different and […]
“Sensible” Support Policies and their Unintended CX Consequences
TL;DR: It’s better to trust and empower Tier 1 than to make customers run through the gauntlet because you only allow Tier 3 to do certain things. I want to share my support customer journey this week–not to complain, but to prompt some reflection on the CX implications of well-intentioned support policies. A week and […]
The Care and Feeding of Taxonomies, Part 1: Why Should I Care?
This is the first in a series of four blog posts about taxonomies. In this one, it’s my job to explain why what sounds like an incredibly dry topic really makes a difference. In succeeding posts, I’ll describe what makes a good taxonomy, provide a step-by-step approach to creating yours, and lay out some common […]
You Need a Dedicated KCS Program Manager
If you don’t have a plan for having dedicated KCS℠ program management, we won’t lead a KCS Design Workshop for you. (With regret.) You’ll be wasting your money and our time. Our fourteen years of doing this have taught us a few things about what works and what doesn’t. A dedicated KCS Program Manager works; […]
Implementing Technology: Cow Paths Bad; Goat Paths Good
At Dreamforce last week, conversations turned to good and bad ways of implementing a new CRM system—and really, any enterprise technology that’s helping automate business processes.
