Synchronize or Perish: Real-Time Knowledge Transfer across the Enterprise
1 Jul, 2004
By: John Hudson,Steven ShawSuccess in today’s fiercely competitive global economy depends on an organization’s ability to change and its employees’ abilities to respond. New products are introduced far more frequently, with new software tools and processes implemented regularly. In this kind of environment, the “learn today and apply next week” training model simply doesn’t work. What’s needed is what training typically fails to deliver: just enough relevant learning (knowledge), delivered just in time for the task at hand. This phenomenon has a dramatic effect on the contact center environment.
Contact center employees require current information to meet customers’ service needs effectively and to enable sales. They are also well-positioned to extract requirements, perceptions and unfulfilled customer needs. Leading contact centers are currently benefiting from the use of Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) in this environment. Essentially, an LCMS provides a very effective means for capturing, managing and transferring knowledge. In the context of a contact center environment, knowledge assets and customer information can be managed in a repository (database), assisting product design, marketing and business strategy, thus allowing the contact center to play a key role as a broker of knowledge within the enterprise.
Conquering Limitations
Picture the basic contact center environment: employees sitting at computer stations continuously on the phone. There is rarely downtime to provide training, yet well-trained employees who increase their skills and knowledge are better able to serve callers on the first contact, make informed decisions and resolve customer dilemmas without involving senior staff. Scheduling staff to be away from the phones for hours or even days to attend training is a poor use of resources. A better strategy is to deliver training right to the desktop via e-learning using a LCMS, enabling employees to access material immediately when needed.
Capturing Knowledge
A LCMS allows content to be structured in small “chunks”, indexed into a topic structure (taxonomy), and tagged with descriptive information (metadata). Building content in smaller components, indexing and tagging these components, brings several benefits. First, it allows for flexibility in delivery as training content can be matched to individual needs. Second, increased search ability promotes re-use of content by developers and enables effective just-in-time learning and performance support strategies.
Advanced LCMSs feature powerful, easy-to-use authoring tools, which enable rapid development of rich, interactive learning content. They also offer functionality to support distributed work teams (including version control and workflow management tools). With these features and functionality, LCMSs enable developers to produce engaging courses more rapidly and more cost effectively than with traditional authoring and media development tools.
An advanced LCMS enables employees to view, right on their computer screens, exact scenarios of other contact center employees interacting with customers in a particular situation. Highly interactive scenarios can be developed, incorporating role-plays where the learner works through exercises requiring analysis, judgment and problem solving.
Managing Knowledge
Keeping content up to date in a cost-effective way is a tremendous challenge. Yet, when sales and support staff are without the latest information, their productivity drops dramatically. They can’t possibly provide quality customer support for a product without in-depth and up-to-date knowledge. A LCMS allows for content to be updated regularly, keeping pace with the rapid changes in a dynamic business environment. This is accomplished because content is stored in small chunks that are searchable and can be retrieved in many different ways (using taxonomies, metadata and other filters) and because content is stored separately from structure, allowing a form of single source content management. Single source means that if the same content appears in different places (e.g., different courses), it exists only in one place in the repository. Therefore it need only be updated or revised in that one occurrence for the same changes to be reflected throughout its different uses. Consider the image of a credit card, which appears 20 times throughout a retail-lending curriculum. With a LCMS, the image will exist in one place in the repository. From there, it is drawn into and re-used within different courses or modules.
With a LCMS, revised information or notifications of updates can be sent directly to specific employees based on their profiles, or to those who have taken the courses. This is extremely beneficial when products and services change quickly and employees need the latest information. Additionally, managers can monitor who has reviewed the updates to ensure their team is current with the available knowledge.
The content can also be tagged for shelf life (through metadata information tags), so the LCMS knows when the information expires and needs to be replaced.
Push and Pull Applications
There are two primary ways to train employees using a LCMS. First, a portal is created so employees can pull content to suit their needs, given the constraints of their environments. Second, the LCMS is used to measure performance in real time and set up to push content to employees to address identified problems.
Traditionally, pulling content essentially meant choosing courses from a catalogue. With a LCMS, employees can pull content relevant to the problems they are having, using a search tool that filters based on metadata tags. What they can retrieve are more precise chunks of knowledge that are more relevant to the task at hand.
Traditionally, pushing content has simply meant courses are mandated for employees based on their job role and other dimensions of their profile (e.g., region, language) or based on the results of performance appraisals. A LCMS can also channel training this way. More significantly, though, a LCMS can also use performance data to drive training content to individuals based on their real performance gaps. For example, the contact center application tracks all the calls made by representatives. By establishing some basic benchmarks or business rules concerning acceptable performance and by setting up the right taxonomies and metadata, the LCMS can take reports of performance as input, and push related content to individuals whose performance needs improving.
Customer Applications
Customers expect 24-hour customer service. Accordingly, the LCMS can be used as the underlying platform to build a support site, enabling customers to pull content for themselves from the content repository. For example, a customer is trying to hook up a home entertainment system after hours. Instead of waiting until the next day’s “normal business hours”, this customer can go to a website and pull content, such as frequently asked questions (FAQs) and installation instructions, or see videos of how to complete the installation.
LCMS: A Strategic Resource
While on paper it may appear easy to schedule contact center employees for on-the-job training, the reality is that training doesn’t happen, occurs sporadically or only benefits a few employees. By integrating e-learning with contact center applications through a LCMS, easily accessible training based specifically on an employee’s needs is delivered right to the desktop. Organizations can use this strategic resource to arm their employees with the right tools to answer questions and solve problems effectively and efficiently.
Lessons from the Field: Dell Inc.
When a company introduces a new product, there is often a need for training in conjunction with the product. Typically, this is a complex process involving the training department finding experts who know about the product, and then working with these experts, writers and technical people to develop the training. There are often numerous revision cycles and reviews. Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS), including built-in workflow tools, streamline this process. Template-based tools requiring no specialized skills make it easy to build, update and deploy content to a network-accessible learning portal.
Instead of waiting for the training department to develop and schedule new training, other staff from engineering, marketing or product development can develop or update content for new products, policies and procedures. The system sends out automated notifications to appropriate groups, tracks results and produces reports so managers know who has taken the training and what their retention levels are.
Dell Inc. is a global leader in computer hardware design, manufacturing and distribution. Dell uses Eedo’s ForceTen LCMS technology to deliver training to its sales forces, using a pull approach. When new products roll out, announcements are made regarding available courses. These courses may be 20 minutes long and are accessed via the LCMS so an employee can zero in on exactly what is needed. Dell has created standards (templates) within the LCMS to speed up the development process, to ensure outsourced content developers adhere to their requirements, and to simplify quality control. Using this system, Dell is able to capture and transfer knowledge effectively and efficiently, demonstrating key aspects of a real-time knowledge model.
The results speak for themselves. Training development costs have decreased 55 percent. At the same time, rapid deployment, universal access and faster uptake have also been achieved, and sales productivity has increased by 20 percent. These kinds of results are clear evidence of the true and concrete value of LCMS technology.
