Sample Solutions as First Step to Knowledge Management

Abstract: Knowledge Management and Customer Care are regarded to be able to strengthen the competitive capability of a company. Knowledge Management is supposed to increase the innovative power for problem solving whereas Customer Relationship Management is supposed to increase the customer satisfaction and thereby the customer loyalty. This case study followed a mixed approach to combine aspects from the Knowledge Management and the Customer Relationship Management. Matter of this study was a small-size organization that had a demand for a ticket system for the 2nd and 3rd level support as part of their customer service. Because of an increasing volume of incoming requests, it was necessary to change the system from e-mail clients to a ticket system. Additionally, the company wanted to assure that all agents are able to process all types of requests in order to keep up good service quality even if the experts are not available. For this reason, the concept of this study was not only to introduce a ticket system, but also to implement a Knowledge Base storing the knowledge how to solve the requests in shape of sample solutions. The aim of the study was to find out whether such an approach would be possible, what the success influencing factors would be and what effect such an approach would have on the overall Knowledge Management practices. For this purpose the study made use of qualitative research methods, like interviews and observations, throughout the whole project’s duration. As a result, the project was not able to deliver the desired insights completely. The introduction of the pure ticket system was very successful as the employees reported an improvement of their working processes. The Knowledge Base however was not used during the observation period at all. As a standard risk for projects, late hardware delivery, turned into a problem and used up the planed buffers, the remaining time for observation, whether the Knowledge Base would be used or not, was too short. Therefore, it is necessary to do a follow-up study and assess whether the effect only is late or there is no effect. It might even be necessary to prove the approach in another environment, as the studied company very much relies on the personalization approach for Knowledge Management. Because of the well developed communication culture at the studied company, the employees prefer direct communication for knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. That inhibits knowledge codification as a Knowledge Management approach. This itself, of course is a valuable insight.