North American Knowledge Management (KM) Market View for Customer Care, 2021 Updated Research Available

Knowledge management (KM) is a mature technology area that can be broadly applied across all areas of business. Initially, KM was aimed at gathering and sharing of knowledge within an organization (across documents, databases, and other sources). One of the most critical early components of KM was content management; an organization’s data and information were made available to stakeholders through portals or dashboards, spurning the need for enterprise content management (ECM) systems.

Over time, all the developments in this space have made the concept quite complex. KM systems and applications can be found in every type of enterprise and vertical market. KM solutions enable data and information of all types to be created, published, and managed from an infinite number of sources, including documents, video, databases, call logs, speech and text analytics, customer and partner communities, Web site activity, search engines, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and people (all this can be done historically and in real time).

KM is particularly germane in the area of customer contact. Here, data sources not only include systems of record, such as customer interaction history or customer relationship management (CRM) databases, but also ongoing knowledge culled from the workforce of agents and supervisors and insights gleaned from customer/agent interactions. For example, analytics solutions such as speech and text analytics provide some of the largest datasets in the world and allow companies to mine information from all customer interactions. These provide insights on myriad aspects of customer engagement, including but not limited to:
• Customer sentiment and intent
• Agent training needs
• Opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling goods and services
• Competitive threats and opportunities

As customer care organizations expand offerings that cater to a highly technical consumer populace and seek to digitally transform customer care, KM can play an extensive role in simplifying service delivery and enriching customer and agent interaction.

This Frost & Sullivan study examines the importance of a solid KM strategy and the benefits it can bring to an organization looking to elevate the customer care and the employee experiences. It analyzes the greatest areas of KM impact, recent developments, growth drivers and restraints, and growth opportunities for market participants. The study also addresses the challenges and the benefits related to making a KM investment and makes recommendations for companies to create a successful KM strategy. Included in the insight is a sampling of solution provider profiles and use-cases for each of the core areas of KM, as examples of the benefits attained through its use.

Author: Nancy Jamison