I have so many blog posts in draft, I don't know what holds me to post them, why I don't think they're ready for posting. It's been too long and there are always new thoughts or new things that I could blog about - I just have to finalize the post and click on 'Publish'. So this is the plan for the coming period: publish. The first one now is one that I wrote for the Sequal Consulting blog (in Dutch) about KCS (Knowledge Centered Service). We’re in the process of publishing them and I’ve translated the first blog post for this blog. I’ll leave out the company information and the call to action (my personal blog is not meant for generating business). This first post about KCS digs a bit into the history of the method and the Consortium for Service Innovation.
“What if we could capture, structure, and reuse the support experience?”
In 1992, a number of large American companies that have a customer support organization got together in Seattle. They all had the same issue: an increasing demand for support and they were all looking for a better way to solve customer issues with knowledge. Software usage had boomed, but with that the demand for help. While it initially were software developers who solved these issues, now it was a service desk that was installed to answer the first questions.
Service desk employees needed the knowledge of specialists to answer questions; specialists that often have so many other issues on their mind. A knowledge base with answers to questions seemed like the solution, so the service desk employees could answer those questions instead of having to ask every time again.
With the development of the knowledge base, often new problems arose:
- The knowledge quickly became outdated, for example when there had been software updates, making it difficult to maintain the knowledge base;
- The information could not be found, so service desk employees started to keep track of their own information somewhere else, such as in an Excel file or in their e-mail inbox;
- A technical writer was appointed to enter the information in the knowledge base. As a next step, the information had to be approved. All this time, the service desk employees were waiting for the information…
Looking for a systematic way to harvest knowledge
Companies lacked a methodical way to set up and maintain such knowledge base. And, if all those companies had the same problem, perhaps they could learn from each other and collectively look for a solution? “What if we could capture, structure, and reuse the support experience?” It’s the start of the Consortium for Service Innovation and the method KCS (Knowledge Centered Service). KCS is the result of best practices from members of the Consortium for capturing, sharing, and reuse knowledge.
Overall, KCS strives to:
- Create content as a by-product of answering questions
- Evolve content based on demand and usage
- Develop a KB (knowledge base) of our collective experience to-date
- Recognize learning, collaboration , sharing and improving
KCS (now version 6) is used in many large and small companies, especially where it was once developed: North America. The method is less well known in the Netherlands or in Europe, although the number of organizations that use KCS is slowly increasing. In the Netherlands, for example, UWV, SVB and Ellips have experience with KCS. KCS can be applied not only in the (IT) service organization, but also in HR, Sales and education. Actually, any knowledge-intensive organization can benefit from this method.
The Consortium for Service Innovation is a not-for-profit member organization. Companies, such as Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, DSV and Ericsson are among its members. This means that they can exchange experiences with peers and think along about how to improve the customer experience. In addition, members are the first to receive information about the other methods the Consortium is working on in the member environment.
All KCS v6 documentation is freely available on the website of the Consortium, there are many resources to dig into.
KCS® is a trademark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.
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