Best Knowledge Management Software for Salesforce

Integrating Knowledge With Salesforce CRM: Attributes to Look For in the KM Software

Changing customer expectations are posing a big challenge to service organizations, that are struggling to deliver the right knowledge at the right time, across all channels for both customers and agents.

Knowledge management is a critical—and often missing—technology piece.

Timely and contextual knowledge presented to agents in a clear and concise form is a pipe dream for most service environments, yet without it the service experience will always be in jeopardy. Knowledge is an underemphasized aspect of experience design and demands a higher prioritization. – Gartner

Many of the service organizations face additional challenges as they have made significant investments in Contact Center and CRM software (mainly used as “systems of record”) such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow, SAP. They do offer a knowledge management component, but it is not a core competency for them. They must also deal with additional complexity in choosing the right knowledge management software and integrating it with their existing systems, which takes time, effort, and cost. So the progressive service organizations are looking for the best knowledge management software which can not only coexist with their CRM Systems but also provide the best knowledge management capabilities to support their journey to knowledge-enable the customers, agents, and employees across the enterprise.

Is your organization also facing similar challenges in trying to find the best knowledge management software for your existing contact center/ CRM software and integrate the two?  Here are key attributes to look for in your knowledge management software system (and the solution provider) to maximize your odds of success.

1. Does it find?

Can the knowledge management software system find accurate answers fast when the customer is on the line and the pressure is on? Make sure your knowledge management software system makes findability easy with flexible search options so that the user can pick the path to the answer he/she likes.

eGain clients find: A leading retailer was able to deflect up to 60% of incoming calls with knowledge-enabled self-service.

• Read customer success story
  Hyper-growth SaaS company transforms customer and agent experience with Knowledge Hub

2. Does it federate?

Compiling answers from multiple sources and presenting them to customers while marking them as trusted/curated is called “search federation,” an important knowledge management software system requirement now. Likewise, the knowledge management software system should be able to “harvest” answers from such sources automatically and feed them to the knowledge manager for publishing as trusted knowledge.

eGain clients federate: Leading promotional products company federates search across multiple internal and external sources to answer questions from suppliers, distributors, business clients, and consumers, powered by eGain Knowledge Hub™.

3. Does it personalize?

The knowledge management software system should be able to personalize for authenticated customers or anonymous prospects, while making it easy to deliver relevant knowledge from one single knowledge base.

eGain clients personalize: A financial services BPO serves multiple clients from a single knowledge base, powered by eGain Knowledge Hub™. To make it easy and efficient for agents, eGain Knowledge delivers personalized views for them, depending on the clients they serve, their roles, and if the caller is a consumer.

4. Does it guide?

While an important business use of knowledge management software system is finding answers, the next-gen knowledge management software system should be able to guide agents and customers through next best steps in their conversations and processes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes guidance to the next level. AI-infused knowledge management software systems can handhold agents through customer interactions. The output might be step-by-step guidance to a customer goal like problem resolution or even a go/no-go decision on whether to take on or do something.

Watch out for pretenders like rigid scripting and rule-based systems that claim guidance. They tend to put agents and customers in conversation cul-de-sacs, especially when the customer goes off-script, and cannot make mid-course adjustments to move the interaction towards the customer goal. Moreover, such legacy systems are difficult and expensive to maintain.

eGain clients guide

• Global bank uses eGain’s patented AI technology to guide a largely novice agent pool through best-practice interactions across 11 countries, while reducing training requirements by half!
• A leading telco guides 10,000 contact center advisors and associates in 500 retail stores with eGain Knowledge for a 37% improvement in First-Contact Resolution (FCR), 50% improvement in advisor speed to competency, and a 20% boost to their NPS (Net Promoter Score).

5. Does it comply?

Compliance with ever-changing industry regulations, whether it is for content, access, or interaction, makes customer service even more challenging for companies, particularly in highly- regulated industries. In fact, 70% of compliance professionals expect increased regulations, 59% expect increased personal liability, and 69% expect compliance staffing costs to rise . This is where AI-enabled guidance offered by the knowledge management software system can help.

eGain clients comply: A marquee global bank guides advisors through a step-by-step dialog and industry-compliant questions as they qualify and onboard small business clients, with AI-powered eGain Knowledge Hub™. Another bank serves wholesale clients in multiple countries with a single eGain-powered AI system that incorporates the global parent’s best practices, while considering local regulations in those countries.

6. Does it embed in other systems?

Does the knowledge management software you are considering offer pre-built integrations so that the knowledge management capabilities can be embedded in the agent desktop provided by the “systems of record” providers such as call center infrastructure, CRM solution providers?

For an integrated experience, during call set up, the IVR data can be captured to pre-populate questions so that the agent can get a running start on the issue resolution process. After the call, the resolution transcript from the knowledge management software system can be automatically saved in the call tracking system along with the service request. The pre-built integrations of CRM/ contact center desktops with  of knowledge is important as the service organizations seek to minimize their efforts and the costs to integrate the two systems.

eGain clients embed knowledge

• A leading financial services BPO embeds eGain Knowledge in its CRM desktop where our solution leverages expanded context from caller information, IVR context, etc., to bootstrap the search for answers and resolution.
• A leading IT management services BPO embeds it in its agent desktop from a voice infrastructure provider, where the integrated solution enables great omnichannel support experiences and proactive customer engagement with contextual offers.

7. Does it pervade?

Clearly, the world has gone omnichannel. Can the knowledge management software system deliver consistent and channel-tailored knowledge on any channel or device? Can it bootstrap a human-assisted service conversation or an autonomous remote fix from device data?

eGain clients pervade

• A retail giant pushes contextual knowledge to omnichannel shoppers, related to ten brands which are their retail subsidiaries, across channels.
• Another retailer delivers knowledge across self-service, email, and chat to help shoppers across their journeys before and after the sale.
• A telco giant bootstraps service interactions with data and context gathered from the calling number even before the agent starts the conversation, and fixes problems remotely with the push of a button from the agent console!

8. Does it engage (proactively)?

Contact centers that want to differentiate themselves deliver contextual, personalized knowledge proactively across touchpoints to accelerate customer service journeys. Will the knowledge management software system you are considering allow you to proactively deliver knowledge across all the touchpoints easily?

eGain clients engage

• A leading catalog and digital retailer deflects requests for human-assisted chat by proactively pushing eGain-powered contextual knowledge to the shopper at the time of escalation to live chat. The same retailer makes over 50 million contextual content or promotional offers per year with eGain Knowledge and the offers engine.

9. Does it unify?

One of the top pain points in customer service is the inconsistency of answers across touchpoints. Is the knowledge management software system you are looking at capable of delivering knowledge that is personalized to the customer and the touchpoint from a single omnichannel knowledge source?

eGain clients unify

• A large US federal government healthcare system uses eGain-powered omnichannel knowledge across phone and digital channels to deliver consistent answers that are also compliant with regulations. The agency powers over 24,000 agents and 2 million self-service sessions per year with eGain with plans for additional use.
• A leading North America telco leverages eGain Knowledge across web self-service and voice channels for consistent omnichannel service. A major telco leverages a unified omnichannel knowledge base across 10,000 contact center advisors and 500 retail stores!

10. Does it make it easy?

Out-of-the-box knowledge management functionality, proven domain expertise, best-practice methodology, ease of trial, ease of deployment, and ease of optimization are critical to creating business value with knowledge. Will the knowledge management software system you are considering provide best practices, expertise, methodologies to make it easy for deployment of enterprise in your enterprise?

eGain clients ease into knowledge management

• A multinational manufacturer of cleaning systems piloted eGain digital engagement and proactive knowledge solutions as part of eGain Innovation in 30 Days. Happy with the results from the pilot and the hands-on guidance provided by domain experts for success, they moved forward with the eGain partnership.
• A toy manufacturing leader, a household name equipped their entire agent pool with contextual knowledge to serve consumers for its own brands and third-party brands that white-labeled its products.

11. Does it “pay”?

Historically, knowledge management use in contact centers and the enterprise has been limited by weak technology and generic content management substitutes. Not all knowledge management software system providers walk the walk when it comes to delivering actual success.

eGain Knowledge Hub™ for Salesforce scores highly on all the key attributes mentioned above.

Leading US insurer deployed eGain for Salesforce to hundreds of agents across the enterprise. The business saw an overwhelming use of the knowledge system and 97% successful knowledge search rate with an average of 99K monthly knowledge article views.

Payroll and human capital management software provider’s employees saw improvements all around — 60% in confidence in answer, 35% in finding the right answer, 62% in consistency of answers, and 67% in time to answer with eGain Knowledge embedded with their Salesforce CRM.

Find eGain for Salesforce on the Salesforce AppExchange