What is Knowledge Management Platform? How to Choose

According to Gartner, ROI for customer engagement digital transformation programs is stunted by poor user experience. Boards and CXOs are also taking note of the negative impact of going “digital without transformation” in customer engagement. What is the solution?

Organizations need a modern knowledge management platform
How do you choose a knowledge management platform
Benefits of Having a Knowledge Management platform
8 requirements from a knowledge Management platform
Best knowledge management platform in the industry

Organizations Need a Modern Knowledge Management Platform

Getting value from digital transformation investments requires businesses to not only put in place digital connectivity (plumbing) for easier customer connection but also modernize their knowledge management systems with a knowledge management platform to serve relevant, personalized content that flows through the plumbing.

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from building a “modern knowledge brain,” powered by a complete knowledge management platform, to match their “digital body.” (Ashu Roy, The Missing Ingredient In Digital Transformation Targeting Customer Engagement, Forbes)

Gartner asserts that enterprises with mature digital transformation programs are nowadays investing disproportionately in next-gen knowledge management platforms to feed the digital plumbing with relevant knowledge and guidance.

How Do You Choose a Knowledge Management Platform?

Knowledge management as a discipline aims to provide access to the right knowledge at the right time and across all touchpoints to customers, prospects, partners, and employees. It is how an organization gathers, creates, curates, distributes, uses, and manages knowledge in a knowledge base, the single source of truth. The definition and concept are simple but the task of choosing and implementing a knowledge management platform to meet the needs of customer service organizations isn’t.

Once an enterprise has decided to invest in a knowledge management platform, the question is how do you choose the best knowledge management platform to build a modern knowledge brain in 2022 and beyond? In the pursuit of an answer to this question, the customer service and business leaders should keep some best practices in mind.

Set a high bar: Establish exec sponsorship with clear three-year transformation objectives with interim milestones to evaluate progress and value creation to sustain momentum and exec support.
Avoid knowledge silos. A comprehensive knowledge management platform includes content management, profiled access, conversational guidance, analytics, and so on with a platform that includes technologies such as AI, ML, NLP, connectors, and API libraries. Going with siloed products for each one of these areas creates fragmented and inconsistent silos across content, process guidance, business rules, and access. These silos multiply when each department – customer service, sales, HR, and others – creates its own silo. Look for a one-stop centralized knowledge management platform that includes all these components, which can be used across user touchpoints and departments.
Look for quick value: Invest in the right knowledge management platform which can deliver quick value in months and not in years. Is it a rich solution with out-of-the-box capabilities or is it a toolkit that needs time-consuming and expensive programming and customization?
Look for domain expertise and at-scale success: Choose a partner who can provide good knowledge technology and best implementation practices to drive enthusiastic adoption and quick value. Ask them to connect you with their clients who achieved transformational results at scale.

Benefits of Having a Knowledge Management Platform

Customer feedback

From concept to deployment eGain has been there to help us see our vision of knowledge come to life. We have successfully migrated 5,000 plus content articles and 6,0000 SharePoint documents to create a powerful AI driven knowledge base that is the center of support for our employees. (Manufacturer who is an eGain client, Gartner Peer Insights review)

From the perspective of a contact center/customer service organization, an effective knowledge management platform should deliver the following benefits:

Accurate and consistent answers across channels and touchpoints
Faster Speed to Answer
Better First-Contact Resolution (FCR)
Reduced need for agent training and onboarding
Improved customer, agent, and employee experiences
Improved customer satisfaction
Information and process-compliant with regulations and best practices

8 Requirements From the Platform

For you to reap these benefits, you must ensure that the knowledge management platform being considered by you has these 8 key characteristics:

1. Findability

A successful knowledge management platform presents accurate answers fast when the customer is on the line and the pressure is on. It should provide multiple ways for users to get to the right answers, by letting them pick and choose the quickest path to the answer such as FAQs, Keyword search, Natural language search, Federated search, Topic tree browsing, and AI-powered guidance.

2. Federation

We all understand that the content in the enterprises resides in disparate sources—CRM systems, content management systems, document management systems, social web, online communities and in different formats. A good knowledge management platform should provide access to disparate knowledge to users by federated search capabilities, compiling answers from multiple sources. The system also be able to “harvest” answers from external systems and route them for publishing as trusted knowledge.

3. Personalization

Finding accurate answers and getting to resolution is good, but the user’s quest for answers can be full of twists and turns that can be very time consuming to work through. A good knowledge platform increases speed-to-answer by being hyper-relevant right from the start by personalizing for customer preferences, agent roles, and agent skills. The right knowledge management platform should also be able to personalize for authenticated customers and anonymous prospects alike while making it easy to deliver accurate knowledge from the knowledge management platform.

4. AI Guidance

While an important business use of knowledge management is finding answers, next-gen knowledge management platforms should be able to guide agents and customers through next-best steps in their conversations and processes. Smart knowledge management platforms like eGain Knowledge Hub™ use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to take guidance to the next level.

Don’t be fooled by pretenders like rigid scripting and rule-based systems that claim guidance but are difficult and expensive to maintain.

5. Compliance

Staying compliant with government and industry regulations and enterprise best practices can be very challenging. Around 70% of compliance professionals expect increased regulations, 59% expect increased personal liability, and 69% expect compliance staffing costs to rise. A mature, AI-guided knowledge management platform enables your business to stay current with ever-changing industry regulations particularly in highly-regulated industries— whether it’s for content, access, process, or interaction.

For example, a marquee global bank uses eGain’s AI-powered Knowledge Management Platform to guide advisors through a step-by-step industry-compliant dialog as they qualify and onboard small business clients.

6. Ability to integrate

A key capability required in a sophisticated knowledge management platform is the ability of have two-way integrations with “systems of record” providers—call center infrastructure, CRM, and content management solutions, so that the customers and agents get accurate answers across touchpoints.

A mature knowledge management platform like eGain Knowledge Hub™ provides out-of-the-box connectors to embed knowledge in the agent desktops, where customer service reps or agents can find fast, accurate answers for customer questions. eGain Knowledge Management Platform provides pre-built Connectors to the leading CRM and contact center (CC) platforms such as

7. Omnichannel support

Clearly, the world has gone omnichannel. To be effective, a good knowledge management platform should deliver consistent and channel-tailored knowledge on any channel or device.

8. Analytics

The right knowledge management platform should provide advance knowledge analytics to facilitate measurement of your knowledge capability.

Is your knowledge base delivering?
Are the knowledge articles answering the right questions?
Where are the bottlenecks?

When you have the insights, you can fine-tune your knowledge base quickly and frequently.

Knowledge platform needs analytics

If you are looking for the best knowledge management platform, make sure that you look for these 8 characteristics. When all the elements fall in their place, knowledge management transforms customer service.

Best Knowledge Management Platform in the Industry: Choose eGain Knowledge Hub

eGain Knowledge Hub™ provides you all these critical capabilities and is probably the only knowledge management platform which comes out ahead on all these capabilities and features. It elevates the performance of all contact center agents and delivers wow in self-service. Powered by AI and ML, it provides conversational guidance for agents and customers, helping deliver accurate answers across touchpoints.