As a project manager, you’re in charge of a lot of people and a lot of data. You’ve got to ensure that everyone on your team can gather the information they need as quickly as possible. It can be a complex task that used to be easier when everyone was in the office. The employees could walk over to an associate to ask questions and get a quick response. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, many project teams are now working remotely from home, so the idea of sharing information has become more of a challenge than it was in the past.

The solution is to implement knowledge management techniques and make a database of information your team can use and contribute to from wherever they’re currently operating. Let’s look at how knowledge management can improve your remote team.

Knowledge Management And Remote Work

Knowledge management allows anyone in your team to collect, organize, and share any information they need about anything, from HR policies to product roadmaps to holiday calendars, with very little fuss. This information can be stored anywhere, from a server at corporate to the cloud. Basically, it’s where anyone can get to it quickly.

When you think about it, a knowledge management information database is perfect for a remote project team because they can still work to their full potential without sitting in the physical office. On top of that, when the information they need is at their fingertips, your employees can get what they need without stopping their current tasks to seek out the information. Studies show that it can take 25 minutes to get back on task after a distraction, which can be devastating when you’re on a tight deadline. After all, it’s easy enough to get distracted by noise and family when working from home as it is.

Many remote employees, especially those who work as part of a project management team, may try to work varied schedules, which could be early in the morning or sometimes at night. Online knowledge management allows team members to access the information they require whenever needed, which provides maximum flexibility. Employees can often be more creative when they work on their own schedule. So, this tech can allow them to reach their full potential for the good of the team.

Why Knowledge Management Is Ideal for Remote Teams

A good knowledge management system is excellent for any company, including those in brick-and-mortar stores. However, these types of databases are ideal for remote teams because it helps to meditate on some of the challenges of this type of work environment.

In addition to the lack of face-to-face contact with co-workers, working remotely has other surprising health risks, including those that have to do with mental well-being. A common side effect of working from home is an increased risk of burnout, which can occur when employees are unable to properly manage stress at work.

One potential cause of workplace stress is if an employee needs information that they cannot find. If this occurs continuously, and the employee is not able to receive the help they need from managers or co-workers, burnout symptoms can ensue. You can avoid this potential issue by building a knowledge management database that is easily accessible to employees and promoting its use.

The other great benefit is that knowledge management creates an even playing field where everyone on the team has the same access, and they don’t feel left out. Sometimes, team members may believe that asking for information they should already have can look like incompetence. The ability to drop in and easily find the necessary information can prevent that scenario.

Getting Started With Knowledge Management

Now that you’ve started a database, it’s time to get the employees in on the act so they can provide their own valuable information. Ask your associates to document key experiences and compile materials that will help other project team members and add them to the database. Since this task is so essential, instead of just making a request, make it a part of the employee’s job description so they understand the importance of what they’re doing.

With the knowledge management database created, the project manager should remind their teams of its existence when an employee asks for a particular piece of information. If they don’t use the database often, it can be easily forgotten and defeat the purpose.

Since the ability to find data quickly is so important, it’s wise to ensure that each member has a strong Wi-Fi connection and access to quality internet. If possible, consider using 5G Ultra Wideband or something similar. A strong connection will allow employees to web-conference and easily use tools like Office 365 to compile their information so they can share it with the team. As a remote team, fast internet, with no lost connections is key for delivering quality work and saving their sanity.

In summary, it’s ideal for every project management team to have a knowledge database that can be accessed immediately, especially if they work remotely. Consider the perks and tips provided here and give your team the power to manage their work seamlessly from the comfort of their homes.

Most Knowledge Management professionals end up in Knowledge Management by accident, rather than a deliberate career choice, just like i did (Nokia 9210 a KM Origin Story)

So below are my top 5 tips to developing a career in KM for customer service. If you get these right, you will go a long way towards a successful career in KM. 

Customer Focus - The Customer and Customer facing staff are the most crucial stakeholders in Knowledge Management for Customer Service. You need to empathise with both and see the world through their eyes. If you can do so, spend time taking calls or dealing with chats from Customers directly to understand what works well and where the challenges are from a Knowledge Management perspective. If you cannot do that, sit with agents and observe the calls. What do agents do? How do they find content? Is it easy to understand? What do they do when they are stuck? I learn far more from sitting with call centre agents than anyone else. Helping frontline staff and delivering value to them should be your primary focus. 

External Networking - Join various industry events. Use LinkedIn's pwer to connect with similar professionals, and don't be afraid to ask questions, share problems, and offer solutions. If unsure, connect with me, and I will be happy to point you in the right direction. Be aware that there are a lot of different fields of Knowledge Management out there, from KM in Law to consulting firms, to libraries, to organisational knowledge, and of course, Customer Service. Most share common traits and best practices, but be sure you find the proper forums for your context. 

Curiosity – Be curious and be happy to try new things and ways of working across all KM strategy components. Pilot new ideas and see what works and what doesn't. Too many KM professionals get protective over the way they work, especially when it comes to content. Try not to be overprotective with your content and embrace constructive feedback to improve it, especially from the customer and frontline staff. A good Knowledge worker should support and encourage this.

Specific Skills – Learning some core Knowledge Management skills could be advantageous. For example, Copy Writing, Process Design, SEO or Information Architecture / Taxonomy skills, but to be honest, in the longer term, I am not 100% sure they will still be as valid, as AI starts to take over a lot of these tasks.

Technical Skills –  Although not essential, it is worth taking the time to understand how your existing Knowledge estate works from a technical perspective. For example:-

• What systems exist? 
• How are they connected? 
• What are the interdependencies? 
• What is the role of IT for KM in your organisation? 
• What are all the features of the KM products you are using, and are you using them effectively? 

Most KM Vendors will have external events where you can meet and talk to other KM professionals that use the same technology. Again, sharing knowledge and best practice.

What advice would you give to someone starting a career in Knowledge Management for Customer Service? 

In any organizational setting, new knowledge is generated every single day. What was a fact a few years ago is now considered outdated or irrelevant. The decay of knowledge not only affects us as individuals but affects organizations as a whole. Technologies change constantly leading to the decay of knowledge. It is crucial for organizations to have processes in place to capture, harvest, repurpose, and achieve knowledge to keep them relevant to the market, constantly innovate, to stay relevant and competitive.

Organizations generally go through a rigorous process for hiring the right skills and experience. Also, the workforce is trained in specific skills and tools to align with their role and the organization’s goals. But the fact of the matter is that employees leave and take along with them crucial knowledge and experience.  Also, people retire, taking their wealth of experience and insights which is then lost to the organization where an employee gained it all. Organizations are left struggling to fill the skill gaps outgoing employees leave in their wake.

Failure to capture the experience of employees who leave, and past mistakes that proved disastrous and left behind a trail of lessons learned, prove disastrous for the growth of organizations.  These learnings are knowledge that needs to be captured, constantly revisited and revised, and disseminated seamlessly for the growth and progression of organizations in the highly competitive market space.

According to Arnold Kransdorff, when this knowledge is left undocumented, it leaves organizations “plagued with an inability to learn from past experience, which leads to reinvented wheels, unlearned lessons, a pattern of repeated mistakes, productivity shortfalls, and a lack of continuous performance improvement.”

Knowledge decay hampers innovation. Innovation directly implies the services and service delivery which directly impacts the organization’s profitability.

Moreover, when institutional knowledge is lost because of the exit of an employee, and if the organizations fail to capture knowledge and disseminate it, it definitely puts the business in a perilous position. The missing download of insights and knowledge from the outgoing member, makes the joining of the new employee inefficient, affecting his productivity, efficiency, and morale which directly impacts the organization’s business goals.  

To remain informed and relevant in the market, organizations must adopt knowledge management systems for capturing knowledge, preventing the loss of expertise as well as constantly reviewing and updating the knowledge base. Also, KM will only work if it works for the people and they find it closely aligned with their work and goals. Take the monotony out and bring in creative ways of knowledge sharing. Introduce virtual cafes, and icebreaker sessions, bring in the flavor of design thinking, story-telling, and mentoring sessions and you will see employees adapting to the culture of knowledge sharing with ease.

Make collaboration, knowledge sharing, and rewarding the knowledge-sharing efforts, a part of your organizational culture, you can definitely prevent the decay of institutional knowledge, keep your employees armed with the best tool and practices to foster innovation, and stay a mile ahead of your competitors.

Customer Service organisations vary massively in size, geography, industries, products, and services; as such, the Knowledge Manager role can vary depending on those factors. However, some responsibilities of a Knowledge Manager are generic across these boundaries and below is my take on the main ones for a Knowledge Manager in Customer Service.

1 – Define and own the Knowledge Management Vision and broader strategy, get buy-in from the business and lead the organisation towards that vision. Ensure there is buy-in from Senior sponsors and decision-makers.

2 – Continuously communicate to all relevant business stakeholders the value of Knowledge Management and its impact in line with the broader business objectives. Including sharing the vision far and wide across the organisation.

3 – Manage Relationships – There is a range of stakeholders to engage with to ensure successful knowledge management.
For example:

• Operational Teams
• Risk, Legal Compliance Teams
• Project Teams
• Product Teams
• Customer Journey Teams
• Senior Leadership
• Finance Teams
• Digital Teams
• Reporting and Data Teams
• Internal IT Teams
• External Vendors

Knowledge Management's success may depend on how well the relationship is managed with these stakeholders and how well they buy into a Knowledge Culture.

4 – Track and deliver against the Knowledge Management Strategy. – Sometimes, it's called KM Initiative, KM Blueprint, KM Framework or KM Operating Rhythm. The Knowledge Manager must ensure that the core components of good knowledge management, as defined in more detail here are continuously monitored and improved in line with the KM Vision. These are: -

• Content
• Process
• People
• Governance
• Technology
• Culture
• Metrics

5 – Accountability – The Knowledge Manager must be proudly accountable for Knowledge Management. The Knowledge Manager and broader team should take the credit if things are going well and value is delivered. Inversely if things go wrong or some things need to improve, the Knowledge Manager should take full ownership and drive any issue through to resolution.

6 – Champion of the Customer – Represents the voice of the customer and frontline staff to relevant stakeholders from a knowledge management perspective. Ideally, the Knowledge Manager will have significant experience and empathy for the big challenges for frontline staff and customers and understand how good KM practices can help. A good Knowledge Manager does not need a technical background.

7 – Owns Knowledge Governance - Facilitates the governance of KM through either steering groups or centre of excellence sessions. Ensuring Senior sponsors or decision makers are included. 

8 - Keeps up to date - A good Knowledge Manager will keep up with the latest trends and technical innovations in Knowledge Management. In addition, they will build a network of other KM professionals and proactively share knowledge and experiences. They may attend and participate in industry events and best practice forums. 

So these are my top 8 responsibilities of a Knowledge Manager in customer service. Is there anything else you could add? 

Introduction

Today, for many organizations Community Engagement is celebrated; leaders are investing in enabling their Vision and driving Transformation through Community Managers.  When creating a rewarding Community Experience, we often forget why individuals engage in a Community and eventually focus on driving Community Engagement. This ‘Know-Why’ is the start of what can truly engage Experts, drive Collaboration, and enable a KM Culture to Innovate if we recognize the four stages of Group Dynamics.  Let's find out how...

As per Tuckman, there are four key stages of Group Dynamics. Each of these engaged stages is based on a defined set of traits and behaviors, and if we understand this, we can use it for driving Effective Community Engagement.  

Recognize how Forming Can be the start to Community Engagement

As a seasoned KM Practitioner, do you feel you are often met with a lack of understanding of KM and practitioners stating an unclear (or unmet) need for engaging in KM Conversations? If your answer is yes, then often we learn to deal with this as a first step by giving Guidance and Direction. These are traits of the Forming Stage. In this stage you are often meeting people for the first time and there is a positive and polite atmosphere.  Here is where we need to step away from individually driving motive and instead foster Collaboration.

As a KM Professional, one powerful tool I always use is a Team Charter in bringing together a diverse group of Knowledge Seekers with a Common Need to Collaborate and Lead them into Community Engagement.  To define a Team Charter, we need focus on Context Building and through powerful tools like Knowledge Café’s, we can engage in ensuring we discuss why we have all gathered, how the problem seems relatable to the larger set of team objectives, and define a Mission that becomes our Lighthouse to achieving our individual goals and share our resources to enable each other.  This Knowledge Building behavior ensures we engage more often and understand each other better.

Storming: How to Move from Conflict to Coaching Mindset while driving Community Engagement

Knowledge Management Strategy must be aligned to Organizational Culture that is easier said than proven. Through years of driving Community Engagement its proven that to truly build rewarding outcomes we need to limit the number of CoPs such that Experts don’t feel overwhelmed. Also, at times we are so busy with analytics and reporting that we forget to manage the chaos. In yielding to the Power Struggle many Experts are driven away as the feel the sense of no increased clarity of purpose on why they are engaging. It is important for Community Managers to resolve these Power Struggles and define how to ensure the experience is more rewarding in building something.

Now imagine a Community is like a Project and the Members are like Project Teams with their own Roles and Responsibilities. So if we manage to define the right Projects that the Community should engage then that build a defined purpose which aligns to the Mission and Objectives of the group. To do this It’s important for KM Professionals to build User Persona’s and align them to balancing the Composition (Right Mix of Skills and Expertise) and Roles (Stakeholder Mapping aligned to Customer Journey Mapping is called for) to build an engaging experience. It’s important we move from just moderating how the Community is systemically driven to becoming a Coach and enable shared understanding through purposeful action navigated by the Organization Mission.

Norming: The Sweet Spot for turning Knowledge Management into Innovation Management

As Community Managers we are driven by results. We all want to showcase how through consistent culture building we are driving our leaders and their Community Vision. In adding this Knowledge Speaking Behavior of our leaders we often fail to diagnose those real elements of Idea Sharing that can turn into real Innovative Solutions. When a CoP is active and thriving and KM Policy is being enabled and Rule Based Structure are being respected this is the Ideal State to realize there is a need to start capturing those real problems where teams can engage and come together. Remember the Knowledge Café during Forming its time to repeat it and briefly introduce those organization wide projects which truly can take a firm to the next level and Innovate.

With reference to the Team Charter model there is a clear need for Authority defining Boundaries where the Leader is seen as enabling KM with a budget to drive Engagement. Many culture building exercises fail to go beyond just Knowledge Building as there is no rewarding benefits, clear mandate in terms of focused time and effort and this is where there is a hijack and loyal followers limit their shared understanding to contribute to something big.

This is where there needs to be a clear budget outlined and revisiting our Lighthouse the Mission revisited for driving those Projects we spoke about during the Storming stage. The KM team has to be provided with a budget to fuel this shared passion and go beyond and recruit passionate team members for driving the Engagement and elevating their Roles towards the organization strategy. This included travel and briefing meeting and anything that drives the culture. Imagine if there was a large global Knowledge Community Engagement Team but the recruits were all passionate about the larger Mission which is the Ideal state where the CXO Leaders would enable more.

Performing: Linking KM Operations to KM Culture Building and Beyond

Imagine you have everything setup for driving true Collaboration through a Community but no one shows up. This is possible only when there is a failure of KM Operations. In the Performing phase it is important for each key member driving the Team Charter to play out their designated Roles to perfection which means slowly the Community Manager or the Leader takes the back seat and there is a sense of urgency that is owned and governed by them but the rest is driven through a passionate Champion Network. It’s important in this state there is a lot of Best Practice Sharing, Lessons Learnt and basically openness for Coaching with New Leaders evolving and driving the Engagement forward.

Adjourning: Making sure the best is celebrated as a Community Experience

Many a time we see senior leaders 'eat the cake,' as they are the ones with the highest risk leading the Team Charter. It is their skill-based leadership that identifies passionate leaders to deliver on key goals, and as time goes they want to be seen as visible icons. Most of the time shared credit leads to the system prevailing and this is where Community Engagement can be elevated to what I call Community Experience - where the leader believes that he is rewarded through the Knowledge Management Community Culture enabling larger organization wide transformation.

In-Summary

What comes to mind when you see the below graphic. Today as Communities thrive in organizations many leaders see them as a source of Innovation. True to its purpose it is interesting to wonder what if someone asked you are you Engaged in a Community or Engaged with a Community  or Engaged for a Community. Well, our answers would mean we relate to Community Engagement in different ways. 

Source: Principles of Community Engagement – Institute for Community Studies

As Community Managers we strive to make available Resources and Assets and enable Culture such that Knowledge flows and there is a sense of ownership, accountability, and shared understanding. We serve leaders and engage in aligning Community Metrics to Organization Strategy however the missing elements are to move ahead and create a Community Experience.

Through understanding each of Tuckman’s Stages of Group Dynamics and relating it to the above Team Charter elements we can truly build a rewarding KM Culture enabling Innovation.

Disclaimer: These are purely my own views and experiences as a seasoned KM practitioner in driving employee engagement and operationalizing the KM strategy through helping employees Connect & Collaborate.