Hi fellow KCS-ers!

This post will cover the following details of our KCS implementation using Zendesk:

Roles and coaching scheme
Help Center sections
Article linking workflow
Article flagging workflow
Article creation workflow
Article templates
Things we'd like to change about the Knowledge Capture App

We are introducing KCS to a fairly mature CX department (~20 front line agents, ~30 other roles, a popular Help Center with ~700 articles). We’ve begun the first wave of a two wave implementation just this week.

Roles and Coaching Scheme

We currently have three main KCS roles:

Reader (can view, link, and flag articles)
Contributor (can create and edit internal articles, external articles need to be reviewed by their Coach)
Publisher (can create and edit external articles, can be a Coach)

New hires start as Readers and progress to Contributor level after a few KCS training sessions during their onboarding.

Currently, all of our KCS articles are internal, so Contributors and Publishers have, essentially, the same permissions. However, Contributors have Coaches who review all their articles.

Contributors level up to Publisher after receiving over 90% on their coach-administered AQI report for 4 consecutive weeks (or after three weeks of 100% performance), and after proving that they take a KCS approach (capturing the customer’s issue in internal notes, searching the Knowledge Capture App) to each customer interaction. Coaches administer the AQI at weekly meetings.

In addition to the three main levels, we have:

Coaches
Knowledge Domain Experts

Our current Coaches are six people who were beta-testing our KCS tech stack and workflow prior to the first wave. They received Publisher status as a result of that experience. Now, they're each responsible for coaching three Contributors toward Publisher status.

Going forward, the KCS council will decide which Publishers will become Coaches.

We have three Knowledge Domain Experts (KDEs). These KDEs are responsible for managing the health of the overall knowledge base. They also are responsible for fixing flagged articles and monitoring the quality of Publishers' articles.

Help Center Sections

We have a fully fleshed out Help Center right now with articles that are long, detailed, and wholly non-KCS. These are divided into sections which correspond to our productions feature set.

These existing sections are visible to anyone, and can be managed by "Managers". Front line agents cannot create or edit articles in these sections.

For KCS, we have two sections:

KCS - Internal
KCS - Future External

Both of these sections are set up so that they can be viewed and managed by "Agents and Managers". This means that front line agents can create or edit KCS articles, and none of our customers can view these articles.

We intend on making the "KCS - Future External" section visible to anyone eventually but, for now, the articles are for internal use only.

Article Linking Workflow

Agent receives a phone call
Agent enters the caller's name and email into a new Zendesk ticket
Agent creates an internal note with the issue (in the customer’s words) in the body and a keyword relevant to the issue as the subject
Agent submits the ticket as new
Agent stays on the ticket
Agent listens to the customer’s question or issue
While listening, Agent searches the Knowledge Capture App and finds an article which solves the issue
Agent uses the article to help the customer
Phone call ends
Agent links the article to the ticket using the Knowledge Capture App
Agent copies the resolution steps from the article into the email response (if necessary)

This workflow has been working fine, although we wish the Knowledge Capture App search was available without creating an internal note. This would allow us to skip steps 3-6.

Article Flagging Workflow

Agent receives a phone call
Agent enters the caller's name and email into a new Zendesk ticket
Agent creates an internal note with the issue (in the customer’s words) in the body and a keyword relevant to the issue as the subject
Agent submits the ticket as new
Agent stays on the ticket
Agent listens to the customer’s question or issue
While listening, Agent searches the Knowledge Capture App and finds an article which is relevant to the issue but has errors/omissions
Agent works with the customer on their issue
Phone call ends
Agent flags the part(s) of the article which need improving
Agent sends a follow-up email to the customer

We've set up a trigger so that all tickets with the “knowledge_capture_flagged_article” tag are moved to a specific View. This View is only available to a specific Zendesk Group (which contains only our Knowledge Domain Experts). The Knowledge Domain Experts are responsible for addressing the flagged article.

Article Creation Workflow

Agent receives a phone call
Agent locates the customer in the admin panel
Agent copies their name and email into a new Zendesk ticket
Agent creates an internal ticket with the issue (in the customer’s words) in the body
Agent stays on the ticket
Agent listens to the customer’s question or issue
While listening, Agent searches the Knowledge Capture App but doesn’t find a useful relevant article
Agent captures information for a potential article
Phone call ends
Agent creates a KCS article (if time/situation permits)
Agent links the article to the ticket
Agent sends a follow-up email to the customer with the new article’s resolution steps pasted (if necessary)

Article Templates

We use three templates:

How-to
Q&A
Issue/Solution

How-to

Q&A

Issue/Solution

Things we’d like to change

We’d like to be able to search the Knowledge Capture app without having to create an internal note and submit a ticket first
We’d like to be able to create fields in Zendesk which would map to the KCS article templates
In terms of analytics, we’d like to be able to:

Separate KCS articles from non-KCS articles when looking at linking stats

We’re linking a ton of non-KCS articles to tickets, but would love to be able to see the chart below with just KCS articles (certain Help Center sections) included

There is no clear way to link articles and the tickets they helped to solve
It’s difficult to give Coaches (who are front line agents) access to dashboards in GoodData related to the Contributors they’re coaching

This is because it would also give them access to dashboards showing performance metrics for themselves and their peers

Conclusion

As a CX department, we're really pushing hard to implement a KCS mindset into our everyday workflow. The Knowledge Capture App is a big part of that workflow and we're really excited to be a part of its ongoing development.