Providing engaging and satisfying customer experiences across the whole of the customer journey, all channels at all times, has become critical to organizations’ success. Customers’ expectations have rocketed while at the same time their ability to express their dis-satisfaction has exploded with social media and commercial review models. Enterprises need to think and operate in [...]

Whilst public sector organizations are similar to commercial sector organizations, and indeed both have a lot to learn from each other, public sector organizations have a number of characteristics that are largely unique to them. In the public sector, particularly local government, many services relate to a location, whether its someone’s home address or a [...]

I guess back in the day, long before my time, during the dotcom thing, KANA was “The Email Company™” or something like that. And not what you think of when you think Outlook® or Exchange by Microsoft™, but the sort of email response management software that eBay might use (and does) to handle millions of [...]

I was asked recently to “state the future for Knowledge Management over the next five years”. This got me thinking what, if anything, has changed about the focus and mandate of Knowledge Management (KM). In my perspective, the goals and focus of KM have deepened, not changed. So, to me, the future of KM is [...]

Back in the day, I did a little studying with Gary Becker at the University of Chicago, winner of the Nobel Prize for applying micro-economic theory to criminal behavior. My use of the phrase ‘a little studying’ is precise, because my main lesson learned from this brilliant man was that ultimately economics is advanced math, and [...]

In my last blog I discussed the critical nature of organizational alignment in achieving a sustainable knowledge management (KM) program. Here are some of the practices and commitments that characterize a truly embedded KM program. Consider if your organization exhibits any of these sorts of behaviors, and if possible look to evolve them in existing [...]

One critical but challenging aspect of success for any project or program is achieving organizational alignment: keeping all key participants and stakeholders on the same page, working towards a common purpose. For many Support and Service organizations, organizational alignment is a major challenge, due to the unique role these organizations play in driving customer interactions. [...]

We’ve just finished the annual KANA Summits and, as usual, I’m full of new ideas and insights. One of the more interesting aha moments came unexpectedly during Chris Perfetti’s presentation on User Interface Design (UID). Chris talked about defining a simple, clear and actionable usability plan that includes quick feedback sessions and regular reviews of [...]

Kate Leggett, ex-colleague and now respected Forrester analyst, puts her finger on the central significance of Inquira’s demise at Oracle’s gentle hands. Stand-alone KM is officially dead. Of course, the last out-of-business sign on the last buggy whip maker didn’t signal the end of horseless carriages, it memorialized that end. Still, milestones are milestones: the [...]

I recently sat next to a first-class contact center agent, watching her struggle gamely to make her knowledge base deliver useful content. Her heroic efforts to overcome search engine stupidity triggered the KANA KM crew to inventory all the common ways we’ve seen that Agents compensate for the weakness, poor tuning and insufficiencies of their [...]