Strategy of Customer Knowledge Management

Customer Knowledge management (CKM) is the process of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using organizational knowledge. It refers to a multi-disciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge, Here I am going to talk about 

Common Phase (Begin from where you are )

Set up a Strategy

Fix the basics

Transform transactions

Create communities

Common Phase

Let's begin with your Website, you've made the transition from brochureware to a functioning e-commerce site. You've created an online catalog capable of handling credit cards and purchase orders via the Web, and perhaps it lets your customers track the shipping status of their orders. Maybe it even allows for automatic replenishment of the warehouse when inventory falls below a certain level. With basic e-commerce out of the way, it is time for a short breather. But what comes next?

Customer knowledge management (CKM) is a novel way to address the underlying causes of protracted business problems rather than focusing on the surface symptoms that result from them.

To gain tangible benefits from CKM, you need to turn it into a program that is immediately relevant to your firm. In most cases, you can use CKM to solve pressing problems. You can customize solutions by industry, for specific functions within that industry and for problems at hand. Equipped with the general principles of customer knowledge management and the specifics to be addressed, you can identify some of the following basic actions:

• Consolidate data from various sources into a consistent knowledge base via content engineering.
• Include knowledge about customers and their needs with other knowledge in creating new products and services.
• Use solutions learned from customers in customer support centers for products such as high-tech equipment, medical equipment, household appliances and telecom devices.
• Use business intelligence (knowledge about customers and markets) from the Internet in an organized fashion.
• Explore strategic options using customer knowledge by visualizing cause-and-effect relationships.

Step 1: Set up a strategy

Charting the right strategy for customer knowledge management is one of the most important tasks a firm faces Limited resources must be applied in an intelligent way to optimize the desired results. While market research and industry experience can help, customer knowledge is the major factor in the equation.

Most organizations today achieve only a fraction of their optimum customer value. There are three ways to increase the profitability of your customer relationships: Acquire more customers, retain the acquired customers for longer time periods or increase the value of existing customer relationships. All of them leverage the customer relationship knowledge acquired earlier.

Integrated transaction management and knowledge management provide the means to manage investments in your customer base, allocating your marketing budget to appeal to customers with the greatest potential return. With areas of high-profit potential pinpointed, you can take direct actions. These actions can range from customer self-service to differentiated customer service packages to cooperation scenarios. Integrated transaction and knowledge systems based on Internet technologies can support all of these.

Step 2: Fix the basics

With the strategic plan in place, you can turn to implementation. In order to broker the exchange of know-how commercially, basic customer care must be running smoothly. Some of the best practices that signify a state of the art call center and customer care facility include the following:

• Contract management
• Incident management (acceptance, resolution, escalation)
• Field dispatching
• Customer installed base
• Knowledge base
• Document management
• Integrated reporting
• Customer surveys (e.g., product feedback, satisfaction).

With the regular call center feeding the solution base, self-service on the Web for customers becomes an option. In addition, the Web can used to replace the phone, allowing either online chat or IP telephony.

Step 3: Transform transactions

The first Web sites--and the large majority of today's sitesw--were and are static; they are the Internet equivalent of marketing brochures. These sites distribute information about products, services, distribution channels, back-ground papers, company financial statements, customer lists and other aspects. The static nature of the initial Web sites was largely due to technological limitations. Web server scripting languages and programming interfaces did not stand up to the requirements of a transactional, fully integrated business system. Also, justified security concerns prevented businesses from publishing critical information on the Internet and from connecting ing Web servers directly to their core business systems.

While developing Internet technologies allow You to create integrated transactional business systems, nontransactional information represents the second pillar for sound CKM. The two elements of non-transactional knowledge systems are content--structured and unstructured, rich information stored on paper or in computers--and people, such as customers, suppliers, pliers, expert and analysts.

Some knowledge experts estimate less than 5 percent of an organization's knowledge is explicitly stored in paper or in electronic format. Implicit knowledge cannot be treated in the same way as explicit electronic knowledge, yet implicit knowledge can be cataloged, grown and connected by managing people and the systems they use.

Content, peoples and technology form the basis for a sound CKM strategy. To complete the picture, take into account the relationships between your firm and its customer, since many nuggets of knowledge are hidden in the interactions between the two.

Remember also that the acquisition of knowledge and business intelligence is not I enough. Knowledge from or about customers, the products they desire, the problems they encounter using them and the help they need must be leveraged to close the cycle and generate value from information.

Step 4: Create communities

After you have created a solid call center, turned transactions into knowledge and organized content in a flexible way for personal delivery, you should organizeI virtual communities and nurture them. Moderate communities of customers to help them help each other, and use the communities to generate sales leads; learn more about how your products actually do in the market; gauge the interest level for new features; create desire for new features even new products; and collect data about the decisions customers make.

The combination of inter-active transactional Internet systems and knowledge management solutions for unstructured Information leads the way to the future to customer management systems.