Knowledge Management – Is it still relevant for Enterprise Service Desks?

However, is knowledge management still relevant for Enterprise Service Desks?

Enterprise service desks are responsible for providing support and resolving issues related to IT Services, Line of Business Services and other operational matters within an organisation.  

Users expect the Enterprise Service Desk to provide relevant support quickly and efficiently.  Users also expect the Service Desk not to transfer them from pillar to post – probably the main gripe when contacting support desks. 

Knowledge management plays a crucial role in enabling service desk agents to effectively and efficiently address these use interactions resolving issues or attend to requests

Key benefits of integrating a well-defined knowledge system and process include:

• Centralised Knowledge Repository: Knowledge management helps in creating a centralised repository of relevant information, such as FAQs, troubleshooting guides, standard operating procedures, and best practices. This knowledge base serves as a valuable resource for service desk agents, allowing them to quickly access and leverage the collective knowledge of the organisation.
• Faster Issue Resolution: By utilising a comprehensive knowledge base, service desk agents can find solutions to common issues more rapidly. They can search for relevant articles, guides, or previous resolutions, reducing the time taken to diagnose and resolve problems. This leads to faster response times and improved customer satisfaction.
• Consistency and Quality: Knowledge management ensures consistency and quality in the responses provided by service desk agents. By documenting and sharing best practices and standardised procedures, organisations can establish uniform service delivery across different agents and shifts.  This helps in maintaining a high level of customer service and reducing errors.
• Training and Onboarding: Knowledge management also facilitates training and onboarding processes for new service desk agents. They can quickly learn from the existing knowledge base, gain insights into common issues, and understand the recommended resolutions. This accelerates the learning curve and helps new agents become productive more rapidly.
• Continuous Improvement: Knowledge management enables continuous improvement of service desk operations. By tracking and analysing the usage of knowledge articles, organisations can identify areas where information is lacking or needs updating.  This feedback loop allows for regular knowledge base enhancements, ensuring that the most relevant and effective solutions are available to service desk agents.

Knowledge Management is a set of tools, procedures, methods, practices, and desired behaviours that help organisations to be more productive.  It is a discipline promoting an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets. The assets may include databases, procedures, documents, policies and previously uncaptured expertise and experience in individual workers.

BMC Knowledge Management is a framework for creating, publishing, reviewing, and searching knowledge articles, to provide service desk analysts with a knowledge base of easy-to-find solutions and give users self-service search options to help them resolve issues on their own. 

The Consortium for Service Innovation which created and maintains Knowledge-Centred Support (KCS), shares best practices for capturing, structuring, evolving, and re-using knowledge.  BMC Knowledge Management leverages these best practices to improve service levels by helping organisations to maintain what their employees, partners and customers know and re-use this knowledge to gain value.

In summary, knowledge management is highly relevant for enterprise service desks as it improves issue resolution, enhances consistency and quality, supports training and onboarding, and enables continuous improvement.  By effectively managing knowledge, organisations can optimise their service desk operations and provide superior support to their customers and internal users.

Contact Marten van Heerden at New Island Technologies for more information around Autonomous Digital Enterprises and how BMC support this transformation.