Concepts in Technology Management - Client Knowledge Base

A Client Knowledge Base is essentially a discipline that involves capturing and building information about the client organisation, and then employing that knowledge to more effectively react to, and anticipate, the client organisation’s technology issues and needs.  The focus is on service, and on anticipating requirements and building opportunities.  The aim is to have such a profound – and carefully targeted - picture of the client and their technology environment, and use it in supporting the client, that we reach the point where the client becomes apprehensive about any loss of service that might be involved in switching to a lower priced offering from a competitor.

It is the degree to which we build this picture and who we use to build it that sets this proposal apart from the existing offerings in the Customer Relationship Management area, from traditional fault-resolution databases and from ITIL’s Configuration Management Database, Service Catalogue, or Known Error Resources.

I initially developed this concept to address three major problems affecting outsourcing vendors:

• difficulty in maintaining skill levels in remote support and onsite staff, resulting in expensive training costs, and failures to meet Service Level Agreements (SLA) with clients, with consequent financial penalties;
• difficulty in providing service to a technically, geographically and culturally diverse Client base, resulting in a requirement to employ additional support staff;
• difficulty in retaining contracts against competition from lower priced players in the same market who promised “the same, or better” level of service.

Providers of insourced IS support might recognise the same difficulties in working with their internal clients, facing the challenge of providing better service while outsourcers are working to convince your management that they can do a better job cheaper.  Client Knowledge Base doesn’t particulary advantage outsourcers or internal support groups, it simply lends the advantage to whoever does it first and does it best.

If a Client Knowledge Base is simply a collection of information about the client, how does it differ from the traditional Client Relationship Management or Client Support tools?

• It is built largely by the front line support staff, the ‘contact centre’ agents and the ‘field engineers’.
• The scope is directed by, but not restricted to, the existing relationship between the vendor and the client
• It can be offered as a product to the client
• It is designed to create a ongoing dependent relationship between the client and the service provider

What benefits does the Client Knowledge Base approach offer (to the vendor) over the traditional Client Relationship Management or Client Support tools?

• It is not a product, but instead an approach that can be adopted and adapted to any degree that the vendor can afford or is comfortable with, and expanded and modified over time.
• It weaves together existing information, and creates a place to store ‘personal’ knowledge that your staff have about the client that is otherwise difficult to access.
• Front line staff processes are modified minimally in order to capture client information as a ‘by product’ of their normal interactions with the client. Call centre staff get the chance to become more than the token ‘most important’ people in the organisation, and are given real dignity, recognition and wider career paths through becoming ‘researchers’ as well as ‘responders’.  By offering some of the components of the ‘system’ to the client they become involved in building and maintaining it as well
• By not restricting the scope to the existing relationship (eg products or services that are currently offered by the vendor) it opens up the possibility of building new business.
• By increasing the likelihood that the client will be ‘tied’ to the vendor (by creating a business risk to the client if they ‘leave’ the relationship), the vendor has the opportunity to make longer term investments in further building the relationship with the client.

What advantages does the Client Knowledge Base approach offer (to the client)?

• It is possible to offer the Client’s own information back to them as self-help guides, orientation information and directories – all of course prominently displaying the vendors ‘badge’.   This is part of the process of giving the Client material evidence to back up their staff’s anecdotal evidence that our knowledge of them and our ability to give support to them, surpasses any other service provider.
• It raises the bar, and requires that any potential new bidder for the Client’s business has to match or exceed an already high level of support that is driven by the Client Knowledge Based relationship.  The clients involvement in the Knowledge Base allows them to challenge the bidder with specific examples (for example “what sort of support could you offer our staff’s children” – on the basis that the Client Knowledge Base has the capacity to understand what staff do with computers in their ‘private’ life (which you’d think was ‘out of scope’ of the relationship until you consider how much work staff are ‘expected’ to do at home these days, and how staff loyalty to organisations (both their employer and you as a vendor of technology services) is built around ‘family’ considerations.  If you are supporting an organisation with 10,000 employees are you (as the vendor) missing out on a considerable business opportunity?)))
• The dependent relationship has to be a healthy one to last.  Being blackmailed by good service is a very different thing to being ‘held hostage’.  The possibility of building a long term relationship with a vendor who themselves has a considerable investment in the future success of your business (as the client) opens up the possibility of both client and vendor moving into new business opportunities.

So where do you buy one of these things.  You can’t, and there’s no book or manual on ‘how to do it yourself’.  As you might see from the example about employees’ children, it’s really a matter of attitude and approach. And there are significant complications – for example if your relationship with the client is built around a contract that says that ‘all information held by the vendor about the client will be returned to the client at the end of the contract’ they can take the knowledge base you have just ‘built’ and give it to the vendor that just undercut you and stole your client.  Working your way around these issues is no cake walk.

Lastly, why isn’t everyone doing this, or in fact why isn’t anyone doing this?  Well it’s not – in fact – new.  Not a long time ago the relationships between people and companies in a small town was built entirely on this principle, still is in many cases.  The pressure on short term results means that large organisations question the value of it, but in a marketplace (technology service and support)  where there are few competitive advantages (apart from price) some folk might soon start claiming they do it, and then some other folk might actually do it, and then things will become interesting.

Comments

[John McCann]

The point about the example of a vendor (thinking about) doing something to support the kids of the staff members of their client organisations is not only that it is potentially a secondary business channel (because you can sell hardware, software, support and loyalty), but because it is a point of DIFFERENCE between you and your competitors in the marketplace. If getting tangled up in that many folk doesn't suit your business model why not 'spin-off' a new business that can take it on, or enter into alliance with an interested vendor who is already in that field. Or just simply donate some money or equipment to the schools where most of the kids of your clients staff members attend. This is shameless stuff, but its not exploitive, there is a positive benefit on both sides. And where does the Knowledge Base come in? Well in knowing the demographics of your client's staff pool. It might be that you'd have more impact by supporting the child care organisation than the high school, or the sporting team rather than the school. Getting to know all of this stuff is easy, clients tell it to you without you needing to ask. Understanding how to maximise the benefit of the new knowledge you gain through your existing relationship with your client (and appreciating that everything is 'in scope') is the key.