Knowledge Management for Help Desk and Customer Care

This book is divided into two parts.In its first part, it presents conceptual core definitions of knowledge management, with a theoretical basis and synthesis arising from research made in several publications, among books, articles, white papers and blogs. The result of this work is a summary of huge material, facilitating the introduction to the subject and understanding thereof.The focus of the book, however, is not restricted to knowledge management in itself. It is not a work which exhausts the subject, although it is a good reference for those wishing to be introduced to the issue.The objective is to present a practical proposition for development of initiatives of knowledge management applied to help desk and customer-care. To achieve this, the first part of the book also presents concepts of KCS (Knowledge-Centered Service), a set of practices and a specific methodology focused upon technical support, to improve the efficacy of resolving problems. KCS, however, is not limited merely to solving problems, being able to be adapted to handling requests in general.KCS is the result of compiling best practices and discussing initiatives by a group of large information technology companies, which formed a consortium to share ideas and experiences.The areas of technical support, whether in help desk or in customer care, depend upon the qualification of the people involved in the process, and this in turn depends upon knowledge. Indeed, how can one resolve a problem without knowing the subject concerned? The worst is that such subject is usually a technical issue, or is related to something technical, as the functioning of software or a product. Even in the cases of requisitions, where the agent does not go to resolve a problem, but to render a service to handle a request, knowledge is required: how to proceed to fulfill the necessity, or to whom and how forward the requisition, and what information is necessary? And if the requisition is a request for information, where to search for this information to pass to the requestor?KCS was created, with certain assumptions common to knowledge management, to deal with obtaining, sharing and transmitting knowledge to improve service, involving incidents and problems. As the methodology itself determines, it can be adapted to aid in forming a useful knowledge basis for handling requisitions. In the first part of the book KCS is presented and commented upon in a detailed manner, including its concepts, objectives and practices. As the theoretical concepts are presented and explained, and that, therefore, a context is provided, in its second part the book develops and presents a practical proposal of planning and implementing a knowledge management system using the practices of KCS. What is being proposed is the use of the conceptual basis of KCS, but not being limited thereto. Indeed, a roadmap resulting from the concepts as well as the experience and a certain creative boldness of this author is presented. The model proposed is something practical and applicable in companies of any size which have areas of technical support, service-desk, shared services or customer care. As they are practices suggested, they can be adapted, obviously, but their structure has a composition which allows the understanding of the themes in a logical and clear sequence, without ever losing sight of the essential academic concepts of knowledge management and KCS, obviously.