Top Knowledge Management KPIs you Should Track for Better CX

How do you know if something is working for you?

Let’s say you aim to run a marathon in three months. You prepare yourself with the right training, exercise, and diet to achieve your goal. You measure your progress daily by checking your speed, endurance, and stamina. 

Three months later, you cross the finish line, celebrating your victory.

Now, what were the factors that attributed to your success?

Sure, hard work, dedication, and consistency were critical contributors. However, without measuring your progress timely against your goals, crossing the finish line wouldn’t have been possible. 

Similarly, even in business, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) regularly ensures maximum returns on your initiatives and sets you and your team up for success. And this is no different for your knowledge management efforts.

In this blog, we will discuss the critical knowledge management KPIs you should consider while measuring the effectiveness of your knowledge management system in improving your CX.  

What are knowledge management KPIs?

Knowledge management KPIs or KM KPIs are specific metrics that organizations analyze to gauge the effectiveness of their knowledge management system and calculate the return on investment (ROI). 

Similar to measuring personal KPIs while training for a marathon, knowledge management KPIs help you plan a roadmap for success for your business. This way, you can progress ahead with what’s working and reshape areas of your KM strategy that need improvement.

Why is measuring KM KPIs important?

Picture this: You’ve invested in a new KM tool for your CX org, migrated your entire knowledge base, and spent months training your employees to use the new tool. You’re ready to deliver exceptional customer service.

But you skip out on ONE crucial part – measuring performance through regular audits. 

This is where most organizations falter. They assume knowledge management is a one-and-done process that will naturally flourish once set up, leading to disappointing results.

This is why defining SOPs and metrics to measure knowledge management efforts is mission-critical.  

From conducting regular content quality checks to tracking tool adoption and ensuring effective knowledge sharing across your organization, defining key KPIs  will serve as your compass, guiding you toward maximum success and helping you identify areas for improvement

What knowledge management KPIs should you track?

Long story short – your business needs and goals define the metrics you measure.  

What could be a star indicator for one business might be secondary for another. And it all boils down to factors like business challenges, goals for KM adoption, team size, and customer expectations for your organization.

Having said this, a robust approach would be to track both number-crunching metrics known as quantitative KPIs and intangible, qualitative indicators. Let’s take a look at both of them.

Quantitative & Qualitative KPIs to measure KMS success:

1. Quantitative KPIs are number-crunching methods that directly measure calculable metrics such as average handle time, first contact resolution rate, escalation rate, etc. 

2. On the other hand, Qualitative KPIs are more intangible methods of measuring the effectiveness of your knowledge management system. These can include metrics like eliminating data silos, increasing customer and agent satisfaction, improving SOP compliance, etc. 

Let’s dive deeper into each of these factors below.

What quantitative metrics should you measure?

1. Average Handle Time (AHT)

Average handle time, or AHT, is the amount of time spent on a call with a customer. Generally, the lower the handling time, the better it is for your business.

For customer-first brands, AHT is a crucial metric that gauges the efficiency of different processes. These processes involve the speed and ease at which agents can retrieve information from the knowledge hub, the precision with which content pieces can identify and resolve customer problems, and the ease of accessibility of content for agents. 

All these factors contribute to the total time an agent takes to answer your customer’s questions, which directly reveals the efficiency of your knowledge management software.

So here’s the deal, the longer your AHT, the more reason you need to embark on a quest to optimize your KMS and ensure it’s agent-friendly.  

2. First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Another essential metric that reveals KM efficiency is first contact resolution. It indicates the ease at which customers can resolve their problems at the first contact with either your assisted or self-service channels. 

For example, a customer contacts your service team for help on a recent purchase. If your knowledge repository is loaded with relevant and updated information, and that information is available on demand, your customer care agent can solve your customer’s problem the first time.

However, if this isn’t the case, your service team has to go through a series of follow-ups with your customer. And the more such cases happen, the lesser your FCR rates, which means the need to detect the bottlenecks in your KM process.

3. Escalation rate

In the previous point, we’ve discussed how first call resolution is the best-case scenario in customer service.

But what happens to cases that aren’t resolved at first contact? 

If your business has a high escalation rate, it often implies that your first line of support cannot resolve customer issues effectively. Finding out the reasons is crucial to improve your customer service game overall.

A higher escalation rate could sometimes mean that your knowledge base lacks quality support content related to more complex cases. Or your agents need more training to resolve particular customer challenges. Either way, this metric helps you gauge the efficiency of your KM initiatives.  

4. Ticket deflection

Ticket deflection calculates the total number of support tickets that agents successfully deflect to self-service channels. This KPI evaluates the efficacy of your knowledge management system in providing self-service solutions to customers.

This is another crucial knowledge management KPI because if deflected tickets are successfully resolved through self–service channels, then it means that your self-serve portals have the right information that your customers are searching for.

Needless to say, the more tickets are resolved through self-service channels, the more it tells of your brand’s effective knowledge dissemination to your self-service channels. And in a world where more than 80% of customers prefer to self-serve before contacting a live agent, you’ll surely make customers very happy.

Top 7 quantitative metrics you should measure

1. Elimination of data silos

How do you know if your KM efforts are paying off?

An apparent but intangible sign of progress is if you have successfully addressed the problem of data silos by establishing a single source of truth. A centralized knowledge repository eliminates the duplication of information, and time wasted searching for data, and loss of expert knowledge.

The results? Your agents will have seamless access to actionable knowledge within their workflow, which will help them resolve customer issues faster and better. This will also reflect on quantitative metrics, like handling time and resolution rates, to prove your KM efforts are on the right track.

2. Enhanced CSAT score

As mentioned earlier, an efficient knowledge management solution will minimize or even eliminate roadblocks in knowledge experiences. This means your agents will be able to solve customer problems faster, and customers can help themselves through self-service portals.

This positive experience can be assessed through the customer satisfaction score or CSAT, a metric that documents how “happy” a customer is with your product or service.

A typical CSAT survey usually follows this format: “How was your experience with [Company X]?”

Suppose your customer satisfaction scores are below average. In that case, it may be helpful to conduct a performance audit across different segments, such as your knowledge tool, agent training, and CX tech stack. By doing so, you can pinpoint any bottlenecks that may be contributing to low scores.

If your knowledge management tools are not functioning optimally, you can work on improving them. However, If the KM tool is not the cause of low CSAT scores, you can investigate further to determine the issue.

3. Increased employee satisfaction

Imagine being a cook in a bustling restaurant. To satisfy your customers, you must be equipped with the necessary ingredients, tools, and a competent team to ensure smooth service. Failure to do so could lead to dissatisfied customers and harm the business.

Similarly, if your organization has an effective knowledge management process, your employees will be empowered with the right “ingredients” —  tools and actionable information at their fingertips, to tend to customer needs. 

Organizations should prioritize employee satisfaction as a critical metric to assess the effectiveness of their knowledge management system. This is because the level of satisfaction among your agents directly impacts the quality of customer experiences.

4. Reduced time to proficiency

Training new employees is a lengthy and costly process. Adopting a knowledge management platform should improve employee time to proficiency due to the availability of on-demand and quality training resources. However, if there are no significant changes in employee training time, it is a good sign to reevaluate your content strategy, training process, and the KM tool itself.

5. Improved SOP compliance

Integral to every business, SOPs ensure that business standards are met and maintained. And a big part of ensuring top-notch quality every time is following SOPs meticulously to hit business benchmarks.

So if your employees can operate efficiently individually and collectively, it means your business SOPs are easy-to-follow and readily available to access. This means your organization has a well-oiled knowledge management strategy, which leads to better employee and customer experiences.

6. Better collaboration and update management 

Implementing a Knowledge management system should result in better collaboration, a streamlined process for capturing direct feedback from users, and an efficient update management process. 

To validate the success, the following are the critical considerations you can review: 

• Does the organization’s knowledge management tool capture direct feedback from end users of the tool, which is agents in this case? Answering this central question will help you optimize your knowledge tool for seamless collaboration across user segments and drive tool adoption. 

• Can team leaders or department heads update agents on the latest tool updates, content changes, important broadcasts, etc.? 

• Do team leads have a process to measure agents’ absorption of updates and notifications? Assessing this is significant to ensure agents have the critical know-how to handle customer concerns adequately. 

As your organization’s knowledge management function matures, you can add more consideration points that directly impact factors such as collaboration, feedback capture, and notifications management. 

7. Retention of intellectual property

Besides storing and sharing knowledge, effective knowledge management ensures that your treasure trove of company information, like research findings, internal policies, SOPs, expert knowledge, and more, is preserved. 

This way, you ensure that sensitive and high-value information is retained within the company despite employee turnover, which indicates a robust KM process.

Wrapping Up

To fully experience the potential of knowledge base management system, you need the secret sauce to success – measuring your KM KPIs. 

Setting KPIs to assess the performance of your knowledge management system will push you to refine and improve your KM strategy and initiatives. Measuring quantitative metrics such as AHT, FCR, and escalation rate and conducting comparative audits after successive internals gives you a direct overview of your KM efficiency in hard numbers. 

On the other hand, analyzing the more intangible aspects, such as eliminating siloed data, improving employee satisfaction, enhancing SOP compliance, etc., ensures that your KM initiatives are well-adjusted for the nuances of everyday business operations.