A beginners guide to knowledge gaps

[RogueFader]

Hi all.

I say a beginners guide, I joined this team to manage problem, however I seem to have had knowledge thrust upon me with no guidance, so I'm learning as I go.

I've been tasked with trying to address knowledge gaps in the public knowledge base, and I was just wondering how people approached this, maybe in a STAR approach.

Just to get some baselines, I've extracted 6 months of incidents where the category is 'User guidance' and where the incident is not linked to an article, but to be fair, getting our teams to link to articles if/when they use them is another battle altogether.

I then put that info into Excel, into a table and then used copilot to look at themes of issues and what types of articles we would need.

I'm sure I'll need to move it on from there a bit, although I'm not 100% on what reports I'll need to run, which will also need to include Virtual Agent, then scan all that data, and tie it all in together to address that knowledge gap backlog.

Any steer on this issue greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[amarks]

Hi @RogueFader,

If you are using a classic governance model, then using the Knowledge Gaps feature is a good way for anyone to flag a gap (as Leri suggested). From what i understand, this creates a Feedback Task that can be assigned to an agent to perform article creation.

If you're using the KCS model, then, as David Kay points out (and he's an expert in this), knowledge articles are created "just-in-time" in response to a request.

Here's where the rubber meets the road, because some people may argue that if they see a knowledge gap then they should create the KB article. In some ways, this flies in the face of KCS, which says, "create it when you need it."  Having said that, there are just some cases where you KNOW a question is going to be asked. In my humble opinion, one correct method is to generate a Service Request (Request for Information) as the vehicle for the creation of the KB article. The SR will be routed to the right knowledge domain as part of the normal course of ticket management and the article will be created regardless of governance method.

Having said all this, there is a proactive approach to analyze gaps, and I'm working through this. The new Knowledge Center in ServiceNow has a specific module for that. (See Youtube for "Platform Academy: Knowledge Center - Deep Dive in to Article Gaps and Duplicates")

Additionally, have a look at your AI Search Profile (if configured). You should be able to view all search phrases that have returned zero results. (Just a thought).

Best of luck,
Adam