Knowledge Managers engaging teams

[RogueFader]

Hi, question to any Knowledge Managers.

I've been handed the process, I'm very much wearing my L plates with the process. One area I want to look at is seeking greater engagement from teams- in particular linking KBs to incidents where they are used to assist, also flagging where there are knowledge gaps, as well as creating more knowledge.

What barriers have you had when seeking 1st line teams engagements regarding utilising the knowledge base, and linking KBs to incidents? So far, I've only had people stating it takes too long to search for the KB.

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Manders]

And what do they answer when you ask them how they answer to the tickets without Knowledge Articles. 

Because if Knowledge isn't used, you have a different problem (or very smart 1st line teams). 

One of the things you need to check is if any reassigned tickets have a knowledge article linked (then you have the tickets that could have been fixed by 1st line by using knowledge, which were resolved by 2nd line).

Also check on the tickets without a link to knowledge from 2nd/3rd line. Those could help in finding the gaps. It could of course be legit (information needed from an application that isn't available for 1st line), but then a Knowledge Article stating that fact, should be available, so 1st line knows where to assign to get that information.

If linking is important within you company, it should just be done. Knowledge is there to assist and to share.

What did they answer when you asked them why it takes them so long to find the correct article? Are the articles too generic, or do you have multiple articles with the same short description (if you get a question about how to login to application X and you have 53 articles with the short description 'Login to application' with only one mention of the exact application in the body, it will be difficult to find it). 

"It takes too long" has a reason. Do they need instructions on how to search? Do your authors need instructions on how to write so their information can be found? Are your agents lazy? Are your articles too long and contain way too much information?

Ask the 'why' question. Ask them how they work/search. Just ask 'why' 5 times (it's a proven method for root cause analysis).

Why don't you link knowledge?

* it takes to long

Why does it takes too long?

* I can't find my way around the system

Why can't you find your way around the system?

* nobody told me how it works

Why did no one instruct you?

* not part of onboarding to the team

etc.etc.

Find the cause, so you can work on the solution.

[RogueFader]

Hello, thanks for your response.

Just in the process of engaging more with teams to obtain wider feedback before the requirement to link to KBs become a requirement. Looking at how knowledge has been ran, I can see straight off there's a lot of house keeping to be done, also high volume of KBs where the view count is low to 0, which makes me think it's all been about quantity over quality. Once I can get our current KBase in order, I can start looking at why people don't engage, I suspect it's due to there not being a requirement, silo working, lack of ITIL adherence, laziness, knowledge process not having controls around it. Totally get why question, coming from a problem background, I'm on board with that.

[Mark Manders]

It sounds familiar. You are not handling 1 haystack with a needle, but you your 6 haystacks. And in all haystacks there are 30-50 needles (nobody knows how many exactly) and they are all light orange, except for one, which is dark yellow. And then the assignment is to get all needles from the haystacks, but you have to leave the orange ones you find, until the yellow one is their.

And in the meantime you do have to pick up the phone every time it rings and resolve the issues that are called in. 

My tip: use L1 teams for the Knowledge cleanup. Have them give feedback on existing articles. Are they helpful? No? Why not? Is it too much or too little information? Are the articles in the correct KB? It will take time, but getting them involved in stuff they should use will help in adopting it. 
And get rid of anything that contains nothing. You don't want to have KBs or Categories without articles. Ask the teams how they want to search. 

[RogueFader]

Thanks Mark.

At the moment, I'm just looking at feedback and flagged articles, those with 0 view count and were created over 2 years ago to me seem just like clutter and I'll certainly be engaging with 1st line teams.