Is knowledge management changing the call center enough to justify ROI?

I believe several factors are involved in determining if the ROI is justified. First, the size and complexity of the call center. If it is a smaller call center, with little complexity of processes, you probably are not going to have very many documents, and the consolidation may be able to be accomplished within a Sharepoint.

If you are managing a larger technical support call center, with hundreds or thousands of complex troubleshooting documents, then a knowledge management system is the only way to go. Trying to accurately locate documents through a Sharepoint in this scenario can lead to agents spending precious time on trying to locate documents, thereby increasing AHT, not finding the document, or using the wrong document for troubleshooting. A good knowledge management system will give agents the ability to search not only by keywords, but ask specific "how to" questions to quickly and accurately locate the correct document.

As with any ROI, you need to shop for the knowledge management system that best fits, consider it's costs, including an admin, and measure against the possible savings in productivity. In my case, we were able to cut technical call times by an average of at least 2 minutes per call. Take that times the average of 12,000+ calls monthly, and you can see where you are able to achieve targets without having to increase staff, or in some cases reducing staffing costs. Like any good tool however, a lot depends on the preparation and implementation of the system. Before old documents are integrated, they should be thoroughly checked and edited, looking for outdated, duplicates, and those documents needing process updates.