KCS in Action: A Support Manager’s View

Support Manager Florian Florian Haase shared TOPdesk’s multi-year journey implementing KCS within their support organization. He explained how the initial rollout in 2015 faced several challenges, including lack of sustained focus and the misconception of KCS as a static product, as opposed to a system that needs ongoing attention.

When Florian assumed leadership in 2022, the knowledge base was underutilized and disorganized. He focused first on coaching and leaning in to the principle of trust. After establishing clear standards for knowledge content, building a robust coaching program to ensure a never-ending feedback loop, and seeing evidence of success, the approach was ready to expand outside Germany.

Key Takeaways

• Refocusing on KCS as a system led to measurable improvements, including reduced ticket volume, more effective use of knowledge items, and lower incident reopening rates.
• Coaching is a cornerstone of their success, with a unique model of three coaches per team member and bi-monthly sessions to review knowledge content and performance metrics.
• While they currently do not measure self-help rates or ticket deflection, they are considering customer feedback collection to further refine their approach.

Replay

Florian Florian Haase talks through the KCS journey at TOPdesk, sharing details about their environment, the first try, the reboot, struggles, and success.

Resources Shared

• Measuring Self-Service Success: Understanding Success by Channel
• Upcoming Public Events
• KCS Training
• If you are interested in presenting at a future KCS in Action or being part of a Practitioner Panel on a topic, contact us
• Get notified about future events by signing up for the mailing list

Chat Highlights

p051118: Is it generally recommended to move away from screenshots in knowledge articles?

• Kelly Murray | Consortium | Seattle: Current arguments against screenshots:
  – Very hard to keep current
  – Bots & GenAI can’t leverage information from them
• p051118: Makes sense, thank you
• Wendy Herrmann (She/Her) – Sodexo: Users learn in different ways, so if you eliminate screenshots, you remove the learning for visual users. How do you work around that to still be inclusive to all learners approaches?
• Karen B: You could offer users a link in the article to a detailed document that includes images.