The Difference Between Information and Knowledge: What You Didn’t Know

Having recently read the Gartner Reprint on how Knowledge Management can help your Customer Self Service Strategy, it struck me how we can fall under the illusion that we have access to and obtain a lot of knowledge – yet in reality we don’t. Instead what we have is a vast amount of information.

A difference that is key and a difference that if addressed can eventually lead to advanced knowledge structures within your business and ultimately an increase in sales, lead generation and improved customer service.

As live chat experts, we become the catalyst that takes information, interprets it into knowledge and then provides this to our customers’ website visitors. These website visitors are interested in buying a product or service, or are looking for support. An exceptional customer experience is an invaluable asset, and with our unique methodology that is based around our knowledge management vision, our results provide an incredible 98% chat satisfaction and 50% increase in leads from existing traffic.

Highlighted for its better return and value on investment by the Gartner Reprint, the whole knowledge management process is one that should be acknowledged as influential to the success of your business and equally the satisfaction of your customers.

The Checklist of Knowledge Benefits Table in the Gartner Reprint lists both the tangible and intangible benefits of knowledge base use scenarios; benefits, that we continuously achieve and exceed with our unique setup. Providing live chat as an extension of our customers’ business rather than an outsourced service, we are able to excel in interpreting the information we store in our knowledge base, processing this knowledge contextually and utilising it directly back to the customer to increase sales and leads while providing the highest quality customer service.

The knowledge base holds the key to how we do this. It is central to our operations – which puts it at the heart of what we do.

We ‘receive information’ but ‘store knowledge’. This is because of the steps we take to ensure the information we obtain from a new business is actioned in a way that it becomes knowledge to our agents who can extend this onto the customers they speak to.

We become, in effect, the key to unlocking everything the customer needs to know and more. We unlock this knowledge for customers and then share, explain and pass it onto them. Customer satisfaction, lead generation and sales all excel within this system. This is how we do live chat. It gives you the extra edge you need and the extra branch your customer sometimes needs before completing a purchase, providing details or fully understanding how to use a product or service.

“Raul answered all my questions and helped me make an important decision.”

The importance of utilising this is far greater than you may think. Having your site filled with information is okay but this leaves it open for interpretation – how can information be written in a universal way to extend through to the whole of your customer demographic?

The success of business/service/product information is imperative to how it is received by customers…which has a direct effect on their satisfaction and your sales and lead conversion rates.

Information is great, it’s facts, opinions and data; knowledge is different, it’s more. Knowledge is the understanding of that information. Knowledge is what you want your customers to have. Our process makes this reality.

“Great service, glad to be able to chat through options with Katie this evening. She has been very helpful. I will place my order later this evening or tomorrow once I get all information in order”

Our operation revolves around our knowledge base (KB). It is where information is stored, it is used by all of our agents and it’s also a place of collaboration.

The KB allows us to manage all of our customers and take on new businesses without any issues. We are able to handle all amounts of data and information, so when we go live there are no issues. To the ordinary eye it would seem we have thousands of information points in our KB. And to the unknowing eye this is all they will be. However, to our agents who have undergone intense knowledge training on each business, these points are actually thousands of potential knowledge points, ready and waiting to go.

As soon as an agent speaks to a customer, the process begins. The KB is ignited, navigation starts, relevant information is located, context is established and the outcome is knowledge which is then relayed back to the customer within a short response time – we have an average first response time of 29 seconds (32 seconds for every message after that).

Simple. Effective. Efficient. This is what your knowledge process needs to be. Information is a start, but only a refined, defined process will allow you to reap the benefits.

This process works and in synchronised fashion with the Checklist of Benefits Table in the Gartner Reprint I have identified the following tangible and intangible benefits that have been and can be achieved from our live chat services:

• Reduction in errors
• New knowledge, content or information-based products/services easily disseminated
• Consistent responses each time the same question is answered
• Improved credibility
• Ability to run multiple simultaneous Web chat sessions, increasing productivity
• Fast, accurate resolution of problems, reducing time customer spends on website

All of these benefits can be your benefits and benefits for your customers. We have a process that works held in place by our business skeleton, the Knowledge Base. This is why, if we are ever asked by a prospective customer if we can ‘manage all the information they have’ we are confident in the knowledge that we can.