Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) is not something we do in addition to solving problems. KCS becomes the way we solve problems. In this article, discover how ServiceNow revolutionizes problem solving with Knowledge Centered Service (KCS), and learn why this approach is not just an add-on, but a fundamental mindset shift. We’ll dive into the what and why of KCS, explore my in-person experience with it, and see how ServiceNow embraces KCS to provide unparalleled value for their users.
What is KCS?
Based on the double loop process (image below), KCS is a best practice methodology for Knowledge Management, that picks up where ITIL leaves off.
Figure 1: KCS Double Loop Process
The main premise of KCS is to capture content at the time of Incident creation in the customer’s context and to “Search early Search Often.” It is key to capture the content in the customer’s context because, if you’ve ever worked with or in IT, you know that IT jargon can be a little… much for most people. The end goal is for customers to be able to search on their own to find the correct answer in a structured, easy to read format. Not only is it useful for our customers; it also enables our analysts to provide the same answer to the same questions through reuse. Because we are searching early and searching often, we can quickly improve upon our knowledge articles as needed.
As with any process, and in addition to the day-to-day Solve Loop, it is important to evolve through continuous process improvement. This is done by ensuring that the health of the content remains intact. Retiring knowledge articles that are no longer relevant, and ensuring that articles are kept up to date and following the identified structure is extremely important. Incident Management is not the only Service Management Process where Knowledge fits in; it should integrate into Project Management, Change Management, Problem Management, Request Management, and Service Configuration Management (to name a few).
As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” KCS is not unlike any other process in that Performance Assessment (Practice Success Factor (PSF), Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and Metrics) must be performed for continuous improvement. Measuring is great, but also ensure that you are taking action and letting data drive your organization. Now, while all of this is great, to succeed you also need to ensure you have Leadership and Communication driving this initiative (note this is an initiative, not a project, projects have end dates, initiatives do not).
My Back Story
I started my IT career straight out of college, working for the Service Desk at my University. Within a very short time, I started to get assigned various “Knowledge bases”, wikis, stored drives, SharePoints, notes under keyboards and the like, with the task of ensuring that we were producing content that we could reuse and eventually provide to end users. In my mind, there had to be a better way, so I did what every good IT person does, and I Googled it. It was from here that I found Knowledge Centered Service (at that time Knowledge Centered Support (KCS)). After taking the principles course, the quote at the beginning of this article became my mantra. “Knowledge Centered Service (KCS) is not something we do in addition to solving problems. KCS becomes the way we solve problems.” I would do whatever it took to bring that information back to my university, make the practices that I learned a reality, and ease the pain of:
- Managing multiple knowledge bases
- Worrying about other Service Desk analysts giving different responses to customers
- Enabling customers to help themselves.
It took roughly a year, and was comprised of – gaining executive sponsorship, putting a team together to build the process that would work for us (following each step of the KCS methodology), and starting to roll it out to the IT team. We were hated for it at first, with co-workers complaining that it was more work to do, but once we started getting a foundation of valuable, reliable knowledge articles, the process was praised, as it made answering customer questions easier in full shift-left force. Perhaps a bit more coordinated Organizational Change Management (OCM) may have helped to smooth the initial roll out, but the value of our KCS implementation was soon self-evident.
Knowledge Management is often put to the side as something we would like to do, but we are too busy as it is, which in it itself, feels like an oxymoron. This really is a Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later proposal. The point of enabling Knowledge Management and KCS for that matter, is to free up time by giving customers and Service Desk analysts the resources they need to resolve issues, while also freeing up valuable time for other members of the team to get the “important stuff” done. If a team of recently graduated (and some not yet graduated) and newly employed individuals can build a successful implementation, while continuing to be successful in their day-to-day work, your organization can as well!
KCS and ServiceNow
ServiceNow has done a fantastic job of embracing KCS (for organizations that venture down the wonderful rabbit hole) and has even gone through the added process of being one of the very few KCS verified tools available. Out of the box (with the free KCS plugin installed), ServiceNow has built in workflows to enable the publishing of content quickly and efficiently, embodying KCS principles. It makes use of many extremely useful features, such as out of the box Article Quality Index (AQI), article versioning, in-context knowledge capture, and feedback management.
AQI
Each article can and should be graded by a Knowledge Administrator. ServiceNow allows us to weigh and completely customize our grading questions. The purpose is to ensure reliability, consistency, and overall health of the knowledge base. If customers (or even internal employees) have a miserable time searching for the correct and easy to read knowledge base, the odds of them trying to solve their problem again by utilizing the knowledge base is much lower. By utilizing the AQI, your knowledge administrators can ensure the quality of the knowledge articles and knowledge base now and into the future.
Article Versioning
The KCS plugin automatically enables the Article Versioning feature by default. If one of your writers updates an article mistakenly or inaccurately , ServiceNow’s KCS module can quickly and easily revert to a previous version. In addition, this will facilitate reviewing a history of timestamped, versioned changes if you ever need this record.
In-Context Knowledge Capture
As we mentioned before, we can implement KCS with many other processes. ServiceNow eases the creation of knowledge by relating Knowledge articles in these other processes, quickly enabling creation while in other modules, such as Incident, Change, or Problem.
Feedback Management
There are arguments for allowing customer feedback to help better the knowledge base, or disabling customer feedback because it may not be helpful. Whichever choice you make, ServiceNow makes it easy to solicit feedback (or not to) from either (or both) customers and internal knowledge users.
Beginning Metrics
ITIL 4’s Knowledge Management Practice Guide even offers us a couple of Practice Success Factors (PSFs) that we can use to track our KCS success. ITIL 4 defines PSFs as a complex functional component of a practice that is required for the practice to fulfill its purpose. This makes for an excellent starting place to assess the overall effectiveness and efficiency of our KCS system.
| Practice Success Factor | Key Metrics |
|---|---|
| 1. Creating and maintaining valuable knowledge and transferring and using it across an organization. | • Compliance of the knowledge management practice culture with formally stated requirements. • Stakeholders’ satisfaction with the knowledge management practice culture adoption and acceptance. • Absorption capacity. • Adoption of the knowledge management practice across the organization. |
| 2. Effectively using information to enable decision-making across the organization. | • Stakeholder satisfaction with the informational support for decision making. • Compliance of information with formally stated requirements, according to audit reports. • Information quality (accuracy, completeness, consistency, uniqueness, and timeliness). • Knowledge management tools’ effectiveness. • Users’ satisfaction with knowledge management tools. |
Conclusion
KCS has grown in popularity over the years, but many organizations still fear the time commitment when implementing this initiative. ServiceNow provides basic plug-and-play functionality to ease the burden of customization, while maintaining the ability to customize to meet your organizational needs. Stay tuned for our next blog post for a more in depth look into KCS within ServiceNow.