Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, The Net Promoter Score (NPS) (47-slide PowerPoint presentation). This presentation covers the Net-Promoter-Score (NPS) and 10 Deployment Best Practices to ensure a successful implementation.
The Net Promoter Score is a customer loyalty metric developed by (and a registered trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix Systems.
It was [read more]
Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Customer-Centric Design (CCD), take a look at Flevy's Customer-Centric Design (CCD) Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.
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Did you know that the average team member spends about two hours daily finding and gathering information? This points to inefficient use of data-governance resources necessary to achieve specific business goals such as communicating with clients, tackling client projects, and finding innovative ways of doing things.
The issue is that most corporate knowledge is scattered across several locations, lying in email threads or buried in Slack conversations. As a result, it’s not surprising that teams will spend so much time combing reliable data from all these channels.
A comprehensive internal wiki can help simplify information sharing, reduce time wastage, improve service and consequently help retain clients. Here’s how an internal wiki tool can reduce churn and boost customer retention.
What’s an Internal Wiki?
An internal wiki is a software tool where a company’s workers can access, create, edit, and share information depending on their level of access. It makes it easy for team leaders to share their knowledge in one place, and access or distribute vital knowledge with colleagues on a centralized platform.
You are free to put whatever information you like on an internal wiki. However, your wiki should contain everything your firm relies on, such as:
- Standard operating procedures (SOPs)
- Training guides
- FAQs
- Contact information for customer service
- Company processes
- Newsletters and reports
All these are aimed at impacting customer acquisition and retention.
How Internal Wikis Help Retain Clients
Now that we’ve established what a wiki is, let’s talk about how a wiki can help your company retain customers and build lifelong client relationships.
Knowledge Is Power
No matter how simple or complex the topic is, getting all the relevant information from a person’s mind isn’t easy. Having a central hub of information, though, may do wonders for a company’s productivity.
The internal wiki serves as a central hub for the sharing and disseminating of information amongst all staff and company leaders. When workers have more information, they are better equipped to assist customers and carry out their duties effectively, resulting in increased profits for the business.
Documentation Is a Client Saver
Wiki pages are helpful for topics like projects because it’s easy to add and update little bits of content that would not make sense in a formal framework. Sometimes, having a link that takes you to the location of a project plan or the most recent version of a quote can be invaluable.
Here’s a scenario when having access to a project’s documentation on the wiki would come in handy: Your company just finished a client project about six months ago. The team member who worked on the project has transferred to a different department or, worse, has left the company. Luckily, before that happened, they had documented everything you’d ever need to know about the project. When the client calls to check in on the project’s progress, that wiki page could become a lifesaver.
Speedy Retrieval Equals Faster Service
How many times have you gone through this? Your client requests additional information regarding business process X.
What do you do first? Perhaps, you open your project folder to figure out the ideal response or the project file to check. Worse yet, what if you fired up Windows Explorer and searched for a Word or text file on your network that might include the instructions?
Windows has to look through hundreds, if not thousands, of files and directories to find what you need, which takes an extremely long time. Unfortunately, even if you reach the appropriate section, the answers provided inside are rarely helpful. This is a tiresome process.
A wiki’s search functionality is arguably one of its most valuable features. If it’s a good wiki, it should have a robust search engine that scans all the text on all pages. This makes it as easy as opening Google and entering your query to run a search. Typically, search results will display the most relevant wiki page first.
Internal Wikis Allow Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the practice of soliciting the help of a large number of individuals to complete a particular task. This has never been easier to achieve, thanks to the internet’s innovations over the past years. It doesn’t matter how big or small a business is; this rule still applies across the board.
Years ago, the individual in charge of creating documentation would be a technical writer, a project manager, or a developer. We all know that most technicians aren’t the best writers. Crowdsourcing can change how wikis track knowledge.
Every new team member has instant access to every existing wiki page in the organization, and those with editing access can edit or create new pages as the need arises. As more information is added, the wiki evolves and improves indefinitely. Consequently, you can update your clients faster on relevant information about your products, processes, or services since employees will have instant access to accurate information.
Updates and Maintenance
If you’re working on a project or maintaining a connection with a client, using a wiki will make it simpler and quicker to update information as conditions change. This helps keep your company’s information stay updated and accurate, an essential factor for customer retention. Customers will lose trust in your brand if they receive inaccurate information from time to time, or worse, get passed around by agents instead of receiving timely answers.
Integrated Document Revision and Control
Most word processors have unnecessarily complex systems for commenting and revising documents. What happens if the user forgets to enable tracking modifications, or if the file is overwritten? The administrative burden will increase, and you risk losing customers if they’re underserved.
A standard feature of most wiki software is an easy and built-in way to keep track of various page versions. The best internal wikis also provide a way to view the changes (both new and deleted content) made in each version of a page side by side. If something gets deleted or a malicious user tries to steal content, the wiki’s administrator can usually restore it to an earlier version.
Bottom Line
Happy and appreciated clients are the only ones who stick around. If you want satisfied consumers and a lifelong relationship, you need a solid internal wiki accessible and easily usable by the necessary team members. When everyone is well informed and has a resource for reference, the result is enhanced productivity, better customer relations, and higher customer acquisition and retention rates.
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In the modern Digital Age, advances in technology and communication, combined with the explosive growth in data information, have given rise to a more empowered global customer. Recent economic and political events highlight the need for organizations to understand how consumers view the world and the most important attributes for their purchasing decisions.
Thus, increasingly more organizations are seeking to invest and focus on Customer-centric Design. A clear understanding of customer needs and behaviors across the organization will help drive profitable growth strategies and provide the confidence to invest in opportunities at a time when staying within budget can be extremely difficult.
Learn about our Customer-Centric Design (CCD) Best Practice Frameworks here.
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