The CX Blog

Say you had a superstar out in the wilds of your tiny site in Edmonton, Canada. Nobody in the company gives much thought to the tiny office in Edmonton, other than they do okay, no fire alarms, and well, what else is there to think about?

But there’s this one tech support agent out there who really knows–and loves– her/his stuff. How do you surface this superstar, how can you gather, capture and share more of this one agent? And how do you let this agent know that her/his voice is important enough to listen to–thereby encouraging ongoing and vital knowledge sharing.

In this way, blogging internally works the same as it does externally. Tagging, rss feeds, all these tools help to broaden and democratize the voice of the agent just like it does the voice of the customer.

Encouraging this agent to post once or twice a week, maybe a case that s/he handled or a question that s/he hears a lot–whatever the case, through the magic of tagging, that information won’t be lost and three months from now, another agent or manager or whoever, is looking for some info on this same problem and voila! The voice and experience of this Super Agent in Edmonton is right there when you need it. And you can follow up for more info, the latest info, request a new post…and you can take the info and standardize it in your KB for everyone to find and use.

The voice of the agent in Edmonton is never lost by leveraging social networking and informal learning networks for that COP or beyond, perhaps even to the customer online. Even better: there is an energizing effect of genuine connection between co-workers across sites–I’ve seen this again and again and it’s gratifying and motivating. Standard knowledge management tends to stifle COP contact of the genuine sort you find in networked communities.