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Consortium for Service Innovation

Plugging Content Gaps Identified From Self-Service

Requestor use of self-service introduces some interesting dynamics:

  • Requestors (customers) will use a good web site to solve problems they would not have called the support center about (demand for support is far greater than the number incidents that come into the support center)
  • When customers use self-service, there are issues they will not be able to solve, but in many situations, they will not submit a request or incident
  • Searches that produce no relevant results represent potential gaps in the knowledge base (an article does not exist) or findability issues (article exists but the requestor could not find it).

Part of the Knowledge Domain Expert’s responsibility is to identify and fill content gaps in the knowledge based based on activity in the self-service mechanism.

Through web and search engine analytic tools we can identify requestors' search activity that was unsuccessful. The KDE should identify issues that were pursued on the web (Google) or through our self-service mechanism where no content existed. The KDEs ensure that articles are created to address undocumented issues. KDEs may also refine existing articles based on how the requestors are searching for a resolution—this improves findability.

Since the Consortium members report that a significant percentage of their knowledge base activity from requestors comes through web search engines (Google being the most prevalent), KDEs have to look for knowledge gaps based on where the requestor started their search activity. 

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