Knowledge-Centered Success: Practices Guide (2027)

Knowledge-Centered Success (KCS^®) is a simple idea that creates profound benefits.  If, as part of our workflow, we can reuse, improve, and (if it doesn't exist) create knowledge that is available to people who are looking for it, we can

1. make gains in operational efficiency,
2. increase success with self-service and automation, and
3. improve products and services while enabling organizational learning.

We do this by enabling the people who are interacting with the knowledge to take ownership for it. This may require different ways to think about work, people, measures, and process.

KCS is built on a set of fundamental beliefs (KCS Principles) that explain why we are doing what we do. The ten Core Concepts (which are more detailed) are based on one or more Principles.  This guide focuses on the how; the best we know to-date about how to make KCS work, while the KCS Adoption & Transformation Guide provides a step-by-step plan for adoption. See the Glossary of KCS Terms for details on terminology.

While the KCS acronym remains the same as previous versions, we have updated the name from Knowledge-Centered Service to Knowledge-Centered Success.  This change reflects the broadening application of the methodology. For organizations to leverage ongoing advances in automation and artificial intelligence, structured, up-to-date knowledge is the path to success.

This guide is based on more than thirty years of Consortium Member experience with KCS, which is largely from the perspective of customer facing support and internal help desks, but the approach applies to any information- or knowledge-intensive environment.  A number of Members are adopting KCS across their entire company, including HR, legal, marketing, sales, product management and development organizations. 

The Consortium for Service Innovation is the non-profit association that developed and continues to maintain the KCS methodology; it is the source for KCS resources and the certifying body for KCS. The Consortium offers KCS certification for people and KCS Verified and Aligned designations for tools and services.  The KCS Verified and KCS Aligned programs are useful for assessing technology to enable KCS. The Consortium nurtures a network of KCS practitioners and vendors who support the successful adoption of KCS and contribute to the continuous improvement of the KCS methodology across all knowledge-intensive industries.

The KCS® methodology is a registered service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation. The first mention of KCS in a written work or presentation must include the superscript ®. Please also include this footnote or parenthetical statement: “KCS® is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation^™.”

KCS cannot be used in the name of a commercial offering without explicit written permission from the Consortium for Service Innovation. Please contact the Consortium with questions.

Knowledge-Centered Success Practices Guide by Consortium for Service Innovation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.  Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at info@serviceinnovation.org.