The Consistency Challenge
Ong says two priorities were the driving force for Cebu investing in a knowledge management system: safety and timeliness of departures and arrivals, which he considers make up 50% of the customer experience.
The other half is, he says, where it gets a bit tricky. “I think our major challenge in the other 50% is really about consistency.” And consistency can be in different aspects of the airline’s operations. For instance, there’s consistency in the way the company answers its customers and behavior it shows them. There needed to be a way to use the same service language across multiple phases of a customer’s journey so customers could see Cebu operating as one brand. Lastly, the airline wanted to be consistent in delivering the experience it promised passengers.
The Incentive for Knowledge Management
Ong says it’s something he finds somewhat funny, but it wasn’t Cebu’s CTO or CIO who propelled digital transformation. Like many global companies, the pandemic drove the airline to invest in knowledge management. And like those other businesses, Cebu had limited resources to meet their consistency challenges.
Ong says the airline eventually chose KMS Lighthouse because the software offered everything it needed to support Cebu’s customer-facing team as well as its employees in general and its customers themselves. KMS Lighthouse:
- Helped align Cebu’s policies, processes, and procedures within diverse sets of employees across different departments.
- Gave the airline a central “source of truth,” where employees and customers alike could get answers quickly, whether internally or externally.
But it wasn’t just KMS Lighthouse’s technical features that sold Ong on the system. He also spoke with existing customers to ask about their relationship with KMS. And the incredible amount of praise he heard for the company and the system bore out once the implementation was made. “They’re true partners,” Ong says, meeting Cebu’s expectations and listening to suggestions for ways to improve the system.
Ong was also happy to share his top 3 tips for getting the most out of a knowledge management system:
- Know what you’re trying to solve.
- Align and invite everyone into the journey.
- Analyze your problems and make sure the solution you’re applying will have a significant impact on internal and external users.
