Glossary

Knowledge is a vital asset to any organization. However, simply having knowledge will not unlock its power. Your organization must manage and utilize it in an appropriate and advantageous way. This is the difference between a mediocre business and a highly competitive organization.

A simple illustration of a context-sensitive tool is when a user receives automatic guidance or documentation relevant to where they are in the software. For instance, tax preparation software often includes pop-ups that refer users to more information or examples of the information they need to enter. Rather than reading through tax brochures or pamphlets, people get help right on the spot in the app or website.

Customer education, sometimes referred to as customer training, is the tools and strategies organizations use to help their customers understand, use, and get the most value out of a product or service. It can include instructional resources like knowledge bases and FAQs as well as webinars, on-demand eLearning modules, online academies, and certificate programs.

What is customer experience and why is it so important? It includes a lot of elements, but at its core, customer experience is the perception customers have of your brand. There are as many definitions of a good experience as there are customers. The most frequently cited characteristics of an exceptional customer experience are fast response times, consistency across channels, knowledgeable staff, clear and consistent messaging, access to a live agent when needed, multiple contact points, and easy-to-use tools. When defining employee experience vs customer experience, it’s important to keep in mind that linking the two results in increased employee engagement which, in turn, leads to happier and more loyal customers.

Customer experience management (CXM) is a system of marketing strategies and technologies an organization uses to improve customer engagement, satisfaction, and experience. Customer experience management software helps businesses boost customer experience and increase productivity by up to 150 percent, reduce customer interaction time by 15 percent, and improve support ticket response accuracy by up to 70 percent.

A customer self service portal is a website or app where customers solve their own issues and manage their accounts without talking to a customer service agent. While it isn’t a complete replacement for live assistance, it is a valuable, time-saving complement that customers and service reps appreciate, especially if it’s well-designed and easy to navigate.

Organizations with a reputation for delivering an exceptional customer service experience, as a rule, have better customer retention rates, more positive reviews, and higher levels of customer loyalty. They also benefit from word-of-mouth marketing and increased referrals. Businesses that don’t prioritize positive customer service experiences can find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, with long-term ramifications that affect their bottom line.

Employee experience is an employee’s observations and perceptions about working for their organization. Ways to enhance the employee experience are one of the top priorities for modern organizations. From “moments that matter” to ESAT and EX, it’s also a topic that brings with it a lot of jargon. This glossary covers some of the most common phrases you’ll hear when discussing the employee experience and the use of knowledge management to measure and improve it.

Enterprise knowledge management is the practice of managing knowledge resources to facilitate access and reuse of knowledge. A fairly broad term, it typically refers to advanced information technologies and solutions that deal with organizing data into structures that build knowledge within the enterprise. Put another way, enterprise knowledge management solutions create business knowledge out of existing assets. This glossary covers some of the most common terms used in enterprise knowledge management.