When Marconi began evaluating knowledge management technologies in the spring of 1998, the concept of sharing knowledge among agents was nothing new. Agents were already accustomed to working in teams of three or four people, gathering in war room fashion to solve customers' technical issues. And a year earlier, Marconi had started basing a percentage of agents' quarterly bonuses on the amount of knowledge they submitted to Tactics Online as well as their involvement with mentoring and training other agents. "Each agent was expected to teach two training classes and write 10 FAQs to earn their full bonus," says Breit. "When we brought new companies online, the new agents received the same bonus plan. This approach allowed us to build a very open knowledge-sharing environment."
To augment Tactics Online, Marconi chose software from ServiceWare Technologies, in part because its technology would integrate easily with the company's Remedy CRM system, which agents use to log incoming calls from customers and track other customer interactions. In addition, says Breit, Marconi wanted its agents to populate its existing Oracle database of product information.
Breit's division spent six months implementing the new system and training agents. The system - dubbed KnowledgeBase - is linked to the company's CRM system and is powered by the Oracle database. The integrated view of Marconi's customers and products provides agents with a comprehensive history of interactions. Technical support agents can, for example, put markers in the database and immediately pick up at the point where the customer last spoke with another agent.
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