Knowlegde-Centered Support is a journey, not a destination. We use the KCS Practices Guide v5.3 which provides some direction. This guide is a compilation of the proven practices of KCS from the problem solving and individual daily workflows, to content quality management, to insighfor team leadership and performance assessment. We break out the eight practices of the
KCS methodology into two reinforcing loops:
Solve Loop
- Capture
- Structure
- Reuse
- Improve
Evolve Loop
- Process Integration
- Content Health
- Performance Assessment
- Leadership & Communication
KCS prescribes a specific structure or format, which provides context for the content, improves the readability of the KCS article, and promotes consistency.
Any situation or issue can be broken down into the following categories:
• Issue (sometimes called symptom, question or problem)—the situation in the customer’s words—what are they trying to do or what is not working?
• Environment—what products does the user have (platform, products, releases)? How is it configured? Has anything in the environment changed recently?
• Resolution (sometime called the fix or answer)—the answer to the question or the
steps required to resolve the issue.
• Cause—the underlying source of the issue. (optional, typically only valuable for problems or defects)
• Metadata—attributes or information about the article such as the article state, the date created, number of times the article has been used, modification history and the date last modified. By capturing the information in this structure at the start of an incident, we are creating as we go. This is also the information we should be using to search the knowledge base for known articles. We reduce problem-solving time and ensure that new KCS articles build on and integrate with existing knowledge.
“KCS was developed by the Consortium for Service Innovation, www.serviceinnovation.org”.