Bloomfire Included in New Forrester Research Report “Now Tech: Knowledge Management Solutions for Customer Service Q3 2020

Knowledge management (KM) solutions enable companies to provide timely answers to customer questions, empower customers to self-serve from an existing knowledge base, and allow internal teams to leverage the collective intelligence needed to do their best work. But if you’re new to the world of knowledge management technology, it can be difficult to know which solution is the best fit for your business.

Forrester Research’s new report, “Now Tech: Knowledge Management Solutions for Customer Service Q3 2020,” can help you navigate the KM landscape for your customer service department or entire organization. The report provides an overview of the top 22 knowledge management providers and their primary functionality segments.

Bloomfire is proud to be included in the collaborative knowledge management segment of the report. You can learn more about this functionality segment and why we believe our platform is a great fit for customer service teams (and entire organizations) below.

Want to read the full Forrester Research report? Get your complimentary copy here.

What Is a Collaborative Knowledge Management Platform?

Collaborative knowledge management platforms allow employees to author content and use knowledge sourced from their community in the flow of work, creating a true knowledge engagement experience. Because collaborative KM platforms encourage employees to contribute knowledge in the flow of work, they allow organizations to capture both explicit knowledge (e.g. policies and procedures) and implicit knowledge (e.g. best practices from experienced customer service agents). Bloomfire is particularly well-suited to capturing implicit knowledge because all content–including audio and video files–is deep indexed and searchable. As a result, subject matter experts can share their knowledge in the format that makes the most sense. 

Collaborative KM platforms also give organizations a feedback loop so that they can continually optimize their knowledge base. Employees can leave comments, ask questions, and flag content for review. Admins can review built-in analytics to identify what knowledge is getting the most engagement, which employees are engaging with the knowledge, and where there may be knowledge gaps. This allows an organization’s collective intelligence to grow and evolve rather than remaining static and quickly becoming outdated. 

Another capability that Forrester Research notes in its report is that collaborative KM platforms are often used org-wide, not just in customer service departments. Bloomfire, for instance, is easily scalable and can be used in a number of different ways, including for customer service, market research, sales enablement, and as an org-wide knowledge engagement platform. We often work with clients that start using Bloomfire in one department and later expand the platform across their organization. 

Bloomfire as a Collaborative KM Platform for Customer Service Teams and Entire Organizations 

Bloomfire helps customer service departments streamline the processes of sharing and finding knowledge, allows organizations to easily grow their customer service knowledge base over time, and ensures agents are able to confidently assist customers. Below are just a few of the customer service organizations that we’re proud to support:

• Orvis switched from SharePoint to Bloomfire because they needed a KM platform with robust search capabilities. Their customer service department now uses Bloomfire for all customer service documentation and standard operating procedures as well as product training materials. They’ve also used Bloomfire’s Groups feature to create segmented knowledge bases specific to the third-party contact center they work with during their peak season. Since launching, 92% of Orvis’ users have engaged with content in Bloomfire, 100% of questions asked in the platform have been answered, and Orvis has doubled their first call resolution rate. 
• VRBO (formerly HomeAway) uses Bloomfire to centralize all their customer service information. They also leverage Bloomfire’s Q&A tool to reduce repetitive one-off questions and improve agent productivity. Since moving from SharePoint to Bloomfire, their customer service specialists save up to 30 minutes each time they need to find support materials, allowing them to assist customers quickly and dedicate more time to resolving complex issues.
• AGIA Affinity uses Bloomfire to keep policies and procedures up-to-date and hold agents accountable for keeping up with the latest information. They use Bloomfire’s built-in analytics to determine who is engaging with content and help hold agents accountable. They also embed checkpoint surveys within Bloomfire posts to help agents measure their comprehension of the materials they’re responsible for consuming. They’ve increased their onboarding ramp up time by 15% and decreased the number of contact center calls placed on hold by 50% since they started using Bloomfire.

Bloomfire is also one of the five vendors in the Forrester Research report noted as being “used companywide, for sales enablement or customer service. As such, they  integrate with CRM, products, and sales engagement platforms as well as employee collaboration tools.”

The flexibility of our platform, from the customizable category structure to the segmentation of groups within a larger community, makes it an excellent fit for a wide range of uses and uniquely suited for organization-wide knowledge management . By arming employees across every department with the knowledge and insights they need to do their best work, Bloomfire helps businesses deliver the best possible customer experiences.