By Christa Peters, Senior Manager, Instructional Design & Knowledge Management | 02/08/2021 |

I was completely stuck when trying to figure out what to write for this blog. How can I make effortless experience interesting and thought provoking? On Sunday, I tuned into CBS News Sunday Morning and was excited when they had an entire segment dedicated to hold times!

Despite the humor of the piece (seriously, go watch it, I will wait), I was shocked to learn the average person waits 43 days of their life on hold! At Percepta, we know that effortless experience means reducing, if not eliminating hold times.

So what exactly is effortless experience?

According to Matthew Dixson’s book The Effortless Experience, there are four pillars of effortless experience:

  1. Create “sticky” channels
  2. Master “next issue avoidance”
  3. Engineer a positive experience
  4. Hire customer service “controllers”

I am going to focus on #1: “sticky” channels. I am sure you’re wondering, what are “sticky” channels? Sticky channels are giving customers and agents access to all the information they need to be able to assist a customer without having to put someone on hold.

As the individual who helps lead knowledge management for training at Percepta, I think this is a crucial piece of our work. Having quick access to information, especially in our rapidly changing information environment, ensures our agents can reject the hold button and simply focus on helping customers quickly and effectively.

In 2020, (before I arrived) the knowledgebase team hit it out of the park. The team met with front line agents to get honest feedback on the existing knowledge bank articles. From there, they re-drafted articles – making them simpler and more useful. We regularly review articles and search criteria so agents can get the information they need quickly and effortlessly.

These are just some of the big changes from 2020! This year, we are going to build on those successes and work to make the hold button obsolete.

Please reach out to me if you are an agent on the front lines and you have ideas to make access to knowledge better!