There is a fascinating set of articles out by Venkatesh Rao, Jeff Kelly, and Andrew McAfee. I follow McAfee, so he alerted me to the discussion.

The gist of it is that Rao speculates that Knowledge Management and Social Media are at war, almost unknowingly, because of cultural differences between Baby Boomers, Gen-X’ers, and the Millenials (or Gen-Y’s). Because these groups think about the problem so differently, they favor different tools and make assumptions about the other tool that may not be quite on the mark.

Rao talks about so-called experts claiming there is nothing new to Social Media, it’s all a bunch of stuff they’ve been doing with Knowledge Management for a long time. This is really at the heart of the conflict. Are there differences? And what does one mean when viewed through the lens of the other? What is Social Media to a Knowledge Management guru and vice versa?

Here at Helpstream we have a product that embraces both capabilities, so it was interesting to try to relate the various anecdotes and theories back to our experience. Before I go any further, just let me say unequivocally that one is not a substitute for the other, and that by putting them together, you realize a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Let’s start out with definitions, just so we’re all on the same page.

Wikipedia defines Knowledge Management as:

A range of practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice.

Pretty straightforward. KM products try to facilitate the collection of this knowledge as well as facilitate access to the collected knowledge.

Their definition of Social Media is much shorter:

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.

These definitions are really pretty good for this discussion. If we integrate them somewhat, Social Media is about discussing knowledge and sharing it directly between human beings, while Knowledge Management is about indentifying, creating, and distributing knowledge. One focuses on the discussion and people elements, while the other focuses on the knowledge itself.

Let’s put aside the questions of whether there are generational perspectives driving friction and instead focus on some of the practical differences that arise.

Are Knowledge Management and Social Media the Same Thing? What Are the Fundamental Differences?

This question is closely followed by, “Can I ignore one or the other,” and “Can I apply the strategies of one to the other?”

Knowledge Management is top-down, expert oriented, and focused on organizational command and control. It’s all about investing effort in determining the right answer and then ensuring that’s the answer you always get. KM is very goal oriented.

Social Media is bottom-up and holistic. Anyone can be an expert and the crowd will judge who the best experts are. Too much organizational command and control puts a damper on the community that is very counter productive. The effort is invested in encouraging participation of all kinds, rather than in eliciting a specific answer from the crowd. SM is very people and process oriented.

It should be clear from the above that one is not a substitute for the other, and that there may be some potential to have a spat between proponents of the two if either side, Mr KM or Mr SM, tries too hard to be “one size fits all” or “your stuff is just a subset of my stuff.”

On the other hand, it should be equally clear that both have something to bring to the table. This merits further discussion.

Why Do We Need Both?

Clearly there is value in having exactly the right answer at exactly the right time and making it easy to find. That’s the promise of Knowledge Management. And it works pretty well. The industry norms are that about 40% of all incidents can be resolved by a good Knowledge Management system, so that only 60% require intervention by a Customer Service representative to get them resolved.

What’s the problem with just using KM and forgetting about Social Media then?

Almost all traditional Customer Service software takes this approach, and it misses out on the advantages Social Media can bring to the table. There are two issues with Knowledge Management.

•- It is costly and time consuming to prepare good content. Often it takes long enough that most of the need for the comment has to be handled by case management before the content is available. For example, when a new feature is released, if there isn’t enough documentation on it, there will be lots of calls. By the time the documentation is revised, the most urgent need has passed.

•- There may be good content that is simply hard to find. We all know how much trouble it can be to find something with Google. Just having the content there doesn’t mean customers will always find it.

A strong community integrated with the Knowledge Base Helpstream-style can help answer both of these questions. For example, by monitoring our own support portal, we’ve learned that fully half of the successful Knowledge Base hits are on community content, not our own professional KB articles. We don’t’ feel bad about that at all. It’s just a reflection that whether the community is faster to provide the answers, or just better at helping customers find the answers, in the end, they’re getting those answers very effectively.

There’s another advantage to communities pointed up in Rao’s article. Some people enjoy building or creating things. As he puts it, Boomers speak with words, X’ers speak with numbers, and Millenials speak with actions. Knowledge Bases often don’t support the ability of others to contribute much (except perhaps a vote or two on the quality of the material). A vibrant community lets the creative builders exercise that itch to speak with actions to the good of all concerned.

Or, for those people who find too much authority or process stifling, community gives them a more casual and comfortable environment to work in. These are real cultural issues that impact your customers and their perception of your business and products.

The Knowledge Management world promises to connect you with an “expert”. One of the tenets is that their notion of expertise location is just as good or better than a social network. But how many companies actually put enough experts into support roles? How many customers believe they’re talking to an expert when they’re speaking to a Customer Service Representative? A good community will call out the experts and empower them to make a difference. A product like Helpstream will even let you create internal sub-communities where your experts can efficiently deliver their content into the broader public community.

Lastly, the Knowledge Base in its most centralized form assumes too often that there is only one “right” answer. Communities allow for collaborative refinement and gray rather than insisting on black or white.

How Do We Harmoniously Synthesize the Two?

First, I hope we’ve gotten past the idea that one can look like the other. Knowledge Management and Social Media are two different beasts that are highly complementary.

Second, to gain the most benefit, you need both connected via seamless integration.

Consider Helpstream’s approach to resolving a an issue for a customer using both. The customer enters our portal and they’re greeted by the normal starting point on the Internet: search. They type in a question or description of the problem they’re having.

The response is a list of results from all over the system. The customer sees both pure Knowledge Base articles as well as Community threads that are germane. Putting you community content into the Knowledge Base is one way to think of that integration, and it’s very important. It turns out in our system that about half the incidents resolved by the KB search are resolved by community content.

Let’s assume the user doesn’t see anything helpful and wants to take the next step. They’re given a choice. They can either submit their issue to the Community or to an Agent (via Case Management). Today that’s an equal choice, but over time we mean to experiment with other alternatives. Even with an equal choice, we find enough people select community that it relieves the burden on Customer Service representatives by about 1/3. Think about that ROI for a moment. What if you could lighten the loads on your agents by 1/3?

Anyone that doesn’t want to try the community can opt to use traditional Case Management to interact with a Customer Service Rep. Here is an interesting statistic: we find that once a customer tries the community, they are 5x as likely to go back to community the next time. That’s a pretty good endorsement for their satisfaction with the community approach!

So don’t insist on a war between Knowledge Management and Social Media. Integrate them harmoniously and reap the benefits. The ROI is immediate and measurable.