NetApp

Key New Features added in 2022

In 2022, the NetApp KB team created multiple dashboards (general and personalized) using CXone Expert APIs, DekiScript and custom Java script. These dashboards help us manage feedback, track author activities, and address audit process gaps.

• User activity Dashboard or My Dashboard: Allows an engineer to see their contributions to the KB database, which includes the articles they have created or modified along with the timestamp.

They can see whether the articles they created are in Work in Progress (WIP), Not Validated, Validated or Archived confidence states. They can also see the visibility status of their articles. Additionally, managers can see the activities data of their teams.

         o We invested time and resources on this dashboard because the native user contribution feature provided by CXone Expert only shows basic information such as the create date and name of the article. It does not show the confidence and visibility of the articles, which are very important in ensuring proper adoption of Knowledge-Centered Service Version 6 (KCSv6) practices at NetApp.

• Global User Dashboard: Gives KCS coaches and managers a birds-eye view of their team’s KCS profiles. Using this dashboard, leaders and mentors can view the KCS licenses of individuals by manager, coach, team, or region.
• Coach Dashboard: Allows coaches to view any pending Process Adherence Review (PAR) and Content Standard Checklist (CSC) audits assigned to them and complete them on time. We are now able to track KCS audit processes within the CXone Expert platform.
• Feedback dashboard: Allows the NetApp KB team and the Knowledge Domain Expert (KDE) teams to track, assign and close feedback within 24 to 48 hours of receiving them. In addition, it allows us to segregate feedback as technical, non-technical external , and Internal so that we can prioritize and forward the feedback to the right SMEs to address.
• Link Manager: Some articles are added as referral links within other articles to provide customers with additional information about a topic. However, when the linked articles become obsolete or irrelevant, it is important to archive/delete the articles and remove the link to these articles from the articles in which they are referred. The CXone Expert platform does not provide an easy way to identify all articles that refer to an obsolete/archived link. The NetApp KB team developed a customised widget using CXone Expert APIs and DekiSript, which allows us to identify all articles in which an archived or deleted article link is referred. This ensures that our customers do not inadvertently click on broken links.
• Case citations: We are in the business of resolution. Therefore, it is important for us to know how many KBs from the database are used to close customer cases. The NetApp KCS team developed a customized script that connects the CXone Expert tool with NetApp Support CRM to display all cases that have used a particular KB as resolution at the bottom of that KB.
• Managing visibility of Archived Articles: By default, the CXone Expert platform allows archived articles to only be visible to KCS publishers. This is not optimal for NetApp KCS practices; it is important that KCS Candidates and KCS Contributors have visibility to archived articles. The NetApp KB team used CXone Expert APIs and a customised script to control the page restrictions for archived articles, which allows us to show archived articles to a privileged set of individuals, which includes KCS candidates, contributors and any other internal employees that benefits from this information.
• Managing Confidence and Visibility of Moved Articles: There are several instances when we have to bulk move articles between guides to manage the number of articles available within a specific guide. However, this movement, by default, changes the visibility and confidence of the moved articles to Internal and WIP, respectively. This may remove the article from Google, and affect our SEO metrics. The NetApp KB team used CXone Expert APIs and a customised script that helps retain the confidence and visibility of any article that is moved between different guides. This script has significantly improved the operational efficiency of our KCS program.
• Alerts for KB discrepancies: Sometimes, we see certain discrepancies in the KB articles created by our engineers. For instance, an engineer would have inadvertently set the visibility of Not Validated KB to Public, or may have forgotten WIP articles that need to be completed and published. The NetApp KB team has built a script using CXone Expert APIs to send us regular email alerts on any such discrepancies, which includes WIP articles pending in the system for more than 30 days, articles created under a category instead of a guide, and not validated articles that are public or customer facing.

Key Features available since 2020

• Easily navigable categories (for high-level product classification) and sub-categories (guides for product sub-classification)
• Permission based access to content that adheres to our support policies (solutions are available only through login).
• Templates that adhere to our content standards
• Section-level controls for added flexibility to set content visibility based on the audience profile (customer, partner, or internal) and yet allowing Google to index 90% of our content (titles and applies-to sections are completely public)
• Specific article authoring, viewing, and editing privileges that allow collective ownership, while maintaining appropriate controls to ensure content quality.
• Touchpoints to allow customers to view articles outside of the KB site, without leaving the primary search site for a seamless user experience
• Touchpoint within the case tool for seamless authoring experience for our technical support engineers
• Two distinct authoring workflows for Solve loop (experience-based) content open for a larger group to update and Evolve Loop (compliance-based) content, where a smaller group, controls updates to content.

Results & Impact

Our efforts to continuously improve the CXone Expert platform has resulted in the following outcomes:

• Article creation rate: improved by 64%
• Article reuse rate: improved by 25%
• Orphaned WIP articles in the system reduced by 84% (Dashboards provide engineers ability to review the status of articles created by them and complete them on a timely basis. Additionally, discrepancy alerts ensure that most discrepancies are identified and resolved on time.)
• About 800 Knowledge Articles published per month, close to 30K in the system by end of 2022 (>10K increase from the previous year)
• 94% of our Knowledge Articles are shared externally—a ~40% increase from before we migrated to CXone Expert.
• >3.5M monthly page views to our digital support sites and >700K monthly page views on the KB site.
• 98% of support journeys include digital channels and we see a 54% success rate
• >80:1 Contact Ratio across our 5-Channel Support Delivery model (Contact Ratio is the number of Digital Support Engagement (web sessions) seen for every Assisted Support Case that is opened) (Goal was 30:1)
• <5% of all answers are assisted support cases
• Our CSAT scores are at an all-time high of 4.5/5
• Our Customer Effort Score is also at an all-time high with 98%

Sites

• kb.netapp.com
• kb-cn.netapp.com
• kb-ja.netapp.com

Team

Ryan Mathews 

Padma Prasad 

Rajesh Panda