One of the most muscular sentences from the cult movie "Operation Grandma" is: "You start at your fastest, and slowly you speed up." (Krembo).
Indeed, sometimes it seems that everything needs to be fast, everything needs to be immediate; moreover, to achieve a truly good result, an endless race is required, and we keep increasing the pace.
Even when we need knowledge, there are cases where knowledge needs to arrive quickly - even immediately.
In professional literature, this is commonly referred to as "just-in-time knowledge" or "real-time knowledge management."
Until now, it was easy for us to define who needs immediate knowledge - employees who are in dialogue with customers and require knowledge for this dialogue. The most familiar example is a telephone customer service center, and in recent years, we have encountered a similar approach in reception centers, sales branches, and service points.
How do we handle immediate knowledge differently from other organizational knowledge bodies?
We ensure that it can be accessed easily, intuitively, and quickly;
We ensure it can be easily navigated thanks to simple and consistent templates, explicit language, explanatory images, and icons.
In short, we make knowledge accessible and present it optimally.
However, it's incorrect to limit the concept of immediate knowledge to service centers, whether telephone or face-to-face.
It's right to provide immediate knowledge also to customers seeking answers to questions that bother them on their own;
It's also right to provide immediate knowledge to employees to define work processes and expected conduct.
Knowledge is beginning to form regarding customers, but most of it is still presented today as long text with little structure and insufficient accessibility and presentation.
Regarding employees, organizations still settle for procedures and guidelines, primarily written, with lots of text, little structure, and even less clarity.
And what happens in practice?
Customers call customer service too often or visit branches, and according to studies, they leave much less satisfied than if they hadn't waited in line and received answers to their questions at a time convenient for them. (By the way - studies show that some tried to search for information and knowledge on websites first but didn't find or understand it).
And employees simply don't work according to procedures unless the sanctions are too high. Most don't do this out of negligence but for the same reasons as customers - it's not easy to find and navigate within documents and understand the answer to the immediate question.
What can be changed?
First, understand the difference between immediate knowledge and other supporting knowledge.
Second, immediate knowledge requires a solution that includes different accessibility and presentation.
Third, implement the above and start in places where the cost of non-treatment is maximal (go after the money policy);
And fourth, enjoy the results. And they will come. Maybe even quickly and immediately.
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