Close the loop with the people who write knowledge

Silence after writing

Someone on your service desk wrote a knowledge article last month.

Do they know if anyone read it?

Usually not. They wrote it, submitted it, and heard nothing. No word that it was approved. No word that it was rejected, or why. No word that it saved forty tickets last week.

Then we wonder why people stop writing.

Silence is not neutral

Silence is not neutral. To the person who wrote the article, silence reads as this did not matter.

Closing the loop

Closing the loop is not complicated:

• Tell authors when their article is approved, and when it is sent back, with the reason.
• Tell them when someone flags it as out of date or wrong, so they can fix it.
• Tell them when it is being used, and roughly how much.

That last one matters most. People keep doing the things they can see making a difference.

Who knowledge really comes from

Knowledge does not come from a system. It comes from people who take ten minutes at the end of a busy day to write down what they learned. The least we can do is let them know it landed.

Next step

When did you last thank someone for an article they wrote? More on knowledge and self-service in the Knowledge library on ESM's Exchange: https://exchange.esm.institute

Tags: knowledge management, service management, self-service, ESM