Biographical Information
Tim Hines
Vice President, Vice President of Product Management, CRM
Consona Corporation
Tim Hines began his career at AOL as a tech support representative in 1995. He was a user and eventually manager of Vantive, Witness and TCS. He also worked in Andersen Consulting’s CRM internal practice. After leading implementation efforts with marketing automation vendors, he joined the Onyx product management team in 2002. After Onyx was acquired by Consona, he joined the company in 2006. Hines guides the product roadmap and functionality across all of Consona’s CRM product lines.
Articles by Tim Hines
Can't We Just Use SharePoint?"
13 Sep 2011
It's the suggestion that people running a knowledge management program fear the most: After presenting requirements for a KM tool, it's almost inevitable that someone at the table looks thoughtful and says, "I think you should use our content management system instead."
How can we make the case for our much-needed tool to a skeptical IT audience focused on consolidation? First, let's see what content management (CM) is good for . . . .
The Knowledge Experience
How and Why to Make Knowledge Management Easier
05 Jul 2011
People naturally want to share what they know. Customer service and support teams share knowledge every day, with email, shared drives, instant messaging and by just popping their head over a coworker's cubicle. Best practices like knowledge-centered support (KCS) make knowledge sharing a simple and effective part of the job. So, doing knowledge management right should be easy... but it's not. . . .
Meet the User Halfway: Search Shouldn't Be Passive-Aggressive
17 Apr 2011
I bet that if a coworker treated you the way most search engines do, you'd punch him in the nose: "Can you get me the TPS forms, please?" "We don't have any TPS forms. But if you'd like, I can get you 10,000 documents that use the letters ‘TPS.'" "May I have the TPS reports, please?" "Oh, sure! Here you are." And yet, this kind of nonsense is just what we've come to expect. . . .
Fix it For Me!
Staying Ahead of the Customer Sat Curve with
Proactive Technology
29 Jun 2010
When you think about reducing customer service costs and cutting margins while improving your service levels, most people go right to the concept of self-service. It's true that with an effective knowledge management solution and self-service portal, you can achieve these goals. You're harnessing knowledge of known issues and deflecting them to your self-service portal. In today's instant gratification world, customers prefer the convenience and immediacy of fixing it themselves...
Making Support Social
Putting the Pieces Together
11 May 2010
Social media is fundamentally changing how businesses and their customers interact. Nowhere will the impact of the social Web be stronger, or more beneficial, than in service and support. Customers have always helped each other, and social technologies give them new, more scalable platforms for helping even more. There's a proliferation of social technologies, but a small number of integrated features can help make support social. Support communities are the most popular...
Knowledge Management, Made to Measure
Using Metrics as a Roadmap to KM Success
19 Oct 2009
Management 101 tells us that success in business starts with setting goals and measuring progress toward them. Service and support leaders are metrics masters: from electronic status boards to thick monthly reports, filled with charts and tables, leaders manage by the numbers. Traditionally, measuring support operations has been straightforward. Shorter hold times are better; higher abandonment rates are worse. Knowledge management is harder to measure. For example, how many articles should be written? As anyone who has waded through an overgrown, under-maintained knowledgebase can tell you...
Think Outside the (Search) Box
Power Enterprise Search with Knowledge
04 May 2009
Enterprises are drowning in unstructured information, and search can help employees get the specific facts they need to do their job, wasting less time hunting for information and resolving problems that have already been solved. IDC estimates...
”Doing KM” vs. “Implementing a Knowledgebase”
01 Apr 2009
Knowledge management can be a key enabler for service and support. Used internally, knowledge helps staff answer more questions with more confidence and accuracy, shortens time to resolution, increases consistency and reduces escalations. Used externally, knowledge deflects repetitive cases and helps customers solve their own issues quickly and easily...