We have had one of those industrial size dumpsters on our driveway for the last six months, thanks to a large remodeling project that has converted our house into a contractor’s delight and a homeowner’s nightmare.

We are trying to live in our house during this remodel. We lost access to our living room a couple of months ago, and all our furniture is stacked up at the far end of the kitchen. My husband’s office has temporarily been reduced down to the space for a folding table for his computer. Our living space is also being reconfigured. Normal routes within the house are lost. For example, the doors that lead to my husband’s office or my daughter’s room have been sealed off. Instead, you now need to walk through the closet in the master bedroom over temporary floorboards, then unzip the dust shield to reach these rooms.

My office is located at the other end of the house. Anytime I pay a bill or file an expense report, I like to make a copy of my paperwork using our printer/copier combination that now sits in the back closet of my husband’s office. In our maze of a house, this means going down a flights of stairs, through the living room dust shield, through the closet door in the master bedroom, and then through another dust shield to get to the printer. Each trip to the printer feels like a mini-expedition.

So, to only make this trip once, I queued up my print jobs and collated all the paperwork that I wanted to copy, and made the trek to the printer. To my dismay, it was flashing in bright orange “Error 2632” on its display. I pressed the OK button, made sure that paper was loaded in the printer, then rebooted it in hopes that the error would clear. Nothing worked.

I knew it was pointless to look for the manual. “You can find anything you need on the web” is my husband’s philosophy and he disposes of manuals as quickly as he acquires them. So, I made the long trek back to my office, to see if I could diagnose the “error 2632” code.

I found what I was looking for on the manufacturer’s site. In fact, searching for the error code was a wonderful experience. I answered a couple of questions up front, like the model number of the printer, the optional features that we had purchased, like a color display, and then entered the error code. A list of results were returned to me, ordered by a relevancy score which ranged between 52% and 99%. When I moused over the top few solutions, a short summary of the solution was displayed. Skimming these summaries, I was able to locate the perfect solution which included a set of steps to fix the problem with diagrams, and an explanation of the root cause of this issue. I even answered the feedback form appended to this solution — “yes”, I typed “this solution seems perfect, and very clear”. However, I thought, how do I get this information down to my printer, where I really need it. I ended up hand-coping the main steps on a sheet of scrap paper to take back down to the printer.

With this information, I got my printer to work, but not without making several long trips back and forth to my computer, to re-read the instructions more closely as I had forgotten to include several important steps in my paper notes.

There must be a better way to get to this information I thought, like why not have it available at the point of use where customer’s really need it, instead of in a manual which can get separated from the device, or on a web site requiring internet access to which not everyone has access to at all times.

Most office peripheral equipment, like printers, copiers, faxes are sophisticated devices of ever increasing complexity. As well, most of these devices have user interface displays. Why not strip down a knowledgebase to its essential components and embed it in these devices?

For example, imagine the printer being able to display a link to a knowledgebase containing all the information about that particular device. In the best of situations, clicking on the knowledgebase link should offer you a choice of how you wanted to find the information that you were looking for. Novice users would be more apt to browse a folder structure of knowledge, or use a guided search approach, which leads the user down a particular discovery path to the correct solution. More seasoned users would run searches and sift through the returned results.

In the best of situations, you should not even have to engage the knowledgebase to find the right troubleshooting steps for an error code. Based on the error displayed, the knowledgebase should have already launched a search, and would have returned troubleshooting tips and guidance on how to resolve the error.

The same paradigm could easily be extended to mobile phones. Right now, for example, my phone has a static help system that gives me the basic advice on how to use it. It would be preferable to have a small knowledgebase embedded in the phone, which could be accessed and navigated via the keypad. Users could easily use the variety of self-service methods to find answers to their questions in the format that they are most comfortable using. In addition, clarifying questions or suggestions for mis-typed words could be used to guide the user to the most relevant topic. In addition, if the mobile phone had internet access, the user could proactively download software patches to remedy as issue that they encountered.

A similar use case could be extended to mobile devices for field service management. Technicians would use the knowledge within their embedded knowledgebase to troubleshoot devices at a customer’s site. When the technician returned to the corporate offices, he could then synchronize his mobile device with the corporate knowledgebase to receive the latest product updates.

In each of these scenarios, the knowledgebase would become an integral component of each device, serving up knowledge where it is needed and when it is needed. It would help differentiate your brand, and keep customers loyal by providing accurate and on-topic answers to your questions.

Kate Leggett is the Director of Product Management for the Knowledge Management product line at KANA, a world leader in multi-channel customer service. KANA's integrated solutions allow companies to deliver consistent, managed service across all channels, including email, chat, call centers and Web self-service. KANA's award-winning solutions are proven in more than 600 companies worldwide, including approximately half of the world's largest 100 companies. KANA