Have you ever wondered what happens with your KBA comments?

[CarlyThomas]

I've been asked by SAP SuccessFactors customers & partners, "Do you read the comments left on KBAs?"

The answer is "Yes!" and we take it a few steps further, we have a two part process in addressing KBA feedback:

The first is that KBA authors are encouraged to routinely check the star rating and comments left on KBAs they have created. They have access to a dashboard that shows the star ratings and comments left on their KBAs within the past 90 days. They can then review comments and take action as needed. They also review low star ratings to see if they can determine what may have caused the low star rating.

Often, star ratings are not accompanied by comments, so it can be difficult to judge what may have triggered the lower rating and an improvement action is not clear. Therefore, we highly encourage you to leave a remark on what about that KBA resulted in its low quality ranking. When the reason is obvious, the author takes action to improve the KBA.

To help mitigate uncertainty with low rated KBAs, we have introduced a "Was this KBA Helpful? Yes/No" ranking to KBAs that will display a short list of options if you rank the KBA as not helpful. This should minimize the effort for you to leave useful feedback and help us take the best corrective action.



Since most authors are also Support Engineers, they may have difficulty finding time to address KBA feedback as Incident solving is their #1 priority. Therefore, we have a group of Knowledge Domain Experts in many product areas that review KBA comments and star ratings on a monthly basis. As they review, they take action based on the comment or where they see improvements can be made.

We also have an internal process that allows our SAP colleagues to flag KBAs for improvement if they are unable to make the improvement themselves.

So keep the feedback coming! It's our best bet in continuing the improvement cycle and ensuring we're delivering the content you need!

Any questions or feedback? Please comment below!

Thank you,

Carly Thomas
HCM & SuccessFactors
Knowledge Management Global Lead

[Sandra_Rossi]

Are the feedbacks of classic SAP notes (corrections) handled the same way at SAP? (it's not a rating, it's a button "Share your feedback")

When I did a feedback on a classic SAP note one year ago (note 2547469, proposal of a better solution for older kernels), I did not receive an email to confirm that the feedback was received, and I didn't receive any other feedback since then (and I saw that there was no additional.

Is there such a workflow with KBAs? (an email + feedback on our feedback)

(I would love it, both for SAP notes and SAP KBA)

Thanks.

Sandra

[CarlyThomas]

Hi Sandra,

Thanks for the comment!  I'll look into what happens with SAP Notes - since these are typically written outside of Product Support by Developers or Product Engineers for fix delivery.  I'll let you know what I find.

I do know that the feedback is meant to be anonymous so that may be part of why an email response that addresses your comments is sent back.  Due to our data protection policy, if contact information is left in a comment, it is restricted from view - following the GDPR guideline of your right to be forgotten.

If there is a serious problem with a KBA or SAP Note, however - such as steps that cause something to break or not function correctly, I would recommend opening a support incident rather than leaving a comment so that we can ensure that is corrected as soon as possible and you can have that confirmation that the issue has been taken care of.

I hope that helps - I'll follow-up shortly once I learn more about the feedback process on SAP notes.

Thanks again,

Carly

[former_member24324]

Carly-

 

Thanks for the blog post!  I would like to gently take issue with the sentence "Since most authors are also Support Engineers, they may have difficulty finding time to address KBA feedback as Incident solving is their #1 priority".

My recommendation is that KBA writing should be the #1 priority for support, not solving tickets.  Good documentation prevents the tickets from happening in the first place. Case in point: I spent 2 hours last night troubleshooting something and looking for a KBA to solve my issue.  I gave up and submitted a support ticket.  The support rep (who was great) pointed me to a KBA.  However, the title of the KBA did not make it clear that it was relevant to my issue.  If it had, I would have had those 2 hours back and the ticket would have never been entered.

To flip this to a positive note, there are probably 2-3 times every day I will hit an issue and go looking for a KBA.  I'd say 80% of the time I find what I am looking for and thus my issue is solved.  KBA's are the front lines for issue resoultion! It's a shame that these successful searches cannot be measured (with Kudos to the support team!) because to me the best tickets are the ones that don't happen.

Also, I regularly rate KBA's.  It would be great if periodically the people who put in the ratings are updated, particularly when a KBA gets rewritten based on a comment.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

[CarlyThomas]

Hi Brandon,

 

Thanks for your feedback!

To clarify, SAP SuccessFactors fully adopts the KCS Methodology.   Support Engineers are creating KBAs (and sometimes WIKIs & Guided Answers) as a part of the Incident solving process.  As they are solving issues, they are documenting the solutions.

The part that is sometimes delayed due to time being sent on Incident solving is the KBA comment & star rating review and why we have the KDEs reviewing as "back-up" on a monthly basis.

What is incredibly wonderful to hear is that you are finding resolutions as often as you are!  As you pointed out, it is challenging to show Incident Deflection based on KBAs - so receiving this feedback is invaluable - a sincere thank you for sharing this.

The guidelines we use from KCS is to modify the KBA that contained an Incident solution to include the keywords used to describe the Incident from the customer/partner's point of view.  So hopefully these modifications were made to avoid a similar situation in the future for the Incident you had to raise.

I'll also provide the feedback regarding rating notifications to our KM Team to see if it is something we can add in - there should be someway to this & preserve anonymity.

Let me know if I can provide any additional detail!

Carly

[CarlyThomas]

Hi Sandra,

I followed up with one of the on-premise teams and it seems there currently isn't a way to leave feedback directly on the SAP Notes.  So they don't have a process defined for it.

Did you leave feedback via an Incident satisfaction survey?  I can see what process in place for that.

For SuccessFactors, our Support Managers review survey feedback with the Support Engineer that worked on the Incident and take corrective measures and if the feedback included things related to the KBA attached, that would initiate an action to correct the KBA as needed.

I have presented the idea of notifications when a feedback is addressed, and we're looking at ways we might be able to implement this and maintain anonymity.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Carly

[Sandra_Rossi]

Thanks Carly. No, I used the button "share your feedback". So nobody knows that there's a feedback button, that explains the "no answer" 🙂

[CarlyThomas]

Hi Sandra,

Thanks for the clarification!  So the "Share Your Feedback" option is to provide feedback on the One Support LaunchPad itself.

However, I checked with that team and they do have a process for passing along feedback received through that method to the KBA Author and Responsible User (we maintain a Responsible User field in case the author is no longer working in the product area the KBA was created in).

The feedback is then reviewed by those users and actions taken as needed.

For the Support Portal and LaunchPad feedback options, they both do state that for KBA and SAP Note related feedback, they are not responding back to the user that left the feedback.

They recommend if there is a correction needed to the SAP Note, to raise a Support Incident to ensure the correction is made in a timely manner.

I am still supporting an option to provide some sort of confirmation to the person who left the feedback that it's been received and confirmation of follow-up actions taken.  It may take some time, but I'll continue to pursue it.

Additionally, I will be providing an update to the SAP Notes team that feedback options similar to KBAs would be welcome to avoid the extra steps taken to provide feedback through the LaunchPad feedback options, and avoid raising Incidents for simple corrections or comments.

I hope this helps & please let me know of any additional concerns/feedback you may have!

Thank you,

Carly

[Sandra_Rossi]

Thank you Carly for your efforts, for taking all this time to answer, and for this detailed answer! Now I better understand. Next time I will raise a ticket instead of feedback (in my specific case, it was to say that the correction was not optimal in old kernels, but I couldn't even check myself... so not really important, but maybe it could have helped the corrector check by himself...) Have a nice day!