Knowledge-based support in help-desk environments

How much does a knowledge based system improve help desk interactions? To investigate the relationship between a KBS and a help desk and to provide a first step in determining the return on investment of KBSs in general, we conducted a study that showed as accurately as possible the impact of a KBS on one of Hewlett-Packard's customer support centers. We organized the study to verify three main assumptions: it takes less time to resolve a call when the analyst uses the KBS; the time saving shows up as a weekly decrease in overall interaction time; using a KBS allows the analyst to solve more kinds of problems than not using it.