Upland explores how AI-powered knowledge management is becoming the foundation of modern customer service, showing leaders how to replace outdated systems with automated, governed, and dynamic knowledge that fuels smarter AI and better CX.
Most of us know by now that we’ve left the “AI is a buzzword” phase behind. We’re in the midst of a seismic shift, and AI is reshaping customer service from the ground up.
But here’s the catch: many enterprises are still stuck in the past, clinging to outdated knowledge management (KM) practices that can’t keep up with the reality of rising customer expectations. Manual updates, rigid taxonomies, and aging content? That’s yesterday’s playbook.
The Gartner Market Guide for Customer Service Knowledge Management Systems makes it clear: AI-powered knowledge management isn’t optional anymore. It’s the foundation of modern customer service.
The Problem with Legacy Knowledge Management
Legacy knowledge management is like running a marathon in flip flops; you’ll get there eventually, but it’s going to hurt.
Manual taxonomies take forever to update, content reviews lag real time changes, and legacy systems bury agents in outdated and repetitive information.
This all creates one big mess of inconsistent answers, compliance risks, wasted agent time, and frustrated customers.
If your team spends more time searching for information than actually solving problems, it’s not an AI issue, it’s a knowledge management issue.
The AI-Powered Shift
This Gartner report highlights how AI is rewriting the rules of knowledge management. The playbook is simple: automate the boring grunt work, let real humans do the thinking.
Content creation and curation processes are also changing. Human-in-the-loop AI can generate draft articles or summaries from customer interactions, while subject matter experts can confirm and refine them for accuracy and compliance.
The bottom line is that knowledge stays fresh, useful and instantly available. No more digging through a stale, 42-page article to find one usable sentence.
Why KM is the Foundation for GenAI
One of the biggest insights from the Gartner report is that knowledge management is no longer just a support function. It’s the foundation of successful AI adoption.
Without structured, well-governed knowledge, GenAI can confidently serve the wrong answer. But with automation and governance in place, KM turns GenAI into a powerful driver of CX and agent productivity.
Where the Market’s Headed
The KM world is moving fast. Gartner notes a growing convergence between contact centre as a service (CCaaS) and customer engagement centre (CEC) vendors, with KM now standing out as a key competitive differentiator.
One of the clearest shifts is in search. Instead of keyword dumps that spit out a laundry list of links, enterprises are moving to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and intelligent search. The result is less friction for customers and employees, while sensitive data stays secure.
In short, KM is no longer just support tech. It’s the secret weapon for CX wins.
What KM Leaders Should Do Next
- Prioritize knowledge automation as essential for customer service
- Monitor KM KPIs like corpus health and utilization
- Skip “search-only” AI tools, and look for full lifecycle KM automation
- Test solutions with your own content to see the real impact
And from us? Make governance and structure non-negotiable. AI is only as good as the knowledge it’s built on.
Conclusion: KM is the Foundation for AI Success
AI is changing customer service fast, but the takeaway is clear: the enterprises that succeed won’t be the ones chasing the AI hype; they’ll be the ones modernizing their knowledge at its core.
By embracing automation, strong governance, and structured knowledge, organizations can break free from outdated KM and give AI what it needs to deliver trusted, consistent service at scale.
This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Upland Software – View the Original Article
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About Upland Software
Upland Panviva is an industry leading knowledge management platform designed to allow your teams to easily access, create and manage knowledge across your organization to give users actionable answers in their moment of need. Find out more about Upland Software
Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.
Author: Upland Software
Reviewed by: Rachael Trickey
Published On: 29th Dec 2025
Read more about - Guest Blogs, Upland Software
