Want to Foster Knowledge Sharing Between Your Agents?

Fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing is more than a nice-to-have!

It’s a necessity, empowering agents to work smarter, not harder, while improving morale, performance, and customer satisfaction.

So here’s a round-up of some of the best actionable strategies out there to help you create a dynamic and collaborative contact centre environment where knowledge flows freely!

1. Stop Letting “Baby Bird Syndrome” Get in the Way

Stop nurturing “Baby Birds” in your team! When you can shift your team’s behaviour from “always ask the team leader” to a self-serve culture, this stops the repeated low-level dependency questions that kill a thriving sharing culture (such as “How do I cancel the order again?”).

Instead, team leaders and managers should only be relied on to triage and escalate real gaps in knowledge.

It can also help to create specialist roles within the team, for example a customer escalation specialist, to empower agents and give them a reason to want to share knowledge with the wider team. This works! People are more likely to contribute when they feel recognized and respected.

Contributed by: Alex McConville, Contact Centre Consultant and author of ‘Diary of a Call Centre Manager’

If you are looking for more ways to empower your contact centre agents, read our article: New Ways to Empower Agents in 2025

2. Play M People’s “What Have You Done Today to Make You Feel Proud?” at the Start of Your Team Meetings

Create an environment where knowledge sharing is standard practice in team meetings about performance.

Your meeting set-up is key here! Even when there are performance issues or agents are working from home.

I’ve always approached this with a positive start, such as playing M People’s “What Have You Done Today to Make You Feel Proud?”. I’ll then outline any performance issues and suggest a change of mindset will help us.

We’ll watch some inspirational videos together, discuss what they meant to each team member and how to take those learnings forward, culminating in a discussion about how the team can support each other. At this point, they’re usually ready to share best practice and how they achieved it.

Contributed by: Rebecca Whittaker, Partner Operations Manager at CCP

3. Regularly Ask Agents for Their ‘Moments of Innovation’ so Sharing Best Practice Becomes the Norm

Include a knowledge-sharing session in your weekly team meeting, so agents know to always be on the lookout for something to share. I call these “Moments of Innovation”!

Of course, this can quickly become stale if it’s always focused on the same thing, so switch up the question and focus week on week:

• “Give me an example of when you resolved a problem for a customer.”
• “Give me an example of when you proactively reached out to a customer to help.”
• “Give me an example of an idea that would make our processes better.”

This regular exercise really helps to shift agent behaviour from simply moving on to the next call to sharing their experience with the team for everyone to learn from.

But don’t stop there! Make sure these moments are recorded too. You could even capture them in a best practice manual.

Contributed by: Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer (CAO) at Shepard Presentations LLC

4. Give Your Agents Ownership of the Knowledge Base

Try giving your agents ownership of a part of the centralized knowledge base. This is particularly effective if you can give them an area they’re excited to learn more about.

This will generate lots of knowledge-sharing behaviours – talking to their peers, identifying what the gaps are, doing some research, and proactively filling in the gaps – and, most importantly, taking pride in what they do!

In the long term, you can rotate the sections of the knowledge base once or twice a year too, to keep the input fresh and varied.

Contributed by: Nate Brown, Head of CX Advisory for Metric Sherpa and Co-Founder of CX Accelerator

5. Praise the Sharing Itself – Not Just the Perfection of the Answer

First things first, make it safe. People won’t share if they’re worried about being judged or made to look silly. Leaders need to create a climate of psychological safety where it’s OK to share ideas – even if they’re forming ‘live’ as the person is speaking!

And when someone shares something you might not fully agree with? Build on it, don’t shut it down. Praise the progress of sharing, not just the perfection of the answer.

Second, make it ridiculously easy. Let’s be frank… If you need a three-page form or a Black Belt to update knowledge, no one’s going to do it.

This is where smarter tech (yes – that’s you AI) can really help. Good AI-driven knowledge management tools can capture, tag and surface the best insights quickly, keeping things flowing without the faff. If AI is a stretch too far, just a good quality classic system will do!

Contributed by: Rob Clarke, Director and Co-Founder of Elev-8 Performance

6. Nurture a Feeling of Belonging to Drive Camaraderie

More than anything, agents need to feel valued and part of something bigger than themselves where their contributions make a difference and their opinions and ideas are important too. 

But why? Because when any of us feel part of something, we are more open, more willing to share, more understanding.

As humans we have a primal need to belong.

Once someone feels they are part of a shared goal and its success, they will automatically feel more accountable and take ownership.

This leads to a feeling of belonging which will see more camaraderie, sharing of knowledge, and that “we’re in this together” feeling.

Contributed by: Clayton Drotsky, Director of Growth Crew Ltd

7. Remember the Onus Is on YOU to Create Knowledge-Sharing Spaces

Don’t just expect knowledge sharing to happen. It doesn’t come naturally to most people.

Success comes from consciously creating spaces for agents to share knowledge – from the cool things they’re learning to the big challenges they’re experiencing.

As a leader, it’s your job to create these opportunities across the onboarding process, coaching sessions, and more.

After all, if you’re not creating these opportunities or reinforcing when people are generous in sharing what they’ve known and experienced, then it’s all going to fall apart pretty fast.  

Contributed by: Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst at Metric Sherpa

8. Make It Clear That Everyone’s Input Is Valuable – Regardless of Role or Tenure

When managers and team leaders actively model collaborative behaviours and openly share their own insights, it sets a powerful example.

This top-down approach signals that knowledge sharing is valued and expected, not just an optional extra.

It can also help to gather feedback on what’s working and what’s not. Involve agents in refining processes so knowledge sharing feels like a team effort too!

Most importantly of all, make it clear that everyone’s input is valuable, regardless of role or tenure!

Contributed by: Alp Kohen, Founder & CEO of UNIQ Training & Consulting

9. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Own Enthusiasm

Building a culture of knowledge sharing begins with the leader fulfilling their number one role of teacher. Just like this:

• Enthusiasm! Henry Chester is quoted as saying, “Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power, and influence, it is nothing more than faith in action.” What is faith? Confidence embodied! Choosing to be an enthusiastic learner spreads like wildfire.
• Encourage reading. Choose to become enthusiastic about reading. Get caught reading a book, liking books, and talking about books.
• Talk about what you are learning. Choose to be excited to learn something new and share that excitement.

Humility in a leader who knows they do not know everything opens the doors for your people to teach you about what they know. Once taught, humbly acknowledge who taught you and issue both praise and gratitude.

Contributed by: Dr M. Dave Salisbury, COO at D&C Consulting LLC

10. Explain Why Change Is Positive and Necessary for Growth

If agents are reluctant to share their knowledge with each other, with their leaders, or across departments, it is a sign you have more systemic work to do in your culture.  

After all, establishing a culture of engagement is necessary to foster a sustainable culture of knowledge sharing. To begin, establish the norm within your company that change is necessary for growth and establish buy-in to the fact that change is, in fact, positive and why.   

Embrace the concept that it ‘takes a village’ to be successful as a company. Then establish that in your culture by leaning into a leadership model to consistently build and maintain a culture of engagement, innovation, and growth, so that knowledge sharing becomes natural.

Contributed by: Adam Boelke, Founder of the Alignment Advantage Group, and author of the “7 Cs to Success” mastermind course on leadership & culture

Informal Peer-to-Peer Sharing Is Valuable – But Don’t Forget to Address the Root Causes of Knowledge Gaps Too

While it’s tempting to focus on encouraging agents to share knowledge more openly, we should also pause and ask: why is this level of informal knowledge sharing necessary in the first place?

When advisors feel the need to compensate for unclear processes, outdated systems, or inaccessible documentation, we’re relying on their goodwill and tribal knowledge to plug the gaps.

That introduces risk to our contact centre operations and customer service – not only through potential points of failure, but also via uncontrolled or inaccurate information being passed along.

Informal peer-to-peer sharing is valuable, and encouraging agents to be more generous with their accurate and up-to-date know-how is worthwhile.

But we must also address the root causes of knowledge gaps. Using the SECI model, organizations can systematically externalize and structure knowledge to make it reliable and reusable.^[1]

Investing in robust knowledge management systems (not just static content repositories) and deploying AI-powered agent-assist tools can help surface the right information in real time.

This reduces the need for advisors to chase answers or rely on colleagues. With better forecasting and data integration, we can anticipate customer needs more accurately and present relevant knowledge to the advisor as the contact connects.

This isn’t just better from an accuracy or efficiency perspective, it also reduces an agent’s cognitive effort. Excessive cognitive load, especially from navigating fragmented or unclear information, can impair decision-making. Reducing this through intelligent systems doesn’t just support agents, it protects service quality.^[2]

Contributed by: Danny Wareham, Founder & Director of Firgun

What Have You Tried to Improve Knowledge Sharing in Your Contact Centre?

Think we’ve missed something? Join our LinkedIn community and let us know.

For more information to improve knowledge management in your contact centre, read these articles next:

• Is AI Really a Game-Changer in Knowledge Management?
• How to Keep Your Knowledge Base Up to Scratch
• 26 Best Practices for a Customer Service Knowledge Base

Author: Megan Jones
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman