Creating a Knowledge Base
4 Roads Four - Creating a Knowledge Base
You have an urgent question about how one of your products functions. What do you do? You go and ask the product manager, and they will share their wealth of knowledge with you. What do you do if you are a customer? You can’t just send the product manager a Slack message or walk down the corridor to their desk.
The knowledge held by every member of your team and every employee in the company is one of the most valuable assets your business has. A knowledge base can save time for your internal teams, allowing them to get the information they need to complete a project without having to disturb another colleague. For your customers, a knowledge base can change their entire experience of your brand.
Self-service has become a driving force of customer satisfaction. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trend Report, 69% of your customers want to solve issues independently. Before a customer tries to contact a support representative, 63% will search the company’s online resources for an answer.
Providing your internal staff and your customers with a strong knowledge base will make your business more nimble and able to deliver faster service while giving greater access and the ability for your customers to self-service.
When building and maintaining your knowledge base, there is a lot to consider. Here are four tips from 4-Roads to ensure that you design your knowledge base correctly.
4-Roads Four Tips:
1 - UX
The design of your knowledge base has to have your users in mind. If you are creating an internal and an external knowledge base, you might need to make two separate designs built around similar knowledge. For both of these groups, it is important to remember:
Ease of navigation: Build your knowledge base in a way that is easy to navigate. Your internal teams may be used to working a particular way, but your customers may expect a more general approach. For both, make sure you utilise categories and tags and have a robust search function that ensures users can find information quickly.
Ensuring you have a well-structured and easy-to-navigate knowledge base will reduce frustration and lead to a more positive experience.
Accessibility: Plan your knowledge base to be accessible on all devices. This is often overlooked, particularly for an internal knowledge base, but your team isn’t limited to their computers in the office. Being inclusive to users with disabilities is more important than a legal obligation; it widens your customer base and demonstrates a commitment to help.
Intuitive Interface: Keep your knowledge base in a friendly, easy-to-use design. Icons, images, and videos should all complement your content. It is important to minimise any learning curve your users might have. Your customers need to be able to find the information they need without confusion and without barriers like sign-ups. This will allow anyone to resolve their issues effectively without reliance on your support teams.
2 - Comprehensive Content that is kept up-to-date
When planning your knowledge base, you must have a continuous update strategy. Your products, solutions, and even knowledge to share with your customers will consistently change. Start with:
Documentation: When planning your content, make sure you include detailed, step-by-step guides, FAQs, troubleshooting tips, and best practices. Cover common issues, simple issues, and more niche topics, and you can ensure you will cater to all of your users’ needs. There is no such thing as a stupid question, and having answers for as many of your customers’ questions as possible will ensure you keep them satisfied and reduce the need for direct support.
Update regularly: Often, a business will try to update its knowledge base when it thinks it needs updating. At 4-Roads, the better approach is to schedule a roadmap of updates before building your knowledge base. You might not always have content reflecting new features or products, but continuing a schedule to review and revise your existing content ensures the customer is always best served by your knowledge base.
Integrate feedback: Your users should be able to provide you with feedback on the content within your knowledge base. This will allow you to continue refining how you are helping your users and ensure that additional questions that arise can be covered. One of the best ways to generate genuine customer feedback is through an online community. Linking community and knowledge base allows your brand to thrive and your customers to help each other alongside the provided knowledge.
3 - Think about your SEO
Your knowledge base is as much of a marketing tool as a support tool for your existing customers. Potential customers who have yet to purchase may want to answer questions about the product or service before deciding. They may be more willing to buy if you can easily guide them to the correct answers and demonstrate a helpful and self-service approach to customer service. Follow the same rules as you would your marketing content:
Optimise keywords: ensure you use relevant keywords and phrases your customers will likely search for. The more visible your knowledge base is, the quicker users will find the information they need to make a purchase or solve their problem.
Internal linking: We often see clients who haven’t considered how to link a search result to other related articles. One article might not answer your customers’ questions in full. Guiding them to other relevant information will elevate the user experience by ensuring they don’t have to search again with different terms.
Structure your data: Help search engines understand and categorise your content. Your results will improve in visibility, making your knowledge base more effective in reaching a wider audience beyond your customers searching through a direct link.
4 - Performance
Your knowledge base will potentially contain a lot of data, information, guides, and video content. With that comes loading and performance issues. Your knowledge base is essential to your customer support function and marketing tool. When you plan out your knowledge base, ensure that it loads quickly. A high bounce rate from your knowledge base can lead to lost revenues and increased costs from demands on support staff.
Track your analytics: your knowledge base analytics should be looked at separately from other aspects of your site. The user data will show where your customers are having problems and the questions potential customers want answered before purchasing. You can use this information to refine and improve your knowledge base and your products and services. If there are repeated questions about particular features, you can refine your marketing to reflect the importance of these questions, which will help you convert more customers.
Today, your customers and your teams expect information to be at their fingertips. Your knowledge base allows everyone to access a vast amount of data and help that is locked away in random files, complicated databases, and the minds of your people.
Providing this information to all your stakeholders allows you to deliver a better customer experience where your users can be empowered to help themselves.
Elevate Your Customer Support with a Robust Knowledge Base
Ready to transform your customer support and enhance your brand’s self-service capabilities? By implementing a well-designed knowledge base, you can empower your customers and internal teams, leading to faster resolutions and higher satisfaction. Start building a smarter, more efficient support system today with 4-Roads.
Contact us to learn how we can help you create a knowledge base that meets your needs and exceeds your customers’ expectations.