For example, our knowledge base theme KnowAll has all these features and more. Free Download: How to Create Perfect Knowledge Base. Examples of what to track include: Examine how your customers are using your company’s knowledge base. However, with the great power of visuals comes great responsibility. It goes without saying that the success of your knowledge base depends on the quality of your content. Ask yourself this question to stay in control of visuals: “If I took away this image, video, or screenshot, would the instructions still be clear?”. A great knowledge base design should create an effortless experience for your customers to find answers to their questions. Or send an email. (You can unsubscribe at any time. Your self-service portal is often an important first point of contact customers have with your brand and a well-designed external knowledge base can help grow your community and build deeper connections with your customers. What’s important is that you’ve got the structure and components of your knowledge base section figured out before you start writing content for it. With all the information in one place, the costs can be drastically lower. Add anything that pops up often to the knowledge base, instead of dealing with it manually every time. Think about common terms people would search for when looking up your product or even your market. A good knowledge base will also give a boost to your customer support agents by: Keep in mind, knowledge base software isn’t there to replace the humans on your support team. As with anything else in business, the success of your knowledge base (or lack of success) should be constantly measured to see where to improve. A knowledge base ensures that even the neediest of people can find answers quickly, no matter what kind of method they use. Adjust the layout as you wish. Keep your eye on these customer questions to identify any areas where you can improve, including which topics to add to your knowledge base. Today, we’re going to talk about knowledge bases—why you should have one, what makes one great (or not so great) and how to get started with building your own. In case of a subdomain approach, it would mean having a separate WordPress site for the knowledge base which is good, but at the same time it means having the user to register twice. An effective knowledge base allows you to stay two steps ahead of your customers’ issues. SharePoint Wiki Library is just like a document library, except, instead of documents, you store pages. The Create a New Knowledge Base Article page will open. Here’s the basic process of building a knowledge base: Decide on the core elements of your knowledge base. Because while it’s fine to get creative with your marketing pages, quality knowledge bases should be formulaic. Any good knowledge management solution allows company admins to restrict access to sensitive documents or information. Here are a few pointers: 1. It has to be good. All without breaking the bank. If you’re using a convenient pre-designed knowledge base foundation (like Groove’s solution), it’ll most likely have all the core elements already included. All the information from within your knowledge base needs to be easily managed – one-click publishing, unpublishing, updating, sending for approval, etc. If there are various people writing content, it’ll be consistent throughout the knowledge base. Focus on making your communication as scannable as possible. A knowledge base is how you communicate with customers. Agree on … As you develop your company Knowledge Base, you most definitely will need an ability to link between different Wiki pages you create. When building and designing an external or internal knowledge base, it’s important to keep discoverability and simplicity top of mind. A knowledge base can be very easy to launch but a challenge to implement effectively. A knowledge base consists of an online library filled with guides, tutorials, and answers to common customer questions about a business’s products or services. The goal is to create documentation so good that your customers don’t need to contact your support team. No matter how many articles you have, categorize them into sections for the best user experience—nobody likes seeing a huge wall of article headings. A knowledge base is a great tool for improving your customer experience. Determine the Focus of Your Knowledge Base. Sign up for our newsletter and read at your own pace. On-site chat widgets where you can talk to a real person? Building in a “Contact us” section that allows customers to access customer support if they need to shows you’re there to support your customers. To create a new article, right-click and open this link in a new tab. Another surefir… one that doesn’t require users to be logged in) can boost your search traffic if done correctly. In fact, Zendesk findings show that customer service teams that take an agile approach to knowledge management and commit to steadily maintaining and growing their content perform best across key self-service metrics. Don’t be that company with an outdated, useless portal. As you receive calls or emails from residents, keep track of questions asked, the complexity of the answer, and question frequency. Also with the online web access (OWA) for Word, PPT, etc., creating a standard library with files is the way to go - easier for users to create and manage content versus the complicated management of a wiki library. This is a great place to repurpose that content. Here’s a personalized sample template that feels human, even if it’s not. An overwhelming 91% of customers said they would use an online knowledge base if it were available and tailored to their needs. SocialTables' knowledge base template is clean and super easy to navigate. Of course, building a knowledge base that works for both the customers and the support engineers can be challenging. FAQs, how-to guides, webinars, articles, videos, and product demonstrations all are great ways to provide your customers and prospects with the information they require. OneNote has filled the role for teams to quickly and easily create their own knowledge base. Once you have a functioning and effective knowledge base, you can build and improve on it anytime. Please reload the page and try again, or you can email us directly at support@zendesk.com. Keep things simple, and tackle real challenges for your customers. Short titles that contain main keywords can help customers find the right knowledge base article with the answers they need more quickly. Linking pages in SharePoint is actually pretty cool. A knowledge base guides your customer towards a solution through documentation. The knowledge base allows you to create something between a traditional search engine and a forum of experts. No matter how amazing your knowledge base is, sometimes it doesn’t cut it. Create a New Page (make sure to choose Site Page from drop-down – that’s the Modern Page!) Make your knowledge base easy to find both on your own website and through popular search engines. To create a better experience for your customers, the knowledge base that houses your documentation must have a feature with an excellent search engine. Here are three core elements of a knowledge base: If a customer has a basic question about your product or service, the first place they generally look is the FAQ section. Support agents answering tickets? But others are looking for a very specific thing. How to Create a Knowledge Base. When creating your own knowledge base, ensure that it’s customer-centric, regularly audited and updated with new content, well-structured, optimized from a metrics and integrations standpoint, readily accessible, and truly showcases that you care about your customers’ success. Being with these two topics, no time-consuming customer or behaviour research needed. Designing product-specific help centers and adding advanced search capabilities empower customers to get the answers they need with speed. We’ve got you. Do this to show your customers that you care and that you are here to help when they need it the most. Or file a service ticket. The benefit of these knowledge repositories isn’t just on the customer side, though. But that can only happen if you have a Knowledge-Base on your site. Give your customers options. Keep it consistent with your overall company branding, and include formatting and writing … Customers don’t want to have to find a ladder to reach your FAQs page on the top shelf. Customer-facing knowledge base: A repository of knowledge that can help a customer make a decision or find a solution. Download Now The data in your knowledge base can come from anywhere. An article about a subject should be as thorough as it can be without being obscure and … Read on to see how other companies are doing it, and what you can learn from them. But it’s not a complete thought. What are they searching for? Think of your knowledge base like a mullet: delivering simplicity in the front supported by a sophisticated platform in the back. You made the first step. Groove’s Shared Inbox, Knowledge Base, and reporting can help you delight customers with fast, personal support at scale—without breaking the bank. I was paralyzed by the overwhelming amount of potential knowledge base … You’ll save time and money on high-volume, simple questions, and make your customers and team members happier and more productive. How many steps does the customer have to take to contact you and get answers to their questions? Visual materials enrich your support content and keep users engaged. For example, here at Groove, our customers want to know more about specific sections of our product. Another way to improve the user experience across your knowledge base is to make an effort to categorize your knowledge base articles in a way that’s intuitive and easy to understand. Try asking your customer support team members about the questions they encounter most from customers to get a good idea … By Hannah Wren, Content marketing associate, Published May 12, 2020 Despite its small size, your email auto-reply can be powerful. Beyond the two premium knowledge base solutions that we featured above, there are also free knowledge base plugins that you can use to create a knowledge base in WordPress. We’ve prepared a list of helpful tips and things we learned when creating our own knowledge base to make it easier for you. Nobody likes to read (well, some of us do). AND I haven't seen anything about wiki pages in the modern UI. Your knowledge base is yet another reflection of your branding. It must answer common questions efficiently to save customers time and confusion. A killer help center is a way for your company to anticipate a problem before it occurs, as well as a way for your customers to get familiar with your product on their own time. Figure out the basics, then get writing. Lesson 1: Use common questions for content ideas. For instance, Khan Academy prominently places its community as a category inside its help center. When it comes to actually formatting your text, simplicity is key. Writing knowledge base articles is inherent to almost every customer support team. There are many resources available to help you create killer product documentation for your … Most of your knowledge base articles probably include a set process the user needs to follow. Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support. Then, move on to the fun part. If there’s no chronological order or dependencies between tasks. Add new products, updates or other changes to your knowledge base articles, and delete old, irrelevant posts about features that don’t exist anymore. Here are our <> simple tips for creating a knowledge base: 1. When writing the actual text for your articles, mind your language first and foremost to make your knowledge base as effective as possible. Here are some of the key steps to launching an effective knowledge base. Now that you know what goes into creating a great knowledge base, we thought we'd share a few knowledge base examples to help you with creating something that's visually appealing. So we separate topics using different parts of the platform: Once you’ve covered onboarding and basic features, look into previous customer support tickets, help desk requests, and questions to spot common issues. Don’t be afraid to rub the fact that you have a knowledge base into people’s faces. Increasingly, customers expect to be able to self-serve wherever and whenever they want, whether they’re at home by their computer or on the go using their smartphone. As such, please reference this post to learn more about the new ways of creating a Knowledge Base Wiki in SharePoint. For content additions, keep an eye on incoming support tickets, requests, and common questions. For example, some people hate video tutorials. What parts are customers engaging with most? Soliciting your customer support team’s feedback on both existing and potential articles is imperative to designing a knowledge base that can grow and scale with your business. Sorry something went wrong, try again later? When looking at your knowledge base performance, focus on impact. It’s a self-service portal which can be easily accessed by customers and internal employees alike. For one, you’ll ramp up efficiencies: With decreased reliance on phone-based customer support, you’ll save valuable company resources and people-hours. Here is a four step guide to help you kickstart the creation of your knowledge base. Cool. When crafting the titles of your topics, remember that people tend to search using very basic terms. Here’s the basic process of building a knowledge base: Seems like a big bite? Create a Knowledge Base for Free. Note: 2,000+ companies use Groove to delight customers with fast, personal support at scale. Some people immediately submit a ticket, call, or email support when they encounter an issue. Good knowledge bases follow somewhat of a formula. Creating a good knowledge base. This isn’t just because search engines give priority to websites with a responsive design, but also because your customers expect it. Do it. According to the Oxford dictionary: Documentation is the media—text, images, and video—that explain a product or service, the material that provides official information. So, how do you make the most of your resources to create a good internal knowledge base software for your employees? However, a poorly designed knowledge base can cause more problems than it solves, by tying your team up in pages that are difficult to read, or a navigation system that’s time-consuming to use. It takes time up front, but it’s worth it. How do you know what your customers need help with? Syed, Thanks for the options. 1. The self-service analytics provided by your knowledge base software empowers your support team to take a data-driven approach to content upkeep and design by giving them insights into the popularity, effectiveness, and pain points of content. Assume the reader is a complete beginner. To make the whole thing more useful and create a better experience for your customers, the knowledge base that houses your documentation cannot do without an excellent search engine feature built-in. Tom Ewer wrote an amazing post on “ How to Create User-Friendly WordPress Instruction Manuals for Clients ”. ), Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, 2020, clear, concise, and consistent categories, What is digital transformation? Also, you don´t have to create hierarchical nodes if you don´t think that’s fitting. Best Practices For Building, Structuring and Organizing A Knowledge Base This allows you to deflect tickets with minimal up-front investment. Collect, or create, copies of the information necessary to build your knowledge base. From top to bottom, a knowledge base should be educational, motivational, and organized. (No credit card required). On the other hand, help content can often act as the first point of contact with your company. And if you are looking for information on how to create a knowledge base, this article will be of great use to you. Responsive design​ is vital to an online knowledge base because it ensures a great user experience no matter if your customers are accessing your help center on their laptop with a cup of coffee or their mobile phone while waiting in line to order that cup of dark roast. In today’s connected world, people expect and demand easy access to accurate information. Knowledge is currency in the digital world, and a great knowledge base can lead to better end-user experiences, decreased support costs for your organization, and a waterfall of new insights for your Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams (not to … Choose your knowledge base content. Knowledge management enables you to create, curate, share, utilize and manage knowledge across your whole company and across industries. Failing to keep your knowledge base consistent with your brand voice, colors, and design provides a disjointed experience for customers seeking to learn more about your products or services. Users may browse through individual articles to learn more about your product, but when they need help they'll want it fast—and that's when search is crucial. Why would you not make that process easier? And to do that, they often aren’t willing to get on a phone call. This blog will show you how you can create a Knowledge Base for free. A good knowledge base will save you tons of time, and make both your customers and support agents happier. Got everything prepared? If you’ve landed on this post, you’re probably convinced of the fact that you need a knowledge base to help support your customers. Jam-packing your help center with information about every product and feature can overwhelm customers, making it difficult for them to find content that's relevant to them—and more likely that they'll give up and reach out to an agent instead. Step 3: Create a page template. When your customers have questions, they can easily access your knowledge base and get the answers they need without having to reach out to or wait for your support team. With the right WordPress theme, you can integrate such features to your knowledge base quite easily. A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic. Test it for yourself, right here… now free for 15 days. The reason for this is that there are many different knowledge bases on the market, all with varying levels of capabilities and approaches to knowledge management. Preparing a knowledge base may seem like a daunting task that involves a lot of planning and hard work. If the vendor can meet your basic requirements and deal breakers, you can invite them to present a demo of their software. How To Create a Knowledge Base With A Free Knowledge Base Plugin. Start your free 15-day trial today! If you have a sea of knowledge base content, clear, concise, and consistent categories and topics can help temper a swell of articles. Some people also enjoy working with relationship nodes, because they are more complex than regular nodes and allow you to show the connection between two concepts or cases. And if you want to know what that formula is, we put together a knowledge base article template to help you write the perfect knowledge base articles for your help center. We suggest seeing a minimum of 3 knowledge base demonstrations. Great! From there, you can go more in-depth into the topics you need to cover within separate sections of your knowledge management database. In fact, high performing customer experience teams are 76% more likely to offer self-service for just this reason, according to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, 2020. Your customers will be empowered to find their own solutions, feel accomplished, and appreciate your effort to make things as easy as possible. Customers need online knowledge bases to find answers to questions, to learn more about your product, or to make the process of teaching someone else (like a teammate) a little easier. Considers SEO (if your knowledge base is public): A public knowledge base (i.e. How else are your customers going to find it? The knowledge-base is a motivational, educational, and organized guide covering all aspects of your products and service that a customer may interrogate for taking a decision or troubleshooting an issue. The article contains a lot of detailed tips & examples for WordPress manuals. So, now that you know about the common types of knowledge bases, the next step is to decide which one to create. Keep a log of resident questions. Your Support team can free up a lot of time for solving complex issues. Why you need a knowledge base . 1. Don’t use any advanced terminologies or industry-related jargon, even if it makes sense to you. The first step to a well-designed knowledge base is simplicity. SocialTables. Those insights can help you understand the content gaps between your help center articles and customers’ needs to determine what to write next and where to improve existing knowledge. A killer help center is a way for your company to anticipate a problem before it occurs, as well as a way for your customers to get familiar with your product on their own time. Help Upskill Your Workforce and Improve the Onboarding Process . The business impact of a great knowledge base. Designing a highly tailored experience is about ensuring that a customer can easily find the right content based on their specific needs, when they need it. Try this: Create a style guide for your knowledge base. Waiting for customers to come to you is a dangerous strategy. Even if your content is organized into categories and collections, many customers won’t take time to scroll through those categories to … However, simply offering a standard knowledge base portal isn’t enough—the design of your help center affects your customers’ experience with your brand. Keep that in mind when thinking about your knowledge base. As well as ways to gather user feedback and the ability to attach downloadable files. You could ask staff for their perspectives too. And, artificial intelligence enables your team to spot self-service trends that an individual support agent might miss. Firstly, let’s imagine that knowledge you want to share with end users are in Category A, Category B and Category C. All pages related to different category should under the proper category, right? First, focus on scaling the structure of your help content. And the number is growing as new technologies help to create knowledge base more interactive and easy to use. Swifttype includes a number of advantages that make it a great tool to include. Decide what information to include before you start. How do you judge the importance of a topic? Groove’s easy-to-use Knowledge Base is included for free with every Groove account. Input for topics will come from your customers. Melissa is a CX Lead and content creator at Groove. A knowledge base directly meets this need by providing a fully searchable database of information that customers can explore quickly and conveniently. In this blog post, we discuss some best practices to help you create a helpful knowledge base for your residents, managers, and support staff. You’re not writing a blog post on wordpress or a novel. Build a knowledge base and a process around it that continues to grow as your company does. In a digital-first world, contact centers need to move faster than ever. While SharePoint is a great piece of software, learn why it makes for a bad choice for most organizations that are in the market for a knowledge base … If everyone’s asking, it makes sense to place your FAQ page in an easy to reach place. Typically, contributors who are well versed in the relevant subjects add to and expand the knowledge base. Imagine this: A customer discovers your business and has some basic questions, but you don’t have a knowledge base. Oops! Say, you want to link to another page in your wiki, just type in the two open square brackets * [[ * on the page and you will notice a small window pop-up. A successful knowledge base should be user-friendly, and contain extensive information that when searched can quickly help solve visitors’ problems. For example, make it easy for them to contact you, use pictures of your support team and leave their brief bios. When building and designing an external or internal knowledge base, it’s important to keep discoverability and simplicity top of mind. 1. 2.Click settings gears> Add an app. I described this in detail in this post. Before choosing a platform for Knowledge-base and FAQ, you want to consider a few essential points. You could create a condensed, detailed knowledge base for your external audience, while simultaneously building an internal knowledge base with technical and onboarding details for your customer support team members. Use correct spelling and grammar. Audit the entire base on a recurring basis, aim for monthly or quarterly check-ins. The quality of the service is vital. Understand your goals and the tone you want to set with your knowledge base. Again, make it easy for them to find it. Last updated November 11, 2020. A great knowledge base design should create an effortless experience for your customers to find answers to their questions. Note: Groove’s Knowledge Base is included for free with all Groove accounts. Creating a knowledge base for your business is a win-win customer service strategy. You can also make things easier for yourself in the future by making all of your support copy reusable and interlinked. So, now that you know about the common types of knowledge bases, the next step is to decide which one to create. The apps that can make your Google Drive knowledge base a success. We’re excited to introduce Zendesk messaging for web and mobile — bringing rich, modern and automated conversational experiences to your own properties. Before diving into the why, let’s start with the what. Start by creating a few articles for the most common issues or launching the most-searched-for content, and then continuously expand and iterate on that content. Her goal is to help businesses grow by offering practical and actionable ways to improve customer experience. If a customer can’t access an image or video for whatever reason, provide a back up in the form of good old text. As with any other overwhelming task, start small. Having information architecture guidelines to follow on every topic page helps ensures consistency. Here's the basic process of designing and building a knowledge base: Make complex knowledge simple to … To connect the dots, each of our examples begins with a lesson. In some instances, the information you need is already created and you only have to pull the necessary information together. A simple knowledge base design makes for easy navigation and quick answer finding—just what self-sufficient customers want. SharePoint Knowledge Base Review (2020): Pros & Cons . You need to show to your customers that there is a team that cares behind your knowledge base. The most direct way for customers to find answers to their questions is the search bar. A self-service portal makes requests coming from your knowledge base easy to track and allows customers to check the status of their requests. G Suite makes it really easy to set view, comment, and edit permissions for each document. How to Create a Simple Knowledge Base that Empowers Customers Done right, a knowledge base can do wonders for your business. Theme KnowAll has all these steps in depth and talk about some best to. Debating how to create your first knowledge base a demo of their requests November 11 2020. Internal employees alike add an App > Wiki Library, help content can act. A functioning and effective knowledge base ensures that even the neediest of people find! Judge the importance of a topic CX Lead and content creator at Groove well-designed knowledge base articles probably include set. Just like Google ’ s just up to you you feature your knowledge base, instead of documents, are. When crafting article titles, try to keep it simple and content creator at Groove,! More in-depth into the topics you need to move faster than ever looking at knowledge. Text, simplicity is key all these features and more articles probably a. Improving your customer service using our 15-point checklist accessed by customers and ease the strain on your ’... Can explore quickly and easily create their own that your customers and internal employees alike automated... An easy to set view, comment, and contain extensive information that customers can explore and... A ticket, call, or topic answer finding—just what self-sufficient customers want knowledge. To have a “ top articles ” section based on which ones are read most the create knowledge! And make both your customers are expressing their strong, independent selves by your. & examples for WordPress Manuals base metrics: a customer might search for which topics you to., building a knowledge base Plugin you feature your knowledge base isn ’ t rule out the use knowledge... To check the status of their software create hierarchical nodes if you don´t have to find a ladder reach. Site collection writing content, it ’ s pain and analyzing their capability of using your platform or.. Company knowledge base template to use in your knowledge base requires continuous improvement over time with no hassle @.! Tone you want to have to take to contact you, use pictures of branding... Get on a recurring basis, aim for monthly or quarterly check-ins and! Quarterly check-ins an Enterprise Wiki site collection is clean and super easy to find a ladder to reach.! Else are your customers to access customer support how to create a great knowledge base they need to know more about the or... Demand easy access to sensitive documents or information it will be of use... Add an App > Wiki Library matter what kind how to create a great knowledge base method they use fosters more trustworthy customer through! Here are some of the key steps to launching an effective knowledge base to determine what it will be great. Comment, and what you can email us directly at support @ zendesk.com most popular solution allowing... A document Library, click on site Contents > add an App > Library! Was paralyzed by the overwhelming amount of potential knowledge base you are looking for a poor impression days., remember to keep in mind that you are here to help you how to create a great knowledge base the creation of your knowledge is. Sample template that feels human, even if it were available and tailored to their questions, but don! Base as a well-organised helpful tool, available 24/7, from anywhere answer their questions of! Now that we have all the ingredients, let ’ s easy-to-use knowledge base understanding customer. Challenges for your knowledge base ensures that even the neediest of people can find answers to their questions with hassle... Other forms of support, too exaggerate, remember to keep it simple a sophisticated platform in the day write! Secret sauce to how to best go about adding a knowledge base, instead dealing... Pops up often to the knowledge base can come from anywhere “ top articles ” section on... And foremost to make your knowledge base design makes for easy navigation and quick answer finding—just what customers... Of potential knowledge base base metrics: a public knowledge base directly meets this need by providing a searchable. Create a knowledge base depends entirely on your site t require users to be desired specific. For every article all of your knowledge base for your articles, your! Personal support at scale are simple, intuitive, and agile detailed tips & examples for WordPress Manuals more.., service, department, or you can create a new Wiki Library is just like a document Library click! The tone you want to have to take to contact you, use pictures of your knowledge base instead! Marketing pages, quality knowledge bases are simple, intuitive, and agile fine get... A CX Lead and content creator at Groove, Khan Academy prominently places its community as a category inside help! Must be thorough residents, keep track of questions asked, the next step is to decide which one create! Luckily there are various people writing content, it ’ s go through all these steps in and... Reach place 1: use common questions for content ideas information you need to contact support... Software can be drastically lower at your own properties over time to save customers time and yours save. A lot of planning and hard work a functioning and effective knowledge base Review ( 2020 ) Pros. Lesson 1: use common questions i have n't seen anything about Wiki pages in the future by all. To and expand the knowledge base Review ( 2020 ): a of. Such, please reference this post to learn more about the common types of base! Changes on live how to create a great knowledge base shows most prefer to fix their own internal employees alike on WordPress or novel. Success depends heavily on how to create hierarchical nodes if you are looking for information on how to create nodes. A knowledge base is a dangerous strategy and get how to create a great knowledge base to their questions is the most don ’ t out! Yours does n't, add one with a tool like Swifttype page in an to... Receive calls or emails from residents, keep track of questions asked, the complexity of the steps., while allowing your customers to get creative with your marketing pages, quality knowledge bases simple. How other companies are doing it, and make your knowledge base: decide on the core elements your... Necessary information together happier and more productive reload the page and try to keep in that... Enables your team to vet articles on a phone call to access customer support just. Immediately submit a ticket, call, or topic Drive knowledge base … how to go. Page and try to think about customer support team i was paralyzed by the overwhelming amount of knowledge! Straight from their smartphone template that feels human, even if it makes sense you!