Autor: Rodrigo Prado | Managing Director & Founder at Imppulsor
The first thing is to recognize them as a business touchpoint. The second is to understand its potential to contribute to the customer experience and the product’s profitability.
The first thing is to recognize them as a business touchpoint. The second is to understand its potential to contribute to the customer experience and the product’s profitability.
A knowledge base is a place your customers will go when they’re confused about a feature of your product, or it’s not working correctly, they can’t log in to their account, they need more information about your return and exchange policy, and so on. Endless possibilities with the use or support of your product or service at any point in the customer journey. For this reason, a knowledge base is a touchpoint and a channel at the same time.
This type of resource could be called a “knowledge base”, “support centre”, “help centre” or whatever you prefer. The knowledge base leaves room for virtually every question a customer has ever asked or may ask.
When well-designed it can:
- Direct customers to the answers to any type of questions they have.
- Teach them to ask their questions more effectively.
- It will improve their experience with both your website and your product or service by helping them find their answers faster.
All of the above translates into a win-win for everyone.
What is the difference between a “knowledge base” and a “help centre”?
In the core, there is not a big difference between one or the other. In both cases, it is an accumulation of resources that customers can use to solve their problems and answer their questions.
The only substantive difference is that a help or support centre will often also have other self-service resources available, as well as alternatives for interaction with the company such as live chat, phone line or email.
What are the reasons for creating a knowledge base?
The first is that clients increasingly show a preference for helping themselves. In the case of mass services, this is highlighted when they face a customer service telephone line, sometimes interacting with a long menu of options, recorded phrases, and waiting times.
There still are, and perhaps always will be, customers who want to interact with a person, which is why phone support is a channel that never goes completely out of date. However, with the cultural changes driven by web services, the profile of customers who want to self-learn and solve problems by themselves is becoming more and more massive. If your support centre helps them achieve these goals, they will love your product and the user experience on your website will be positive.
Educate and support your team.
If you have a particularly complex product or service, there may be questions that your own support team may not have the answers to. Having a comprehensive knowledge base on your website is not only to the benefit of your customers, but also an invaluable learning resource for your collaborators. The better your documentation, the faster your team members can answer questions.
It can also help your support team provide a more consistent experience for customers. If your entire team refers to the same documentation, they will be more consistent when answering questions. In fact, if you have a small support team, a knowledge base is one of the most cost-effective ways you can help them manage their workload. A comprehensive knowledge base can reduce the number of tickets your support team receives. And, of course, it costs much less to set up and maintain support documentation than it does to hire additional employees for this area.
Helps you think and create better products or services
Building a knowledge base can be a daunting and tedious task. But forcing yourself to do so might give you less insight into your customers. As you write answers to frequently asked questions, explaining the steps and procedures customers need to follow, you literally put yourself in their shoes. This makes it easier to take note of the problems, pain points and imperfections that your customers experience with your product or service and therefore think about how to improve them in the future.
Explain it all
Your knowledge base should answer all potential customer questions, including ones. The goal here is to create as complete a source of information as possible. In a knowledge base, there is no excessive explanation. In fact, you should write your support documentation as if the customer reading it is a new user. Cut down on jargon and don’t assume your customers know what you’re talking about when you use industry or product terminology.
To this end, consider involving your entire team in the foundation building process. Ask your experts how to explain specific terms to non-technical customers. Ask your customer service team how they break down complex procedures over the phone. What’s the list of customer questions your teams have answered this year? If your team isn’t yet sorting through and analyzing the types of questions you’re getting, maybe now is a good time to start.
The more time and effort you spend building a solid knowledge base, the less time you will spend focused on customer service in the long run, which will pay off twice: more customer satisfaction and loyalty, and more product or product profitability. line of business, for the smaller and more focused investment, to cover this critical delivery area of its value proposition.
Ask for feedback
To increase the effectiveness of this customer support channel, you must offer pull and push resources at the same time. Let your customers tell you where your explanations are vague or unspecific, or which screenshots don’t help them. With these comments, you can apply continuous improvement to your resources. Make it as easy as possible for customers to submit feedback. One way to do this is to allow customers to rate articles based on how useful they are or to have a feedback form at the bottom of the page.
You should also be aware of additional content that you need to add to the documentation. Analyzing your customer feedback and the terms visitors are searching for in this section of your website can shed light on what’s missing.
The more time and effort you spend building a solid knowledge base, the less time you will spend focused on customer service in the long run, which will pay off twice: more customer satisfaction and loyalty, and more product or product profitability. line of business, for the smaller and more focused investment, to cover this critical delivery area of its value proposition.
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