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<\/a><\/p>\nCompanies can meet this desire to self-service by creating a knowledge base<\/a> \u2014 but the ability for customers to find their own answers is only one of many benefits.<\/p>\n In this article, I\u2019ll provide an overview of why it\u2019s important for companies to have a knowledge base and dig into things like:<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Knowledge bases<\/a> host information that customers need to effectively use your product or service and can include a variety of different content types, such as FAQ documents, help articles, video tutorials, and more.<\/p>\n Knowledge bases allow customers to quickly and easily find answers to their questions, removing the need to reach out to customer support for simple or common needs.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n As the saying goes, \u201cCustomers are the backbone of any business.\u201d Providing a great customer experience is critical to keeping your customers happy \u2014 yet I know firsthand that customers today have extremely high expectations.<\/p>\n Since 90% of consumers<\/a> expect an immediate response to their customer support needs, any delay in resolution time can negatively impact their overall experience with your product.<\/p>\n While today\u2019s customers may have high expectations, luckily, they\u2019re also pretty resourceful. Nearly 70% of customers<\/a> say they\u2019ll try to solve their problem on their own first before reaching out to customer support.<\/p>\n This is where knowledge bases come in. Think of it this way:<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Now that we\u2019ve covered why having a knowledge base is important, I\u2019ll go over a few key benefits of implementing a knowledge base at your company.<\/p>\n In my experience, when customers can easily access what they need and get quick answers to their questions, they tend to be happier. By giving your customers access to a knowledge base, you\u2019re ensuring they don\u2019t have to wait around for answers to many of their time-sensitive questions.<\/p>\n Beyond that, a knowledge base shows your customers that you understand their needs and you care about their overall experience.<\/p>\n I asked Nicole Theohary<\/a>, director of customer experience at Slang.ai<\/a>, how she goes about building a knowledge base for their customer base of busy restaurants. I love what she had to say!<\/p>\n Theohary told me, \u201cA great knowledge base is like a really attentive host at a restaurant \u2014 it anticipates your needs, makes answers easy to find, and leaves you feeling taken care of.<\/p>\n \u201cAt Slang, we think about support as an extension of hospitality. We create resources that are ready-to-go and easy to access, because restaurants don\u2019t have time to wait \u2014 they need answers fast.\u201d<\/p>\n I think we can all agree that faster time to resolution equals happier customers.<\/p>\n Customers don\u2019t just expect a speedy resolution, they also expect you to provide self-service options for them to try finding that resolution on their own.<\/p>\n Customers want to try to solve their own problems before reaching out to someone, and most of them really want to avoid talking to someone at all if they can. (And this is increasingly true with millennial and Gen Z customers, which Gartner<\/a> calls the \u201cself-service or no-service\u201d mindset.)<\/p>\n In fact, one study showed that 73%<\/a> of customers<\/a> want the ability to solve product\/service issues independently. Interestingly, the same report found that a third of those surveyed would rather clean a toilet than speak to customer service!<\/p>\n Additionally, 98% of customers<\/a> said they rely on online self-service resources like help articles and FAQ documents, meaning they don’t just want it, they need<\/em> it.<\/p>\n In other words, if you require your customers to email or call your company to get help, you\u2019re not meeting their expectations \u2014 and you\u2019re delaying the time it takes for them to see value with your product.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t just want your customer to use your product \u2014 you want them to love<\/em> using it. There\u2019s nothing better than having my customers get excited about new features or finding a new use case for the product.<\/p>\n Your knowledge base can drive product adoption in two key ways: foundational product adoption and enhanced product adoption.<\/p>\n I suggest using your knowledge base to provide self-service content that helps customers find more enhanced or sophisticated ways to use your product.<\/p>\n For example, in one of my previous roles, we included documentation in our knowledge base about how to build and test three of our most popular \u201cadvanced\u201d chatbot use cases. These were considered a more \u201csophisticated\u201d level of adoption, and the content we built for this included a video tutorial so that customers could build this flow on their own.<\/p>\n By creating content related to a variety of use cases, you help your customers discover new potential outcomes with your product and help make your product \u201cstickier.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that product adoption is integral to retention and revenue. For your customers to renew or expand their contract, they need to be happy with what they\u2019re currently using and seeing value from it.<\/p>\n And in order to fully adopt a product or service, customers need help.<\/p>\n When customers run into issues, they\u2019re either going to:<\/p>\n A simple way to increase your customers\u2019 time-to-value is to help them self-service.<\/p>\n Providing a library of self-service resources helps remove friction for your customers by enabling them to complete whatever they need to accomplish with your product. And when customers have the resources they need to fully adopt what they\u2019re currently paying for, chances are they\u2019ll be more likely to renew and maybe even upgrade to more advanced functionality.<\/p>\n A customer support rep\u2019s work is (seemingly) never done, and I\u2019ve yet to work for a company that didn\u2019t<\/em> have a never-ending queue of support tickets and pressure to meet SLA\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many products and online services take time for a customer to learn. Understandably, they\u2019re going to have questions and need assistance. But in my experience, when a company provides an opportunity for customers to self-service for more common questions, it frees up support reps to help customers who have more complex needs.<\/p>\n Interestingly, 91% of customers<\/a> said that they would use a knowledge base if it fit their needs. By ensuring your knowledge base adequately addresses your customer\u2019s most common questions in a way that\u2019s easily searchable, you:<\/p>\n With every self-service interaction that your customer makes, your company sees significant savings. While you do need to make an initial investment to build and maintain your knowledge base, I promise that the return on investment will be worth it.<\/p>\n Forrester Research<\/a> found that while a live agent interaction can cost between $6-12 each, a self-service interaction can cost as little as $0.10. This can add up to significant savings, especially if your customers are reaching out to live agents for repeating topics or common questions.<\/p>\n By enabling customers to find their own answers to more \u201cTier 1\u201d<\/a> questions, you ensure that your support reps can use their knowledge and expertise on more nuanced and complex customer interactions.<\/p>\n This not only saves you money, but also creates a better experience for both your rep and the customer. Win-win!<\/p>\n Any organization that\u2019s focused on growth should also be focused on scaling effectively. I was pleasantly surprised to uncover how a well-maintained knowledge base helps your organization scale in today\u2019s rapidly changing digital landscape.<\/p>\n As Nic Brown<\/a>, senior customer education manager at Salesloft<\/a> told me recently, \u201cA solid knowledge base is crucial for any growing company. It\u2019s not just about helping customers find answers \u2014 though that\u2019s a big part of it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really about making sure your team isn\u2019t constantly reinventing the wheel. When you centralize your knowledge, it becomes easier for support teams to respond faster, for new hires to get up to speed, and for everyone to stay aligned on how things actually work.\u201d<\/p>\n I agree with Brown\u2019s point about any growing company needing a knowledge base, and I think a knowledge base is especially necessary for:<\/p>\n If I\u2019m being honest, nothing makes me more frustrated than doing the same task repeatedly. Productivity and efficiency are critical these days, especially if you\u2019re in a customer-facing role like me, where the hours in your day are precious.<\/p>\n Having a centralized repository of resources enables your internal teams to have a one-stop shop for information.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s a CSM helping a customer enable a new feature or a technical support rep helping a customer troubleshoot their integrations, your teams can feel confident in the process of navigating to the knowledge base to look for the right information.<\/p>\n When you build a knowledge base, you enable your employees to follow the same process that you\u2019ve built for your customers \u2014 i.e., trying to self-serve first. Much like your customers\u2019 experience, this process helps your employees get answers more quickly and ensures they aren\u2019t delayed in responding to their customers.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever played a game of telephone, you know how skewed a message can get when it\u2019s relayed over and over. Luckily, if you have a centralized knowledge base, your internal teams all have access to the exact same messaging right down to the last word. This ensures that everyone in the company is relaying the same message.<\/p>\n A knowledge base not only ensures that a customer gets a consistent response no matter who they interact with from your company, but it also ensures that the customer is receiving the same information from your teams that they would find on their own if they searched the knowledge base. (We\u2019ve all been in a situation where a customer said, \u201cBut so-and-so told me I could do this!\u201d)<\/p>\n Consistency is important when setting expectations with customers, and by ensuring your internal teams and your customers are accessing the same information, you create a consistent experience.<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong> In order to maintain<\/em> consistent messaging, I suggest providing your teams with a process to follow if they can\u2019t find the answer in the knowledge base. I never want to give my customer the wrong answer by just guessing when I couldn\u2019t find the right answer in our help docs.<\/p>\n A knowledge base doesn\u2019t just surface information to your customers \u2014 it can also surface valuable information to your company as well. Brown pointed out that using a knowledge base can actually improve your company\u2019s decision-making by showing you key insights about your customers.<\/p>\n When talking to Brown about this, he told me, \u201cIn my experience, a well-maintained knowledge base surfaces trends you might otherwise miss. You start to notice what people are struggling with most often, and that can feed directly into product improvements, onboarding strategies, or even how you talk about your product externally.<\/p>\n \u201cSo while it might seem like a simple support tool, it actually plays a big role in how a company scales and stays connected.\u201d<\/p>\n I think having these sorts of insights is a huge benefit to having a knowledge base. By leveraging the data within your knowledge base to uncover areas of friction in your customer\u2019s journey, you can improve and enhance the overall customer experience.<\/p>\n Starting a new job comes with a steep learning curve, and it can take a new employee up to 12 months<\/a> to be \u201cfully productive\u201d in their new role. (I know many of us can relate to that!)<\/p>\n When I\u2019m new to a role, I spend a lot of time in my company\u2019s knowledge base. If I\u2019m meeting with a customer and they ask me a question that I don\u2019t know the answer to, I\u2019ll search for a help center article while screen sharing and say, \u201cI\u2019m not entirely sure, but let\u2019s find out together.\u201d<\/p>\n Having a knowledge base enables your employees to ramp faster, and is especially valuable for employees who are customer-facing.<\/p>\n For example: New customer support reps can lean on help center articles and FAQs to find answers to customer questions while they\u2019re still learning the ins and outs of the product. This means they can jump into the support queue and start taking tickets more quickly.<\/p>\n As a CSM, using a knowledge base helps me feel like I can still deliver value to a customer in real time even if I don\u2019t automatically know the answer to their questions. It enables us to find out together and remove whatever blocker they have to keep things moving for them.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever worked for a software company, you know that sometimes the \u201cspeed of innovation\u201d is faster than the speed of internal enablement.<\/p>\n When new products or features get released, a help center article should follow shortly after. By ensuring your knowledge base contains new (and updated) information about your products\u2019 features and enhancements, you reduce the time it takes for employees to find information or get answers to their questions. You not only create a culture of self-service for employees, but you also build trust with your internal teams by consistently creating the content you know they\u2019ll need to do their job.<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong> If you lead a CX function at your organization, work directly with your product team to make sure there\u2019s a plan in place for quickly creating knowledge base content related to new feature rollouts. There\u2019s nothing worse than trying to support customers with new features or products when there\u2019s no documentation to help you.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Now that you\u2019re (hopefully) excited about reaping the benefits of a knowledge base for yourself, let\u2019s talk about some tips for building one.<\/p>\n Before you dive into creating knowledge base content, take a step back and define a plan for your project. What problems are you currently facing, and what metrics do you care about influencing?<\/p>\n I recommend taking some time to perform a gap analysis<\/a> to really outline the current state versus your desired future state. This process can help you set tangible goals for the future that also help drive your project plan.<\/p>\n For example: If your support ticket volume is up by 15% or your product adoption of a new feature is lower than desired, you can use these metrics to map out the potential impact of your knowledge base.<\/p>\n If your company decides that support ticket volume and product adoption are the two most important metrics to track against, you\u2019ll want to focus your efforts on building content that aligns with those two specific areas.<\/p>\n This means that any other content requests would be out of scope for right now and can be added to a \u201cphase 2\u201d of your project plan.<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong> Don\u2019t forget to align on who will be responsible for maintaining your knowledge base moving forward. This should be included in your project plan.<\/p>\n Once you have your project plan and goals defined, you\u2019ll need to decide which knowledge management system<\/a> you\u2019ll use to build and host your knowledge base.<\/p>\n I suggest using Hubspot\u2019s Knowledge Base Software<\/a> as it\u2019s customizable to your brand, offers great AI features, and provides insights and analytics to help you measure performance.<\/p>\n Source<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n As with any software purchase, your needs and requirements will be unique to your business, but here are a few things to consider as you shop around.<\/p>\n At my company, our knowledge base uses federated search to pull up results from the help center articles, our community hub, and our customer academy. This offers our customers multiple content sources to find what they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>If your company is global, AI features can often help with translating content into additional languages, which is a huge time saver.<\/p>\n Who will your knowledge base content be written for? Be sure to consider all of your customer personas and their overall customer journey.<\/p>\n For example, if you\u2019re in B2B and have an admin and a core user, chances are your admin is likely doing tasks in the platform that your core user is not.<\/p>\n If this is the case, you\u2019ll likely want to create knowledge base content that caters to what each of those personas is trying to accomplish. A good place to start is with your product or service\u2019s RBAC<\/a> list.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t overcomplicate this, though \u2014 just make sure you\u2019re considering the knowledge base from all of your users\u2019 perspectives. From there, focus on differentiating knowledge base content only where necessary so that you don\u2019t end up with a million articles that require constant upkeep.<\/p>\n Common examples of different audiences you may want to consider:<\/p>\n Example:<\/strong> Gong<\/a> does a nice job of this by segmenting their knowledge base into categories like \u201cusing Gong\u201d and \u201cconfiguring Gong.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the goal of a knowledge base is to find quick and easy answers, it\u2019s important to set up your knowledge base in a way that\u2019s easy to navigate.<\/p>\n How will your landing page and user navigation be organized? Here are a few things to think about when it comes to setting up your knowledge base:<\/p>\n When organizing your knowledge base, I strongly suggest adding personalization to your approach. With 80% of consumers<\/a> saying they prefer to do business with companies that personalize the experience, it\u2019s worth taking the time to understand your customers\u2019 unique experience.<\/p>\n For example, in my past roles as a CSM, I spent so much time training new admins and users on how to use our product. Because of this, I am a huge proponent of creating \u201cuser guides\u201d and \u201cnew admin\u201d resources that can serve as a one-stop shop to help get customers up to speed. You\u2019d be surprised how often customers ask me for this!<\/p>\n I also like when knowledge bases have a section for new product releases. This makes it easy for customers to see what\u2019s new and exciting, and also ties into the benefit I mentioned around product adoption.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>However you organize it, make sure you have a search bar so that your customers can easily find what they\u2019re looking for. Bonus points if you offer federated search and can bring in content from other data sources.<\/p>\n Need inspiration? Check out my list of the best SaaS Knowledge Bases!<\/p>\n You should be using data to make informed decisions about what type of questions you want to answer. Whether you analyze support tickets or see what customers are searching for on your website, you\u2019ll need to find data that helps you understand exactly what your customers need help with.<\/p>\n The most common place to start is with support ticket data \u2014 especially if your goal is to improve ticket deflection. However, here are a few questions you can ask to uncover other areas that may benefit from content creation:<\/p>\n Once you have your data sources, look for the topics that come up repeatedly and start there with content creation.<\/p>\n Pro tip:<\/strong> Brown told me that, \u201cAn underused tactic is watching how people search \u2014 not just what they click on. Tools like search analytics or ticket deflection tracking show where users are getting stuck, or what terms they\u2019re using that don\u2019t match your wording.<\/p>\n \u201cThose gaps are gold. They tell you where to improve, what to rename, or even which articles to prioritize. Most users tend to abandon a search after 2-3 page views; so knowing how they are searching and knowing what keywords they are using can go a long way in getting the content into their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Make sure there\u2019s alignment with your product, enablement, and customer-facing teams about the process for pushing content related to new features into your knowledge base.<\/p>\n Customer support reps, CSMs, and onboarding managers rely on this information to support their customers with new releases.<\/p>\n\n
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Why are knowledge bases important?<\/h2>\n
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Benefits of Using a Knowledge Base<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nCreates Happier Customers<\/h3>\n
Meets Customer Expectations<\/h3>\n
Increases Product Adoption<\/h3>\n
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Increases Retention and Revenue<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nReduces Support Ticket Volume<\/h3>\n
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Saves Costs<\/h3>\n
Helps Scale Your Organization<\/h3>\n
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Improves Internal Productivity<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nCreates Consistent Messaging<\/h3>\n
Improves Decision-Making<\/h3>\n
Enables Faster Onboarding<\/h3>\n
Improves Internal Enablement<\/h3>\n
1. Define the goals and vision for your knowledge base.<\/h3>\n
2. Find a knowledge management system that fits your needs.<\/h3>\n
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3. Identify and segment your audience.<\/h3>\n
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4. Make your knowledge base easy to navigate.<\/h3>\n
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5. Use data and analytics to define your content.<\/h3>\n
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6. Create cross-functional alignment for new content.<\/h3>\n
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