7 Easy Steps For Building A Knowledge Base

The blog post will discuss 7 easy steps companies can conveniently implement for building a knowledge base management for customer service from scratch. 

Why is a Knowledge base important? 

A Knowledge base is a reservoir of self-help articles, FAQs, and multimedia content that helps both internal support teams and customers to solve problems independently.

Building a Knowledge base benefits businesses in multiple ways:

1. A knowledge base helps internal support teams quickly identify the relevant solutions for customers’ problems without wading through disparate files and formats.
2. A customer support knowledge base, also called an external-facing knowledge base helps customers to help themselves, eliminating the need to get in touch with agents. 91% of customers would use a knowledge base if it is accessible and tailored to meet their needs.
3. The customer service knowledge base for support agents allows them to deflect queries to self-service channels, which helps customers avoid long wait times and helps agents focus better on complex questions. 

7 Steps for building a knowledge base with ease

1. Identify the purpose of the knowledge base 

Building a knowledge base begins with identifying the purpose, target audience, and challenges an organization wants to overcome. Based on the target audience, there are primarily two types of knowledge bases that contact centers need: 

• Internal/Private Knowledge base: Created for support teams to access product and process information, training materials, and information to help customers.

• Customer service/External Knowledge base: A customer-facing Knowledge base with self-help guides to help customers access solutions without needing to contact agents for support. 

Depending on the purpose and target audience, a knowledge base can be chosen accordingly. With advanced Knowledge base solutions providing a centralized knowledge base, companies do not have to create different knowledge bases for customers and agents. 

With an omnichannel-ready Knowledge base software like Knowmax, information can be created and shared with relevant departments and channels from a unified dashboard. An omnichannel knowledge base helps create and share information for a diverse target audience from a single platform.  

2. List down the content types for the Knowledge base

• The next step is to get the existing content ready and identify the need for new content. To ensure information is effective for agents and customers, it is essential to identify suitable content formats for the knowledge base. 

• For instance, recurring customer problems can be organized into FAQs format, while the information for a complex troubleshooting problem can be organized into guided workflows. Without suitable content types to give the knowledge base a structure, agents and customers are prone to get confused, and to avoid that, it is essential to identify the right content format for each use. 

• After uploading content on a Knowledge base software like Knowmax, AI capabilities suggest the relevant content types and automatically convert information documented into a Q&A format into FAQs for customer support. The uploaded content can also be edited and repurposed to meet the current customer service needs. 

3. Add visuals to boost the content readability

• A relevant visual in the right place can do the work of a thousand words combined. Visual device guides are crucial to managing customers’ expectations for faster, more accurate, and minimum effort-requiring services. 

• Add suitable pictures and videos in the knowledge base articles and troubleshooting guides wherever needed. This enhances the understanding of the content, which otherwise can increase average handle time (AHT) with lengthy text-loaded instructions. 

• With Knowmax’s knowledge base, pictures and video guides can be included in articles and troubleshooting workflows at any step, wherever needed. This helps agents resolve issues faster at the first go, resulting in higher first-call resolution (FCR) and improved customer service. 

4. Interlink different content modules in the knowledge base

• The very purpose of a knowledge base is to make all the relevant information available to users with minimal effort from their side. Building a successful knowledge base requires different content modules to be interlinked so users can find all the information they need from a single dashboard. 

• Therefore, it is crucial for self-help articles to have proper visual support and for workflows to have relevant articles interlinked in one place. With a Knowledge base solution like Knowmax, content modules like articles, visual-how to guides, and troubleshooting workflows can be conveniently interlinked for enhanced findability and searchability of information. 

5. Publish the Knowledge base across relevant channels 

• After the content creation, it is time to proofread the content, check its relevance, and publish it. To avoid duplication of effort in creating information separately for different channels and departments, it is helpful to have an omnichannel-ready knowledge base for knowledge creation and sharing. 

• With an omnichannel knowledge base like Knowmax, relevant departments and channels can be selected for knowledge sharing after stakeholders have approved the content for publishing. Given the rising customer expectations for consistent experiences throughout channels, an omnichannel knowledge-sharing capability is essential. 

6. Track the effectiveness of the knowledge base regularly 

• A knowledge base is always a work in progress. Information is quick to get obsolete, and the need to add new content is a constant phenomenon in customer service. 

• To maintain the relevance of the knowledge base, it is necessary to regularly audit the content and check if it is at par with the evolving customers’ needs. To measure the effectiveness of information timely, it is crucial to have in-built analytics in the knowledge base that can track the performance of each knowledge piece. 

• A knowledge base solution like Knowmax has in-built micro-segmented analytics that tracks the overall time spent and usage of each knowledge piece, highlighting the most searched keywords and the content most used by users. The automatically generated content performance reports help organizations with actionable insights to regularly optimize the knowledge base and meet evolving customer service needs. 

7. Encourage user feedback and incorporate it 

• Building a knowledge base that produces an adequate return on investment (ROI) requires businesses to work in tandem with user challenges and grievances. Content should be open for user feedback and incorporated into the mainline decision-making process for optimizing the knowledge base. 

• Knowledge base software like Knowmax comes with a feedback-sharing mechanism wherein agents can rate the effectiveness of content and add their suggestions after resolving tickets. The feedback is shared with the content admins and can be acknowledged in real-time, making the knowledge base platform a unified place for knowledge creation, sharing, and collaboration regarding the needed improvements.  

Conclusion 

Given the rising customers’ expectations for quick, efficient, and omnichannel experiences, having a robust knowledge base is a must. It is important to note that a knowledge base is much more than a static FAQ section.

A knowledge base must include troubleshooting workflows, interlinked content, and multimedia support to help agents and customers seamlessly access relevant information at the right time with minimal effort.