5 Best Tips To Create The Perfect Help Center Articles

To support the statement above, 89% of millennials have used a search engine to find the answer to their customer service question before calling customer service, and 84% have used a self-service portal. Help center articles are perfect for self-service purposes. 

5 Tips for creating perfect help center articles 

While writing self-help articles for customer portals or forums, there are a few essential things to consider. Use the following tips the next time you create help center articles.  

1. Focus on the customer’s perspective

• From the product perspective, it may seem ideal for customer support teams to put out features and describe them in the articles
• But this is the wrong approach to solving your customer’s problems
• The right way to answer your customer’s questions is to write more on the situation and elaborate on scenarios or write from the customer’s or a peer’s point of view

2. Use conversational language

• Most of the time, instructions and manuals come in technical terms. Jargon makes your product or service categorized challenging to understand
• The tone needs to be friendly and approachable so the customer does not feel intimidated at any point in time
• The best approach to using conversational language is to write as one speaks

3. Show empathy

• Help center articles forums are where customers seek out help. To deal with the frustration of the customer, show that you care
• The tone of language used in the help center articles needs to have reassurances that calm the users down
• It is essential to show empathy as a brand to show that you care and calm customers down in panic situations for a better customer experience

4. Add elements to the articles: 

• Adding hyperlinks for detailed information is essential within self-service articles 
• With no external help, the help center articles need to have supporting media and redirected hyperlinks to solve problems with an in-depth analysis of the situation 
• The elements can be anything ranging from QR codes, links, and visual support to make the whole experience interactive

5. Make customers feel intelligent

• Making your customer feel like they know it all is the key to building the perfect help center article
• Condescending language is to be avoided while writing help-center articles
• When customers feel like the product or service is easy to use with fewer complications, they instill loyalty because of brand value and the tone of language used

Benefits of a KM platform in creating help center articles 

A knowledge management platform is one of the ingredients to success in creating the perfect help center articles. Besides that, help center articles would be just one part of self-service.

With a future-faced knowledge management software like Knowmax, creating self-service guides is possible in multiple formats, including FAQs, picture guides, and self-chat guides. Know all the benefits of a KM platform, like Knowmax, in creating all forms of self-service articles. 

1. Unified Knowledge base for all information

• Having knowledge management software is that all your information is in one unified platform
• Omnichannel customer service with consistent customer support is enabled through this feature
• Customers get consistent information on whichever platform they access these self-help guides enabled by KM

2. No-code, DIY creation

• Creating self-help troubleshooting guides is a simple task with a robust knowledge management platform
• Take Knowmax KM, for example, where complicated decision trees can be on self-service with next to no complications in creating these scripts since it is a 100% no-code, DIY nature
• Customers can access these pictures or FAQ guides across all touchpoints, and support teams would have no hassle in learning or creating these as soon as a problem is identified

3. Unique self-service formats

• Self-service cannot be in just one format. New-age customers prefer interactive ways to engage with brands.
• Moreover, businesses cannot have self-help guides in just one format. With a robust KM like Knowmax, you have multimedia support coming into place with formats like FAQs, visual guides, articles, and live chat support
• Having multiple formats speaks to customers looking for different kinds of help in self-service. For example, if a customer wants to change internet settings on the phone, they can visually see the steps on a picture guide instead of just text with action descriptions. 

4. Automatic FAQs creation

• Imagine you have Q&As present in a document. And your knowledge management picks up the content and publishes it in a FAQ format, as seen on customer touchpoints
• Wouldn’t that be amazing? So an AI-backed KM platform like Knowmax has this feature
• Create FAQs within seconds now, and never let your customers miss out on any information

5. Publish from a single platform

• Does your business use multiple platforms to create and publish self-service articles or help center articles?
• Put an end to inconsistencies in information creating and publishing by using a knowledge management platform that enables you to design and publish across all preferred channels from one platform, which is a single source of truth
• The Knowmax knowledge management platform even lets brands preview content across the platform and see what it looks like on different types of devices

Conclusion 

Publishing the perfect help-center articles or self-service is within reach through a future-ready knowledge management platform. Creating, curating, previewing, and broadcasting from one platform creates consistency and enables seamless omnichannel support for all customers and their needs.

Creating perfect self-help guides or self-service articles through knowledge management ultimately aims to improve CX.