Why Have A Knowledge Base To Create A Self-service Portal?

89 percent of millennials use a search engine to find answers before making a call to get customer service. What if your business has its own portal that acts as a forum for discussion and has answers your customers are looking for? That is where the idea of a self-service portal is born. 

What is a self-service portal?

A self-service portal is a self-help forum disseminated in the form of apps websites. Social media and various other customer touchpoints. These portals have information that a customer would like to find out about the concerned product or service of the company. 

A self-service portal is the means for customers to get their self-help guides. Most self-service portals have Frequently Asked Questions and articles on products/services to help customers. 

The beauty of a self-service portal is that it can be made for customers wherever they stand on the customer journey, be it pre, during, or post-purchase support. Any customer across your customer journey can go through the ready repository of knowledge for their purposes.

Why have a self-service portal for your business?

1. Keeps up with customer expectations

• As mentioned in the beginning, customers need fast service in today’s world. Self-service portals prove to be the first point of interaction and give customers access to information they might be looking for.
• Obviously, this comes to how well your customer support teams can draft and design these self-service portals for your customers, so they have a ready reckoner of information in any and all categories
• Carefully designing and drafting customer service portals goes a long way in improving overall customer service. Because this reflects on how much a brand cares for its customers and goes to lengths to prove it through customer service.

2. Enables Customer convenience

• Customers in today’s world have so many errands to run. You can’t possibly give them a particular time and say,’ Hey, this is your time slot to resolve your problem. Please be there on time.’ Most customers cannot make it on time given by customer support teams.
• You need to understand your customers and put their needs and happiness first as an organization. How can you do this? By dedicating your customer support operations to being customer-centric.
• Through self-service, a customer can open the website or app at their convenience and get any information they would like to know without changing their daily schedule. This improves customer retention rate as long as the customers are happy with the service.

3. Saves customers time

• Imagine this. You are on call with a customer support team, and they ask you to stay on hold and put the plain boring music. You keep waiting on the call and eventually cut it out of frustration.
• No one likes to waste their time, especially for calls to customer service teams, which is why new-age customers or millennials turn to search engines for their answers. But these answers might not be your product/service specific and would mislead them.
• Having self-service portals help customers get answers by themselves without having to place a call or wait on long call hold times. This is also beneficial for your support teams as it helps with call deflection.

4. Provides personalized experience

• Customers love to be valued and made to feel unique. In a world with 7 billion and counting people, it is excellent for your customers to be recognized as their entity. So how can you personalize your customer’s experience?
• You must be wondering self-service in itself is complicated. How can one personalize the customer experience through self-service portal? There is a straightforward way through CRM integration.
• By taking customers’ data and keeping track of it, you can recommend products and services related to what your customer has purchased and will be willing to buy

Benefits of the knowledge base in creating a self-service portal 

Now that the importance of having a self-service portal is evident let us move on to what a knowledge base is and how it enables self-service.

What is a knowledge base for self-service?

A knowledge base is a one-stop repository of information. A knowledge base is a repository of information created in multiple formats like FAQs, articles, visual guides, and step-by-step flowcharts in the self-service portal. When disseminated in self-service portals, all these formats help customers look for solutions without much difficulty. 

There are multiple benefits of having a knowledge base for self-service. Have a look at a few benefits of the knowledge base in self-service below.

1. Be available round the clock

• With a ready repository of information your customers need, be available to support them at any time of the day. Your customer support teams need sleep, but the technology your self-service runs on – through the internet- does not need sleep.
• Your customers can look for anything they want at their time of convenience. This also touches on the element of customers service convenience, where you do not make the customers wait for your support teams to take their time to get back to the customer’s problem to resolve it effectively.

2. Provide consistent information across all channels

• It might be challenging to be consistent on all platforms when you have multiple customer service portals across your digital channels. One solution is having the same knowledge base for all these customer support channels.
• One way to disseminate consistent information is to adopt a knowledge management platform to create your knowledge base. A knowledge base enables omnichannel customer support, so all data is the same on every platform, as you have a single repository.

3. Enable faster resolution

• Customers need quick resolutions. They absolutely do not like to wait. Having a well-curated knowledge base helps your customers not wait to get their answers. A knowledge base repository with all information your customer needs resolves all problems your customer might have.
• Creating a broad knowledge base for self-service through careful curation helps customers resolve problems independently. This means faster resolutions for customers and more first contact resolutions.

4. Improve customer acquisition

• The knowledge base for self-service doesn’t just cater to existing customers, but it also helps bring in new customers. For example, a customer just browsing through your website goes to a product page, finds FAQs attached, and reads through.
• If the content resonates with the customer, they can imagine the product fit into their lives based on the FAQs they have read that are positioned at the right place. This means the knowledge base for self-service has the potential to make a browser into a customer.

Conclusion 

Post-pandemic, the ways customer service has improved has been incredible for the customer front. Self-service is now non-negotiable for brands that strive for excellence in customer service. Knowledge management platforms like Knowmax help you improve customer service operations for more fantastic CX. Research your options well to create the perfect knowledge base for self-service for your brand.