Today, customers are always running out of time and prefer self-help over waiting to connect with the agent. According to a survey, businesses reported a loss of 75% of their customers due to the waiting time. Another study stated, 81% of customers attempt to find answers themselves before reaching out to a representative. The percentage is huge and good enough to explain how vital the knowledge base is for a business. To have an adequate knowledge base software, it is necessary to understand its meaning and importance.
What is the knowledge base? It is a universe of information having relevant articles, FAQs, and more for the support team and the customers. The data is used for sharing knowledge, collecting, organizing things. It can include information on how to use a product, direction, FAQs, videos, case studies, etc. There can be a human-readable or machine-readable knowledge base. A knowledge base looks like –
Why your business needs Knowledge Base
1. Self-help, the customers, to reduce tickets
People have no time to scroll all over the Internet to search for answers to their queries nor prefer to hold calls for long. They want immediate answers to initiate the purchase cycle. So, a visitor on your website expects to search the term and have enough information displayed in a click. This is where the knowledge base software does all the wonders. It frees the agent from replying to repeated queries.
2. Help support reps improve call resolution
Agents have to handle multiple queries related to different topics from different channels. This, many times, confuses and reduces the efficiency with time lost in fetching answers from all places. With the knowledge base in place, they can refer to the information while on call and guide the customer accordingly. Further, the agent can share the documents with customers too.
3. Easy to create
The main task of creating a great knowledge base is shortlisting the kind of questions customers ask. Discuss with agents, go through tickets of past and present, get insights from the market, survey, and more. Eventually, you can keep editing or adding questions to enhance this informative base.
How is the knowledge base different from a blog?
Many misunderstand the Knowledge base as blogs. That’s not true. Where the blog is made up of posts, the knowledge base is made up of pages. There is a difference in the way these content pieces are organized. Blog posts are organized as per their newness—the new ones coming on the front page and older blogs moving back. In the case of the knowledge base, the pages are organized in a hierarchy. These are static pages without any date. Here, generally, the pages are arranged in the form of importance and niche.
Things to consider in the knowledge base
It is necessary to consider multiple things while selecting a knowledge base for your business. There are numerous companies offering software, but here’s what to consider,
- Knowledge base management should be a standalone or built-in tool to use as per the requirement
- It should offer admin, agent, and customer interface
- The software should allow addition, tagging, editing, multiple search options, and more for articles to make search & sharing easy
- To maintain the privacy of documents, they must be accessible according to the roles.
- Have a plan in place of who your customers are and what they ask
- Write effectively on most asked questions & keep updating it timely.
- Have a responsive design
- Convert complex knowledge into simple sentences
- Keep the title concise with relevant keyword
- Have a search bar in place
- Define the type of knowledge base such as IT, HR, project-based, legal, etc.
Remember, clear, concise, and consistent information is what can do wonders. NovelVox Knowledge Management is an impeccable software for your business with all features you need to simplify the customer’s journey with your brand. Check out all details here.
