5 Steps To Building a Knowledge Base that Eases Customer Support

A knowledge base is the perfect solution to avoid repetitive customer queries that reach your help desk, deflecting an overwhelming amount of support tickets for your customer service team. By building a knowledge base, your users can solve their own customer support issues, sparing you time and resources to deal with more complex inquiries. 

A good knowledge base is thoughtfully curated and organized with the audience in mind, allowing easy access to the information stored. And implementing an excellent knowledge base isn’t as hard as you think it is. 

In this post, we’ll take you through five simple steps to build a kickass knowledge base that solves customer issues and satisfies their support needs.

How to build a knowledge base that is valuable to customers

If you want to develop a knowledge base that solves your customers’ problems, it needs to be consistent, easily browsable, and up-to-date. A knowledge base can include troubleshooting guides, FAQs, product tutorials, or any other essential details that your customers might find useful. Follow the steps below to build a knowledge base that will help your customers and service reps.

Step 1: Choose the right knowledge base software

When picking a knowledge base software, you shouldn’t just choose the first free option you can find. You must make sure the platform has the necessary features to power an easily usable customer portal. 

Essential knowledge management software features that you need to look for are:

  • Article/tutorial templates
  • Formatting options
  • Search function, tags, and categorization (for easy navigation)
  • Version control and multiple language options
  • SEO optimization
  • Helpdesk & chatbot integration

Although we’re a bit biased, we think the Freshdesk knowledge base tool is a great choice for any company. It has all the aforementioned features, and you can curate knowledge base content with our rich text editor and easily add in the attachments you need.

Plus, adding meta information to optimize your content and make it more discoverable is a breeze with our automatic indexing. You can also easily control content visibility in Freshdesk, making it simple to keep your private knowledge base and public knowledge base separate.

building a knowledge base in Freshdesk

Step 2: Choose knowledge base topics

It’s easier to select topics for your knowledge base than it sounds. All you have to do is search for trends in the questions you usually receive. 

Search through old tickets to find frequently asked questions

If your customer support team is getting several of the same questions over and over again, start writing knowledge base articles answering them.

Search through old tickets and record the number of queries related to particular problems. If a large percentage of queries are related to a recurring issue, like resetting a password or how a specific product feature works, record those topics and write content that solves those issues.

Use analytics for further insights

You can learn a lot from what people search for on your site. You can do this on Google Analytics too:

– Head to “Behavior” and click “Site Search.”
– Then, click “Overview” to look at the common terms that people are searching for.

You can also compare specific periods and sort results by “Absolute Change” to check out trends that have risen over time.

Related resource: Best practices to source information for your knowledge management system

Step 3: Develop the knowledge base articles

Once you’ve lined up your topics, it’s time to start planning and writing the content. Here are a couple of tips to keep in mind while developing content: 

Use visual aids (screenshots/ GIFs/ videos)

Visual aids alone can improve learning by 34.3%4. And the more interactive an exercise is, the more it helps with retention and understanding. Creating and managing a knowledge base using video is something a modern-day support strategy must include. 

For those reasons, it’s always good to include more than just text in all of your knowledge base articles. Experiment with video tutorials, GIFs, pictures, and diagrams to give customers a visual of what you’re explaining.

Try apps like Skitch or Preview to add additional instructions to your images or draw attention to specific elements, as Drip does in their knowledge base.

Use custom templates to improve the agent-side workflow

Speed up new article creation with custom templates. This feature is available in most knowledge base software and allows you to:

  • Improve consistency by saving and reusing specific formats of content.
  • Speed up article production by filling in the basics.
  • Ensure easy navigation by adding a Table of Contents, and including links, and other elements.

Step 4: Structure your knowledge base

If you don’t structure your knowledge base documentation, your customers won’t be able to find what they need quickly (or at all). Most knowledge bases are structured with a basic home page for all of their support-based articles.

It’s also a common practice to include the most popular knowledge base articles on the home page. This example of Evernote’s knowledge base homepage demonstrates that clearly:

Kbase Freshdesk-Evernote Help & Learning

Here are four simple steps using which you can categorize your knowledge base the right way:

i) Group articles from the same topic
The first step is to sort articles and group similar topics together. The Freshdesk knowledge base is a good example of this. All of the articles on “Solutions” are grouped into different categories such as ‘’Setting up support channels’’ and ‘‘Bringing in your Customer Base’’, and so on.

knowledge base structuring

Next, sift through the most popular articles in your knowledge base and make them prominent on your homepage for easy access, like Evernote did. The brand also offers a community program where users share tips, tricks, and information about their software.

ii) Add a search bar
The next element that every knowledge base needs is a visible search box.

With a search box, your users will be able to easily access the information they need in seconds instead of sifting through different categories to find the specific article they’re looking for. Add a search bar to the top of your knowledge base like this one from MyEducator.

My educator knowledge base

This functionality turns your knowledge base into a sort of customer support “search engine.” Rather than trying to navigate categories or tags, customers can type in a few keywords to access what they need.

Pro tip: Don’t forget to integrate your knowledge base with any live chat options you might offer, as well. Alternatively, if you don’t offer support on live chat, then you can deploy a help widget, or even a chatbot on your knowledge base. This way, if your customer can’t find what they need in your knowledge base, they can immediately connect with a customer service representative from the same page.

iii) Cross-link relevant articles
One of the easiest ways to make your knowledge base more effective is to cross-link articles that are related. That will enhance overall user experience. This process is pretty straightforward. You don’t need any complex features to interlink other articles within each new one you write.

Here’s how Adobe does it within their knowledge base articles:

Adobe Knowledge Base

You should link to further content for any terms, features, or tools that the customer needs to use to solve an issue.

iv) Tag each article for easy discoverability
To make sure the content is easily searchable, incorporate keywords and tags in your knowledge base articles just like you would in blog posts. You should also adjust your title to reflect problems that customers are likely to search for solutions to.

Step 5: Maintain your knowledge base

A knowledge base is never finished. Content management should be done on a continuous basis to keep the information up to date.

Update articles whenever necessary

It can be easy to assume that once you’ve created knowledge base articles about your product or service, you won’t need to update them for a long time. However, the truth is that a knowledge base needs to be continually reviewed and updated as your company, products, and features change.

If a customer finds the article they need, follows every step, and then finds out that the information is outdated, they won’t be happy. That’s why you need to update your support portal with every new product release, process change, or feature that you introduce.

Track customer feedback and make changes accordingly

Make sure that your knowledge base always reflects common questions and tickets. Do weekly or monthly checks to make sure that you’re covering trending issues.

knowledge base dashboard

The team at Guru says6, “…you need to ensure that your team constantly updates its KB to reflect any new ‘trending’ queries they may be receiving on a weekly/monthly basis.

For example, if you found that you received over 100 queries over the past month about how to renew a contract with your company, you could then compose an all-encompassing blog post or article that clearly highlights how to do this.

That way, when future customers have similar queries, they should be able to proactively find the answer on your website, thus deflecting the need to contact a human agent.”

Related resource: How to optimize your knowledge base

How can AI transform your knowledge base

Artificial intelligence is a complete game-changer for customer service. Implementing a smart “virtual customer assistant” can reduce support calls, emails, and chats by 70%7.

Launching an AI-enabled chatbot can go a long way in improving the self-service experience you deliver too. Let’s explore how the combination of an AI and a knowledge base can help you provide a better customer experience and improve agent productivity.

– Answers customer questions in seconds

Instead of the customer having to search for the answer manually, an AI-powered bot can deliver an accurate response in seconds.

Chatbots remove the need for painstakingly searching the knowledge base for an answer. For example, if a customer is wondering how long it takes to process a refund, it can deliver a clear, single-sentence answer.

Chatbot conversation

You can see how successful your bot is at answering these questions with easy-to-understand analytics.

But that’s not all.

– Helps new support reps offer better support with real-time knowledge base recommendations

Knowledge bases can be hard to navigate for new support reps, and it can slow down support ticket resolutions.

Imagine a brand new technical support rep trying to navigate the knowledge base to figure out complex technical issues. Even “regular” support involves some rare and complex requests, like how to process a damaged item.

Smart solution article recommendations for agents

Imagine if every new support agent had to confirm these kinds of requests with senior staff. It would slow every ticket down considerably.

Plus, if there’s no support system in place, it’s easy for new reps to make mistakes. That can have grave consequences (32%7 of customers will stop being your customers after just one bad experience). With intelligent recommendations, AI enables your agents to answer quickly and correctly to earn lasting customer loyalty. 

– Improves key customer service metrics

In our customer happiness benchmark report 2019, we noticed clear trends between using bots and an improved level of service.

First response times were a lot faster. Companies with bots needed only 13 hours for their first responses. That’s 6 hours less than competitors.

first-response-with-bots

And customers were significantly happier.

csat-with-bots

Companies with bots had, on average, 7% higher CSAT scores than companies without them.

However, you may worry that developing a chatbot on your own will require a significant investment of time and money.

The beauty of it is that you don’t have to. With a no-code chatbot builder, you can design and deploy a chatbot without a million-dollar budget or AI team.

An AI that’s already integrated with your knowledge base and helpdesk

You don’t always need to develop an AI or set up custom integrations from scratch to get these benefits. Freddy AI for CX is a mix of an AI-powered customer-facing chatbot and a virtual assistant for your reps that can be deployed in no time. Freddy AI seamlessly integrates with your helpdesk and improves customer satisfaction and agent experience by:

  • Answering questions based on knowledge base data and following up with relevant messages or questions after analyzing the intent of the query.
  • Providing instant resolutions to complex issues without requiring agents to step in.
  • Enabling agents to solve tickets a lot faster and more consistently (Assist Bot).
  • Increasing agent productivity by automating backend support processes.

Build a knowedge base effortlessly with Freshdesk

If you want to take your customer support to the next level, an effective knowledge base is an absolute must. We’ve already established that building a kickass knowledge base isn’t hard. Get started today to save your team from the growing pile of support tickets they deal with every day and to give your customers the peace of mind that comes with self-service support.  

If you’re looking for affordable and extensive knowledge base software, give Freshdesk a chance. It’s free for unlimited articles and agents.

Sources:
1 – https://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/2018StateofGlobalCustomerServiceReport.pdf
2 – https://www.toistersolutions.com/blog/how-quickly-should-you-respond-to-email
3 – https://supportdriven.com/2015/09/01/advice-from-the-future/amp/
4 – https://smleo.com/2020/02/05/the-effect-of-visual-support-on-learning-a-psychology-case-study/
5 – https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-19-gartner-says-25-percent-of-customer-service-operations-will-use-virtual-customer-assistants-by-2020
6 – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/knowledge-base-what-why-its-important-you-need-constantly-kotch/
7 – https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-05-28-gartner-says-the-future-of-self-service-is-customer-l
8 – https://www.pwc.com/future-of-cx


Updated on August 24th, 2022.