6 Keys to a Customer Service Knowledge Base Your Customers Will Use

⏱ Reading Time: 6 minutes

Customer service is a crucial segment of any business. People using your services might come across some issues, in which case customer service can be of huge help. Most people want their problems solved immediately. If it takes more than one week to resolve a situation, they are likely to stop using your products. 

Not everyone is comfortable with calling your customer service. Some prefer sending emails while others want to try and find a solution themselves. All these different approaches might make your job more difficult. You need to mobilize resources to rapidly address all complaints and questions. This is a good reason to build a customer service knowledge base your customers can use before attempting to call or send emails. 

🚀Read Customer Service: A Guide for Successful Business Growth🚀

A customer service knowledge base is an online collection of short support articles. They’re meant to contain basic information about your products and services. They also offer instructions and guidelines your customers can apply to solve their problems. According to an essay writing service, a good customer service knowledge base reduces the stress of your customer service team and helps clients solve problems independently. 

Picture 1. Why is it good to have a knowledge base?

6 Key Elements Your Customer Service Knowledge Base Must Have

Here are 6 key elements your customer service knowledge base should have in order for your customers to actually use it. 

1. Make It Understandable

Cynthia Zuchetti from write my thesis claims that too many jargon words will make your texts hard to understand. Keep in mind that not everyone has domain-specific knowledge, so the articles need to be readable and understandable.  

Your customers should be able to find short and simple answers to frequent questions. And this is why you need to focus on your written language in order to create comprehensive texts. You can listen to support conversations or review chat transcripts to see how your customers communicate. The answers need to be formulated using terms they can understand. 

You also need to evaluate if your articles are helpful and comprehensive. For example, a great idea would be to add article ratings and ask your customers for feedback. You can ask them to think about readability and comprehensiveness and rate the articles on a five-point scale. You can even add emoji for each number to make the rating easier. Or, you can ask simple questions like “Was this article helpful?” or “Was this article easy to read?”. 

Read Emojis in Business Communication.

2. Make It Intuitive 

Unless your customer service knowledge base is easy to use, people will avoid using it. This will inevitably increase the workload of your customer service team. So many companies fail to create a simple navigation design that allows everyone, regardless of their technical abilities, to access and use it. 

Keep in mind that people want quick access to information, so make your knowledge base easy to navigate. For example, a search bar for your knowledge database is an absolute must. If you use the words customers actually use, they will easily find the articles they need. You can also add hashtags to each article and enable the search function to include hashtags. For example, in an article about how to recover your password, you can add hashtags like #passwordrecovery. 

Picture 2. Add hashtags

3. Organize the Information

Besides making your articles simple and readable, you can organize them in groups and sub-groups to make them easier to find. Also, don’t forget to name them accordingly, to make them even more searchable. 

Depending on the type of support and information you provide, you can organize your support articles based on type of activity. For example, if users want to know how to set up their account, place the support article in a “How to” group. Alternatively, you can organize it depending on the user’s experience level. Some of your products may require a more advanced set of skills in order to set them up. Therefore, you can provide information and support for beginner vs. advanced users. 

Templates can also help you organize articles, so people will know where to look for the information they need. This also helps you ensure consistency and uniformity across your knowledge base. You can also enable a local navigation option for your menu that allows customers to explore specific sections of your database. This will allow them to explore similar topics or topics related to their original query.  

Read Importance Of Knowledge Base.

4. Update and Review It Regulary

Once you’ve built your customer service knowledge base, it is important to update it frequently. This means that the customer service team can add and change information, depending on the issues they encounter and the product changes you make. 

This step is extremely important. Just as you are constantly improving your product and or service, you need to make sure your knowledge base gets proper and timely updates. The last thing you would want is for your customer to find a dead-end hyperlink or a piece of information that is no longer true. Make it a habit – whenever you do a product update, there has to be a team member who will be updating and checking your knowledge base.

5. Add Visual Elements

Some information can be easily explained by video tutorials or screenshots. Don’t create huge walls of text to explain how a product or service works, unless absolutely necessary. Instead, add visual elements to your guidelines and articles, like infographics, screenshots, video tutorials, and GIFs. You can also color code your articles to group them together and make them easier to search. 

This will help your customers understand the information through a practical example  you provide. Keep in mind that huge texts may force customers to seek answers elsewhere, most likely by contacting your customer service team. 

Picture 3. Visual elements

6. Make It Accessible

Most companies fail to make the knowledge base accessible to everyone by insisting on a mandatory log-in.  Although all your customers have subscriptions and are required to have an account to use your website, not everyone will  memorize their credentials . 

Many people do not want to waste time logging in to access a customer service knowledge base. Make it accessible to everyone and always remember that people want quick access to information. Anything interrupting their easy access will  make them give up entirely.

Check out Paldesk knowledge base!

Picture 4. Paldesk knowledge base example

Customer Service Knowledge Base Wrap Up

People need information quickly, so make your articles easy to read and understand. Avoid using industry jargon and add visual elements to make the instructions easier to understand. Organize the information into  groups and keep your customer service knowledge base updated. 

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Becky Holton is a journalist and a blogger at custom essay writing service. She is interested in education technologies, UK essay help and is always ready to support informative speaking at research paper writing service. Follow her on Twitter.