Do your customers keep asking you the same questions about your product or service? Then it is time to develop a knowledge base. This is a place where you will answer frequently asked questions and give advice on how to use your product.
Before we look at the steps to creating a knowledge base, let’s review:
What a knowledge base is?
A knowledge base can be internal or external. For this article we will look at developing a customer-focused knowledge base. According to Hubspot, this is a self-serving customer service library. It is designed to lower the amount of emails and calls your customer service agents receive and give your customer service agents useful documentation to send to your customer. Here are some steps to creating an external knowledge base.
STEP 1: What should you include in your knowledge base?
This is where it is imperative to know your client. It is important to know what their pain points might be. You could also contact your marketing team and ask for them to give you the buyer personas they may have come up with. Though it is sometimes hard to get into the minds of your buyers, you could send out a survey asking your customers which areas of your service or product they struggle to use. You could also go through your customer service job list and see which questions are being asked on a regular basis. When you have a list of questions and pain points then you can move to step two.
STEP 2: How do you create the content for your knowledge base?
When you have a list of questions and pain points you need to divide them up into categories. These categories can be “getting started”, “how-to” or “FAQs” when you have created your categories then you can put the questions or pain points under the specific categories. Now you need to create the content, it is important to remember that people process content differently and some like to see videos while others prefer text. It is good to have a mixture of text and video on your knowledge base. You could use video for concepts which need intricate explanations for processes. It is also important that all the content you create adheres to your in-house style guide.
STEP 3: Where should you put your knowledge base?
As the knowledge base is used to make your customer’s experience better, it should be placed where it is easy to find. You should also ensure that the search bar is visible and that the categories on your knowledge base are easy to understand. Furthermore, you can list the most commonly read articles on the home page of the knowledge base. It is also important to include the potential word searches your customers will do in the headings of your article.
By following these three steps you will be well on your way to improving your customer’s experience.
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