Nowadays, providing self-service is an integral part of any customer service strategy. And one of its essential components is a comprehensive knowledge base. But how do you get started building one? And how can your startup business effectively run and maintain it? Let’s find out.
How A Knowledge Base Helps Your Business
Considering all the effort needed to set up and run a knowledge base, you might wonder if it is worth all that. However, there are several key benefits that your startup business can gain from having a well-maintained knowledge base.
A Happy Customer Base
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One of the most frustrating things for a customer is searching far and wide for a single piece of information. An up-to-date knowledge base means they can get that information right away. That will result in them being more satisfied with your service.
More Consistent Customer Support
Your knowledge base also plays a significant role in the effectiveness of your overall customer support system. In particular, it can help you deliver 24/7 support. Customers don’t have to wait for your regular business hours to make a call. That is especially helpful if you have an international audience.
Greater Customer Retention’
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Surprisingly, a good knowledge base can also help you retain customers more. This isn’t just about helping them get the information they need now. You can also use it to provide a more proactive type of support, giving them tips and solutions they might need in the future. With that, they will be more convinced to stay with you.
Better Employee Engagement
Your knowledge base can also help the business internally. One struggle that agents can have is finding the right solution for support requests they are handling. The knowledge base will serve as a repository they can use to search for answers quickly. That helps shorten support engagements while ensuring they resolve the issue effectively.
Training Aid And Knowledge Preservation
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Finally, the knowledge base is an indispensable tool for training your team. They can access the content at their leisure and learn at their own pace. On the other hand, you can use it to preserve all the know-how that employees who are leaving possess. This makes it easier for them to pass it down to the new team replacing them.
Building Your Startup Business Knowledge Base
When building your startup business knowledge base, you will wonder where to start. The first thing you need to do here is decide which types of knowledge bases to create. Emphasis on the word “types.” This is because each type serves a different purpose and audience. The basic types include:
- An external knowledge base: This one is publicly available for customers, and they can use it to research for answers.
- Internal knowledge base: Your support team might also have its own knowledge base consisting of internal information and solutions.
- Hosted knowledge base: You might also want to combine internal and external information into one knowledge base. It is organized so that each group can access their part of the repository independently.
- Open-source knowledge base: This knowledge base is open to the public, not just to access information, but also to add their own. Collaborative projects are the ones that most often use this type.
Note that you can have multiple knowledge bases for different products. You can link these together to create an information network all stakeholders in the startup business can use.
The Core Elements Your Startup Business Knowledge Base Needs
Much like the types, your knowledge base can have various content. However, it should have three core elements. These elements serve as a backbone from where you can further develop the knowledge base structure.
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FAQ Section
The Frequently Asked Questions section serves as the entryway to your knowledge base. As the name says, it answers all of the basic questions. Thus, all the important topics should already be accessible right on the front page. From there, you can lead users to more advanced questions.
Search Function
Your knowledge base search function should be straightforward to use. Aside from the obligatory search bar, you might also want to include a list of advanced topics. You should also provide a quick access directory for all the relevant articles.
Contact Support Option
While they are primarily there for self-service, users might still want to connect with your support team from within the knowledge base. Incorporate the links within the articles to make it easier for users to jump to. But you would still want to have a dedicated contact support panel elsewhere for convenience.
Developing Your Startup Business Knowledge Base Articles
Consistency is vital when running your startup business knowledge base. You want customers to quickly get the information out of the articles. This is where having a specific format helps greatly.
One basic template you can use is this.
- Problem
- Process/solution
- Results
- Related resources
Using this template, you can guide readers better. Note that depending on the type of content you have, the article might break from this format from time to time. Nevertheless, you should ensure that all of the important information is right there at the beginning of the articles.
Helping Your Startup Business Maintain Its Knowledge BAse
Once you have built your knowledge base and uploaded the articles you have written, it pretty much works by itself. But it will still require maintenance. In particular, you need to make sure that everything is up to date. You also need to make sure that all of the different sections are functioning.
Virtua Solutions can help you here through our Customer Success service. For starters, we can handle the updating of articles and other content based on new product information. This is vital, especially if you are launching new products. You want the relevant info to be ready in time for your product is out.
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We can also analyze the knowledge base’s effectiveness for you. Our team will be the one tracking the engagement rate for your content. We can then infer what types of posts work best for providing solutions.
From there, we work with you to improve your knowledge base content. Our team relies on years of experience handling knowledge bases for different industries. With that, we can continuously refine your content to meet changing user needs.
It is worth noting that running and maintaining a knowledge base is long-term work. Virtua Solutions is committed to being your partner for the work. Contact us today and get ready to make your startup business more helpful to your customers.