5 Topmost Knowledge Base System Benefits And Building Steps

A knowledge base help businesses become more efficient, organized, creative, and insightful. They are a digital library of key information that can be used by employees for quick reference or by customers for easy access to helpful resources. With the advance in technology over recent years, the systems have significantly evolved in terms of features and capabilities.

Nowadays, with just a few clicks, customers and/or users can find answers to their queries without a hitch. And, since 92% of customers say that they would use a knowledge base, it’s only the right thing to grant them a full library of information that they can access at their convenience. As technology evolves, knowledge will exist in more and more disparate places.

Information gets stuck in emails, social media interactions, forum discussions, comments, tickets, and even in the brains of individual service desk agents. If you don’t already have one, it’s time to aggregate your knowledge in a single repository or system. In today’s connected world, people expect and demand easy access to accurate information.

And to do that, they often aren’t willing to get on a phone call. Or send an email. Or file a service ticket. They want the answer they need immediately. Which is why you need a rich, deep knowledge base. Given that they are of incredible importance, let’s take a look at the benefits you can enjoy by using a comprehensive knowledge base.

Understanding The Knowledge Base Purpose For All Web-Based Businesses

In this ever-changing business landscape, a knowledge base is essential to staying competitive in 2023 and beyond. Using a tool like a knowledge base allows businesses to store, organize and retrieve crucial information much faster. For instance, when a customer is researching how a product works, they can consult it and gain answers to their questions in a flash.

Forthwith, investing in a knowledge base software not only reduces labor costs but also increases team collaboration leading to improved customer satisfaction while promoting business growth along the way. Organizations use knowledge bases for a lot of reasons. And they’re finding more uses virtually every day, but a knowledge base depends on your needs.

Of course, such as in terms of what your organization does and who it serves. But, there are a few ways that a great knowledge base system is proving to be invaluable to various teams as well as the business(es) they operate on.

Consider the following:

IT: It simplifies everything from troubleshooting to training/onboarding and general how-to and support questions
HR: Again, great for everything from training/onboarding to distributing company policies and pay schedules
Legal: Helps with contract and other approval processes, policies, trademarks, and registrations

Have you ever been frustrated trying to find company information when working on a project, only to spend more time asking coworkers questions or searching for information than actually working on the project itself? Or worse, you had to spend extra time recreating the information? That’s what happens when you don’t have the right knowledge base management system.

Obviously, for most businesses, this unintentional information gatekeeping creates production bottlenecks that waste time and effort. However, in the age of remote work and distributed workforces, knowledge management becomes even more critical — teams must be able to access information from anywhere and at any time. And, so are the target customers.

How Using A Knowledge Base Benefits Businesses And Customers

At its most basic, a knowledge base is an information repository that acts as a reference point for customers and employees alike. When utilized correctly, it can provide an efficient way to streamline customer service, save money on costly employee training programs and increase customer satisfaction. Additionally, these tools help to build trust between customers.

As well as the business, while allowing the latter to create transparency in their dealings. This allows customers to make informed purchasing decisions while staying up-to-date with new products or services. Another benefit of making a knowledge base is discoverability. For one thing, a knowledge base gives your business a huge boost in SEO to rank well on SERPs.

You can rank for search terms like questions related to your product using your knowledge base articles as well. In a nutshell, these tools are of immense help when it comes to creating an online knowledge base, documentation, manuals, help sites, FAQs, and more. Plus all management aspects like content authoring and designing to customizing and finally publishing it.

By taking advantage of this increasingly popular asset, businesses get to save time and money while ensuring their customers’ needs are met quickly, efficiently, and consistently, resulting in long-lasting relationships built on mutual trust.

1. An increase in efficiency and productivity

With the right knowledge base system, your business can become a powerhouse when it comes to customer service-related tasks. A good knowledge base can provide answers to common questions, troubleshooting tips, step-by-step guides, and much more. Customers can more easily find answers to their questions without having to reach out to support, resulting in faster resolutions and a reduction in response times.

2. First contact higher resolution rates

With a good knowledge base, there’s no need to put customers on hold, transfer them between agents, or call them back later. Answers are right at customers’ fingertips. And when they have additional questions, others in the community are right there to help. It’s an easy-to-use, self-serve way to resolve issues fast.

3. Offers a competitive advantage

By using a knowledge base to capture and share knowledge, organizations can gain a competitive advantage in their industry. This can help them innovate more quickly, respond to market changes more effectively, and make better strategic decisions. With a quality Knowledge Base in place, there is also more consistent service. Everybody in your organization will reference the same playbook. Whether you’re in sales, IT, HR, or any other department, you’ll see the same information. This reduces confusion and enables teams to operate more consistently.

4. Lower training costs

A knowledge base, supported by a strong knowledge management program, ensures new hires are trained with the latest information and get consistent guidance. That translates to a better work environment and lower costs. Once you put a good knowledge base in place, backed by a plan for knowledge management, customers and employees find answers themselves. So you can focus on the important aspects of your job, rather than answering everyone’s questions. If you aren’t already convinced of its value, a knowledge base can help you even in much more ways than you can ever think of.

Consider the following:

Organize everything people need to know in one place
Standardize answers
Make your company look smart, up-to-date, and professional
Offer a feedback loop and the opportunity to engage with stakeholders

5. Improved quality control and consistency

Knowledge bases can help improve quality control by providing employees with access to standard operating procedures, quality guidelines, and best practices. This can help ensure that each employee follows the same procedures and guidelines, reducing the chances of error and increasing efficiency.

The Topmost Tips To Implement Knowledge Base System For Your Company

Creating a knowledge base system may be a daunting task, but with just a few simple steps, you can make sure the process runs smoothly and efficiently. First, analyze your organization’s existing methods of document storage and retrieval. Try to identify any gaps or inconsistencies that may pose an obstacle to creating a comprehensive knowledge base system first.

Next, establish concrete goals and objectives while keeping in mind that the desired outcome is an organized system where data is easily accessible, and employees know exactly where to find relevant information. It’s important to know what kind of features to include in your knowledge base to make it more effective. Start by making sure it supports key features.

1. A responsive search functionality

One of the main features of an effective knowledge base is the search box. Users need to be able to search for articles and guides on your knowledge base to find solutions to their problems. As a result, a properly functioning search system provides is a must-have. Whilst, keeping in mind, behind every great experience is a great workflow. As the foundation for all digital workflows, your system should be able to connect teams, people, functions, and systems across your organization.

2. Simple to use backend dashboard

When building a knowledge base you should always put users first. But, you shouldn’t disregard the importance of your own experience. You’ll be handling hundreds of articles, guides, tutorials, questions, and much more using the knowledge base system. Being able to easily create all these types of content using a simple and easy-to-use back-end system will go a long way to serving your customers better. What’s more, as you unleash the power of IT, you can easily and quickly transform your business with digital IT workflows. Modernize your operations to optimize productivity, cost, and resilience with a single platform for IT.

3. Easily manageable category options

With lots of knowledge articles in one database, you could easily get lost while updating and adding new content. A simple archive and categorization system helps keep the entire knowledge base organized. As well as make it easier to browse. By deploying a great Knowledge Base Software System for your business, you can fully maximize your investment. Additionally, you’ll also be able to realize value faster with experts on demand, premium support, and preventive tools to guide your digital transformation.

4. Unlimited workplace file attachments

They say that digital efficiency brings bread to the world. Sometimes when sharing knowledge through an article you need to include additional downloadable content in your blog posts, guides, and other content materials — like PDF files, templates, video files, etc. After all, if your knowledge base system supports file attachments, you can attach these additional files directly to the articles. At the end of the day, make sure that you have a complete platform that allows your company to digitize your customer management and workflows. It should include solutions to cover IT, Employee, customer workflows, and the like.

5. Customer feedback, analytics & reports

A great way to improve your knowledge base is to get feedback from users. A simple thumbs-up system is more than enough to learn if an article in your knowledge base was helpful to users or not. With analytics, you can learn which knowledge-based posts perform better and which create more bounces. This will allow you to keep improving your knowledge base. And, more so, create more helpful guides. By incorporating these features, you can ensure that your knowledge base is user-friendly, promotes customer satisfaction, and maintains web accessibility for all users.

The Topmost Recommended Knowledge Base Software Tools To Utilize

Eventually, once you have identified the goals of the knowledge base system, it’s time to select the right software or platform that fits your needs and goals. Moreover, implementing this type of online platform is your best choice if you want to enjoy the benefits of using a knowledge base. But, it should be much more than just a knowledge base software.

Meaning, that it should include an application store with integrations made specifically for creating advanced knowledge databases. When it comes to creating knowledge bases, focus on a platform that uses an old-school design, but then incorporates modern tools. It must be familiar and user-friendly with useful functions for organizing the knowledge database.

Always remember, that a great knowledge-base software tool will offer you/your business a super easy-to-use admin interface to create knowledge-base articles with ease. Go ahead and populate your help website with answers to common questions and other helpful information. Bearing in mind, the unique hosted knowledge base software takes care of the rest.

But, it’s not right without a lightning-fast search box that works like magic to find relevant helpful articles for your users. In addition to an array of customizable features to make your support website feel like your own. Make sure you can first try to use the custom domain option (even on the free plan!), so your site can live at help.yourdomain.com.

Not to mention, a suitable Knowledge Base System should also offer you a unique way to upload your logo, customize the layout & style with Custom HTML/CSS to match your company’s brand, and even change any text to say whatever you’d like. Or rather, translate into multiple languages so that you can reach out to them — as far much wider target audience as possible.

The topmost tools:

It’s, important to realize, that some of the above tools will offer you beautiful, mobile-friendly, and searchable features so your customers can find answers fast. A smart contact form that auto-suggests articles as someone types their message. Plus, your website users get their questions answered faster, and support agents save time.

Challenges To Consider When Using Your Own Business System

Knowledge base systems offer an optimal way to preserve, organize and distribute information within an organization. However, these systems require various changes and considerations to maximize effectiveness. Implementing a knowledge base system may be costly in terms of both time and money, especially if the content has to be imported from other sources.

Additionally, organizations must ensure their content is formatted correctly for the system and that it considers the needs of their users. Privacy policies should also be considered when dealing with sensitive information. Ultimately, managing this type of system can prove difficult and requires continued maintenance to ensure it remains up-to-date.

Therefore, they should take all of these challenges into account before implementing a knowledge base system to maximize effectiveness. Look for a system that’s easy to use and that’s important for you if you are no technical guru. Make sure that you’ll also be able to have an FAQ page set up in a matter of minutes because of the software’s ease of use.

It should also produce a very nice-looking product for the end user and be reasonably priced. In addition, make sure that you also have site-level and article-level privacy settings. So that you can set it up at your convenience…

The Simple Steps To Build Your Very Own Business User Knowledge Base

In most cases, knowledge base systems are a great solution to this decades-old problem — they often provide a convenient self-help service to users. More importantly, they help save businesses lots of resources otherwise spent answering common user questions. Furthermore, 51% of customers prefer to support through an online knowledge base.” – Social Media Today.

Usually, when you come up with a question related to a product or can’t figure out how to perform a task, the first thing you do is contact the support team. This involves waiting hours until you receive a reply to your email. Or rather, waiting on hold on the phone, jumping from one support representative to the next. A great customer portal is the only way out here!

So that you can empower your customers to gain ownership over their experience with a secure customer portal. Not forgetting, that having your very own portal keeps ticket conversations going between customers and reps, so issues are resolved faster. Another aspect to consider is that you can have some avenues of VoIP calling at your disposal.

Similarly, you can call your customers directly from the knowledge base system platform with the help of in-built VoIP software. In the end, you can get crystal-clear call quality and take advantage of features like call logging and analytics. Beyond implementing a strong knowledge management system, below are some tips on building and maintaining a knowledge base.

1. Determine that you need one

Start by asking yourself how much time you’d save if employees didn’t have to answer the same questions over and over. Then look at your customer satisfaction and productivity goals; if your organization could do better, a knowledge base is a great place to start. Your main goal is to help customers help themselves, and reduce your number of support requests. Meaning, that this is the only way to convert frequently asked questions (FAQs) into a searchable library of help articles, videos, and documentation.

2. Get your content together

This is no easy task — the content is everywhere. Collect FAQs (and answers) from any department that provides service. And we mean any department, like the guys who build trade shows, the people in IT, HR. Teams across the organization all can and should contribute to your knowledge base. And they should be part of the knowledge management process that maintains it.

3. Customize pages and stay consistent

Create a style guide, so that all of the information you pour into your knowledge base looks and sounds the same. This covers the entire visual presentation including font, type size, colors, and even images. Perse, this is the only way to empower your customers to gain ownership over their experience with a secure customer portal. Your portal keeps ticket conversations going between customers and reps, so issues are resolved faster.

4. Find your voice and stick with it

Figure out how your company or organization talks. Whether you’re polished or have kind of a laid-back vibe, use that in the presentation of your knowledge base. The people in marketing can help. But, as you try to stick with your voice, you must also try to help your customers on your website in real-time. Automatically, make sure that the system you choose can allow you to route users to the right people on your services team, and build better relationships through contextual conversations.

5. Get the right tools to manage it

Make sure you have the right tools for hosting and managing your knowledge base. Everything from the frequency of content changes to how customers typically interact with your information should be part of your decision. A great knowledge base system should offer you a way to receive inbound calls from your customers and track them in the proprietor platform. So that you can reach a resolution with speed and authenticity with all the information you need in one place.

6. Make it easy and keep it that way

Once it’s up and running, remember that your knowledge base is a self-serve operation. You’ll need to make sure your knowledge base is easy to navigate. And easy to use. Allow contributors to use speed templates to upload data. Use labels and search terms to categorize information and make articles easier to find. Organize the content to fit your organization and then be careful to maintain it. What about omnichannel messaging? Well, you can try to provide a superior customer experience regardless of the channel. Suffice it to say, you can also meet your customers wherever they are always — by accessing multiple channels in the inbox and seamlessly switching between them.

7. Keep it relevant and up to date

This is where the creation of your knowledge base flows into the ongoing task of knowledge management. Implement a system of analytics, so you understand how people are using your content. Allow users to leave feedback and ratings. Make sure your management and marketing people have a say in managing the knowledge base. Avoid delays and bottlenecks by identifying multiple people to approve content. Set up gatekeepers, then empower them to act when information needs to be dropped, added, or changed.

What About SaaS, Cloud, & WordPress Systems?

Moving on, after going through the list of knowledge base software, you might be wondering what are the differences between SaaS, Cloud, & WordPress system tools. Well, our top picks feature a variety of knowledge-base software. For your information, two of the main competitors on the list are web-based knowledge-base software and self-hosted knowledge-base apps.

On one hand, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are knowledge base services and platforms that allow you to manage your database online through their own website — they often fall into the category of web-based application platforms. Usually, the self-hosted category includes Content Management System (CMS) Software such as WordPress that you set up yourself.

While, on the other hand, in addition to the management differences, another key difference between these two systems is pricing. Whereby, self-hosted WordPress-powered systems are much cheaper and more flexible than cloud-based apps and SaaS platforms. Still, it comes at the cost of convenience. When using SaaS, you can call support to fix any key issues.

Another important difference is the third-party app integrations. Oftentimes, with third-party application integrations, you can bring more unique features to your knowledge base to make it more useful to both you and your customers. Keep in mind, that not all knowledge base systems will support the most commonly predefined application tools and solution services.

A few great third-party apps to integrate:

Zapier: It’s like a hub of all the apps you can ever think of. It allows you to connect your website with more than 1500 popular services. With this integration, you’ll be able to connect all the other apps with ease plus get WordPress support.
Salesforce: With Salesforce integration you’ll be able to connect your knowledge base system with your customer support and marketing systems.
WooCommerce: WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. With this integration, you’ll be able to easily sell products directly through your knowledge base website.
Yoast SEO: Yoast is another useful WordPress plugin that will help optimize your knowledge base articles to rank well on search engines.

Moving on, now that you have a wider understanding of knowledge base software, you might be wondering which option is best for your business. If you have a new or small business, we’d recommend going with WordPress to build your knowledge base. With the flexibility it provides, you’ll be able to easily extend your knowledge base further as you grow your business.

Also, you can save a huge chunk of your budget as well. However, if you have an enterprise-level business, you should consider investing in software like Helpjuice or ZenDesk to be precise. Eventually, which includes easier management and advanced features required for running knowledge bases to serve thousands of customers and facilitate large teams.

The Bottom Line:

Notsbly, back in the old days and before the Internet, manufacturers used to ship products with a giant manual. It’s like a book with hundreds of pages that include instructions about how to use the product. Of course, no one bothers to read them anyway. Today, we have knowledge base systems. Unlike those old bulky manuals, it’s much more innovative.

Whereby, a knowledge base system provides users a place to find answers to questions and guides related to a product, all by themselves. Thus, it’s a valuable asset for any business. By utilizing this tool, businesses can increase efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction while reducing costs. With the proper implementation and maintenance, it offers even more power.

Resource Reference: Frequently Asked Questions | How FAQs Benefit A Website Business

For one thing, a knowledge base can provide a competitive advantage in the industry. Overall, the benefits of using a comprehensive knowledge base system make it a worthy investment for businesses looking to stay competitive in the ever-changing landscape of modern business. However, it is essential to consider the challenges of implementing and managing it.

Such as content formatting and privacy policies. Still, there are also private knowledge bases for some notable business entities. These are collections of documents you create as a resource for your teams. For example, you can create a private knowledge base for your customer support team to help them find answers to common questions much faster.