Customer experience is one of the most defining qualities of almost every business in today’s competitive business environment. According to research, 90 percent of consumers in the United States use customer service as a crucial factor when deciding whether or not to buy a product or service from a company.
If you can’t meet your customers’ expectations and ensure their complete satisfaction, they will move on to find a brand who will. That said, you probably already know that a customer’s interaction and experience with your brand doesn’t stop after they purchase your product or service. From the moment potential customers visit your website or landing page, and long after you deliver their order, you need to make sure you’re available.
It’s important that you maintain the business relationship with your customer by communicating with them on a regular basis, even after the point of sale. And there’s no better way to do this than by ensuring your customers have easy access to valuable and accurate information about your product or service for their basic customer support issues.
Building and maintaining a robust knowledge base can help you stay ahead of your customer’s issues, worries, and concerns about your products. And as a result, you provide them with high-quality post-sale customer service and support.
What is a Knowledge Base?
Simply put, a knowledge base is a centralized online self-service library that includes information about a topic, department, product, or service. When you give your prospective customers and employees access to a library of information about your brand, products, and services, you encourage them to not only help themselves but also interact with your brand in the best way possible.
A customer service knowledge base includes essentially anything that can help your clients and customers understand your brand and use your services or product. This includes FAQs, white papers, video tutorials, troubleshooting guides, case studies, glossaries, how-to-articles, user forums, etc. Here are some of the reasons why it’s crucial for your business to have a robust knowledge base:
- Deliver more consistent customer support. The fact that a knowledge base is available 24/7 means that your customers can easily and quickly access information about your product using any device, from any location, when they need it.
- Manage your customer’s issues in a proactive manner. If you’re looking to earn positive reviews and loyalty from your customers, you can’t afford to be reactive with your customer service. A knowledge base allows you to be proactive with your customers’ needs.
- Increase customer retention. A knowledge base creates a positive customer experience as your customers are able to solve their problems with ease. And when they are happy and satisfied, retention rates increase. That means consistent sales and more revenue for your business.
Take a look at these knowledge base examples for some inspiration. Here are five tips to help you build and implement an effective knowledge base:
1) Determine the Purpose of Your Knowledge Base
The first thing you need to do is to list the specific goals you want your knowledge base to achieve. Remember, you can’t create a customer service knowledge base because everyone else in your industry has one or just for the sake of having it. You must not only determine its purpose but also define it to your prospects and clients, so they can have the right expectations from the onset.
Your customer service knowledge base will serve the purpose you want it to serve. The goal is to make sure it provides value and solutions to your customers’ problems. Here are some of the goals you may want to achieve with your knowledge base:
- Provide valuable information on your brand, products, and services
- Provide product and service support for basic customer problems and issues
- Provide information on product promotions, discounts, and pricing plans
- Offer information on new product launches, company events, and activities
Whatever the purpose, you want to make sure your knowledge base is accurate, well-written, accessible, searchable, and comprehensive. It should have the right content that can add value to your customers and help them effectively address their concerns, problems, and needs autonomously.
2) Organize and Structure Your Content
Once you have captured the right data and information for your knowledge base, it’s important that you organize and structure it well. First, you need to ensure all of your content is consistent with your brand voice, personality, design, and colors. This will provide a disjointed and consistently seamless experience for prospective clients seeking information about your products or services.
Secondly, you should consider creating a template of the structure or format that all of your articles in the knowledge base should follow. The goal is to maintain a very clear and consistent communication style throughout the different types of content in your knowledge base.
Thirdly, you need to include a predictive search bar on the home page so it’s easier for your customers to search and find the exact information they need. It’s also important that you group your content in categories and subcategories in a manner that makes it easier and useful for your customers to find what they may need.
3) Use Video in Your Knowledge Base
There’s no better way to enrich your knowledge base, connect more with your prospects, and keep your customers fully engaged than using instructional videos to help your customers understand how to use your products or services. Use a free screen recorder to enhance your knowledge base with video-rich instruction.
As you probably already know, video content is the most preferred type of content by consumers today. A recent study found that 72% of consumers would rather learn about a product or service by watching a video than by reading blocks of text about it.
Using video in your knowledge base will allow you to not only reach a wider audience but also show and demonstrate to your customers the actions they can take to be successful. Keep in mind that your clients want to self-serve or rather help themselves, and video is a highly effective type of content to do so.
4) Improve Your Content Through Customer Feedback
As a business owner, you know that the customer is the king. It’s not enough to just create valuable guides and articles for your knowledge base. You need to check and determine how useful and helpful your content is and there’s only one way to find out- through customer feedback.
One of the things you can do to capture feedback from your audience is to include a feature that allows a customer to either upvote or downvote based on whether they found the solution or answer they were looking for. You could also have an auto-responder that asks them if the article or solution provided was helpful once a ticket is closed. You can then use the feedback to improve your content accordingly.
5) Keep the Content in Your Knowledge Base Updated at all Times
If there are any changes in your branding, company activities, or product and service offerings, make sure you update your knowledge base so it doesn’t become useless. Remember your customers expect to learn more about your brand and products from your knowledge base and they’ll most certainly notice if you neglect it. And before you know it, they’ll be engaging someone else who can provide them with the answers they need. Take time to create new content for the new products you’re launching and actively update your articles to cover any new product features.
