The Knowledge Base is an indispensable resource at every Help Desk. In it, users can easily find the answers they need. Having a knowledge base helps to:

• Reduce the number of support requests or queries received at the Help Desk.
• Free up time and resources to address more complex problems.
• Organize and categorize content for your customers and users.
• Receive useful feedback from your customers.

In fact, according to a HubSpot study, “more than 69% of consumers prefer to solve problems on their own, and 63% almost always start by searching the company's online resources before going to a support representative.”

Therefore, you should give your customers the opportunity to find solutions to their issues without having to go directly to support.

Let's take a closer look at how this tool improves the performance of your Help Desk.

How does the Knowledge Base improve customer service?

If you implement a Help Desk, it is because you want to enhance your customer service strategy, isn't it? Well, the key is to take advantage of each of its tools.

Believe it or not, there are many businesses that do not use the Help Desk Knowledge Base or do not know how to implement it. That is to say, they do not update it, do not upload content in all formats, etc.

This is a mistake because self-service is one of the most efficient ways to reduce the number of tickets that enter the help desk. In addition, the Knowledge Base is not only for customers, but your agents also benefit from having all the key information in one place.

Let's take a look at 4 ways in which a good Knowledge Base improves your Help Desk performance:

1 – Increase your team's efficiency

Having a well-organized Knowledge Base ensures that your helpdesk staff can easily find answers to common customer questions, without having to waste time searching for information in different sources. This speeds up response time to users and makes it easier for support staff to manage their workload.

2 – Greater consistency in your service

When customers come to the Help Desk for help, they are looking for accurate and reliable answers. Inconsistent answers from different agents can undermine their confidence in your organization's ability to help them.

That's why a Knowledge Base helps ensure that everyone on your team is providing consistent and accurate answers to customers. When you have a centralized knowledge base, you have a reliable source of information that guides agents when responding to customer requests.

3 – Empower your customers

A Knowledge Base can help users find answers to their questions without having to contact support. With this tool, they will have access to a self-service option that can help them solve common problems on their own.

Among the many advantages of self-service, we can highlight that it makes it possible to reduce the number of tickets. Therefore, your support team will have more time to focus on more complex problems.

Finally, the Knowledge Base helps customers feel more confident in using your products or services. When they can quickly search and find useful information on their own, they feel empowered and in control. Ultimately, this leads to a better customer experience.

4 – Facilitates feedback for service improvement

The best Help Desk tools have a feedback mechanism in which your customers let you know their opinion and if they found the content useful or not.

In addition, you can not only receive direct feedback from the customer but also indirect feedback. That is, on the platform you will be able to identify:

• Recurring issues with your product or service.
• The effectiveness of the information shared to solve users' questions.
• Number of people who access the Knowledge Base, but do not find an answer to their question.

With this information, you can develop new strategies to improve your customers' experience.

Finally, we give you some basic tips to have a good Knowledge Base:

5 tips to optimize your Knowledge Base

1 – Lean on pre-existing resources

One of the most worrying things when starting a Knowledge Base is to think that you have to start creating all the content from scratch.

Nothing could be further from the truth! If your company has a website and a blog, you can select the most visited and best-positioned articles to include in the Knowledge Base.

Also, if you have already made tutorials or induction videos for employees on some functionality of a product or service, you can edit them for customers and use them.

2 – Organize the information with a clear hierarchy

It is essential to organize the Knowledge Base using a clear hierarchy with categories and subcategories.

The information must be easily findable for users. In other words, it should be easy and quick to access relevant information.

3 – Keep the information updated

Keeping the Knowledge Base up-to-date helps reduce confusion and ensures that the information remains valuable.

We've all experienced frustration when we've come across outdated information after spending considerable time researching, haven't we? Then strive to periodically review and update the knowledge base to ensure a better user experience.

4 – Gather feedback from customers and team members

There's nothing better than turning to customers and employees for important feedback on what's working and what's not.

You can start a strategy to get feedback through customer and employee surveys. This can be done periodically or quarterly.

Also, remember that it is crucial to maintain open communication with your support team to understand the gaps in your Knowledge Base.

5 – Create content in multiple information formats

It is no secret that everyone interacts with information in different ways. Therefore, it is essential to provide information in multiple formats: text, video, images, and screenshots or dashboards.

Depending on your company's capabilities, you have two options:

• Create each piece of content in all three formats: text, video, and image. Or at least in text and video.
• Choose the format depending on the nature of the question you are trying to answer. Is it a simple answer and is it easy to explain in a short text? Is it a complicated question and a longer explanation is needed? In this option, you should rely more than ever on your team and customer feedback to make improvements.

In short, the Knowledge Base is a key tool in every Help Desk. If you know how to take advantage of it, it can make the difference between a successful customer service strategy and a poor one.

So what are you waiting for, isn't your team tired of constantly having to deal with the same basic support requests day in and day out? Give them the opportunity to grow by focusing on more demanding tasks.

So, if you're ready to embrace the Help Desk with the best self-service functionalities, we can help you find it, contact us.