Improving Search Techniques on Your Knowledgebase
Having difficulty finding what you want in the Parature Knowledgebase? The following tips are meant to provide enhanced techniques to improve search results. Also provided, are a few ideas on how to leverage your own knowledgebase to improve the satisfaction of your end users.
Searching the Parature Knowledgebase™
Search keywords rather than entire phrases. Let’s say you are looking for a video tutorial on how to submit a ticket. Your first thought may be to search “video tutorial how to submit a ticket” as your phrase, but this may not render the desired results because there are so many combined words that the search engine is looking for. Begin with something simpler like “submit a ticket” or “video submit ticket”. This kind of search may return more than one result, but it should be easier to find the article you are looking for.
Always sign into the portal before you search. When you are signed into the portal, your Service Level Agreement is recognized by the Parature system, which allows you more knowledgebase articles than the default screen. If you are searching the knowledgebase on the portal without being signed in, a search may render fewer results.
Utilize Parature Advanced Search. Advanced search allows you to customize your search results, finding specific phrases or words. If you happen to know the ID of the article you are looking for, you can type it in here as well.
Be careful with abbreviations. Often, terms like “Knowledgebase” and “Service Level Agreement” are abbreviated to “KB” and “SLA.” When you are performing a search, always spell out the entire term first, as the search may not catch the abbreviations if there are none in the article.
Leveraging your Knowledgebase for Customer Search
Use tag words. Feel free to add tag words at the end of your knowledgebase articles. Adding tag words will allow for a search to grab any of the tag words you choose, which will help in pulling more articles. You could specify these by adding a line at the end of your article titled “Tag:”, and then adding your tag words after the colon.
Get specific with your article questions. Try not to detail your questions too much. Making the question long and complicated will make it more difficult for your customer to find it. Article Question construction is important because customers who cannot find their answer are more likely to give up. By optimizing your knowledgebase questions to mirror the experience of your customers, you can increase knowledgebase satisfaction.
Don’t abbreviate or confuse with complicated terminology. Always spell out your terms. Use terms as your customers know and understand them, not as inter-office jargon. It makes the experience of looking for an article that much easier.
Please share your best practices thoughts and tips with our Parature community.
