Knowledge for Your Knowledgebase

Often times, companies fall short of having the appropriate resources for managing their Knowledgebase, such as a Technical Writer or Administrator. Sometimes knowledgebases are even managed by more than one individual. With this mix of resources, it can frequently be difficult to collaborate and maintain a clean and informational knowledgebase. These obstacles shouldn’t deter you from striving for a robust knowledgebase though. Implementing specific practices and procedures can help improve your knowledgebase and maintain its prime condition.

Let’s start with the basics-what are the best steps in reviewing a knowledgebase article and its location? Begin by considering folder structure and layout. What questions do your users ask the most? What items are they most likely to look for when navigating to the knowledgebase? Organize your folders based on the needs of your end user, whether this is structuring them for beginners to experts or starter information to advanced techniques. Start with analyzing how your customers will read the knowledgebase; this will be your most helpful tool in folder layout.

Once you are ready to review an article, you will need to read over it more than one time. Begin by checking to make sure that your article is in the proper folder and doing a grammar and spelling assessment. Then, review your content-does your content answer the question in its entirety? Is your content user-friendly? Does the terminology make sense to your customers? Be careful not to use “office jargon” in your articles, as it may confuse your customers. Lastly, make sure your terms are consistent, meaning that you are not using different terms to refer to the same thing.

Aside from these best practices, the following tips may be helpful in maintaining your knowledgebase:

• Take note of articles that receive the most subscriptions. You should be tracking the amount of subscriptions that each of your articles receives. These articles should be edited to be as close to perfect as you can get them.
• Set expirations on your KB articles. If you open an article, scroll down, and check the “Advanced Options” check box, you will see that you can set an expiration date. If you have a product that changes often and rapidly, you may want to set an expiration date for every three months. If your product changes from time to time but there are often updates, you may want to set an expiration date for every six months. The amount of time you wish to set expiration dates on is really based on the needs of your customers and the changes within your product.
• Pay attention to the amount of views or ratings an article receives. If an article is continuously receiving negative feedback, you should consider updating and cleaning it. Ratings are important to your knowledgebase because without improvement, customers are more likely to submit tickets instead of looking for their answer. Build a knowledgebase that your customers trust. You should also track the amount of views each article collects. Articles that receive the highest amount of views should be reviewed often; they should be in prime condition.
• Review support tickets for new knowledgebase content. By reviewing tickets that are submitted to your support team daily, you may be able to find valuable knowledge to add to your knowledgebase. Support tickets track the issues your customers are having and give you the chance to document the solutions to their issues.
• Consider screenshots in areas where they would be helpful. While screenshots are not necessary for every article, customers often prefer visual learning. Adding screenshots will help them further understand the concept of the article.

Please share your best practices thoughts and tips with our Parature community.

"Best Practices in Customer Service" Webinar Series

Delivered by the industry’s leading minds, this thought leadership series is designed to serve as a valuable resource to provide insight into customer service best practices and industry trends. The webinars in this series are ‘must attend’ events for any organization committed to improving the customer experience. We invite you to register for one or register for all depending on the topics that interest you.

Customer service industry experts, Robert Spector – bestselling author, Rich Gallagher of Point of Contact Group, Paige Newcombe of Coremetrics, John Ragsdale of Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), Dr. Natalie Petouhoff of Forrester Research, Jay Topper of Rosetta Stone, Sahar Hashemi of Coffee Republic, Lorraine Grubbs-West of Lessons in Loyalty and Southwest Airlines, and Lisa Ford – customer service expert will focus on current industry technologies, best practices and trends that are key for organizations to improve their support processes to improve the customer experience.

The Best Practices in Customer Service webinar series:

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence
Date: January 20, 2010 - 2:00pm EST
Presenter: Robert Spector - Bestselling Author of The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence
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Getting Your Worst Customers to Love You: True Tales from the Front Lines of Customer Support
Date: February 24, 2010 - 2:00pm EST
Presenter: Rich Gallagher - Bestselling Author and Communications Skills Expert
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Metrics that Wow! How Coremetrics Became the Customer Service Model of Success
Date: March 30, 2010 - 2:00pm EDT
Presenters: John Ragsdale - Vice President of Technology Research, TSIA and Paige Newcombe - Senior Director, Global Client Services, Coremetrics
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Why the Customer Experience Matters Most – Rosetta Stone’s Customer Success Strategy
Date: April 21, 2010 - 2:00pm EDT
Presenters: Dr. Natalie Petouhoff - Senior Analyst, Forrester Research and Jay Topper - Vice President of Customer Success, Rosetta Stone
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In the Customers’ Shoes: How Coffee Republic Built its Brand through Great Customer Experiences (UK Audience)
Date: April 28, 2010 - 9:00am EDT/2:00pm BST
Presenter: Sahar Hashemi - Co-founder, Coffee Republic
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How to Build a Culture of Customer Loyalty – How Southwest Airlines Does It
Date: May 19, 2010 - 2:00pm EDT
Presenter: Lorraine Grubbs-West - President of Lessons in Loyalty and former Director of Employment at Southwest Airlines
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Why Customer Service is NOT Enough
Date: June 22, 2010 - 2:00pm EDT
Presenter: Lisa Ford - Creator of How to Give Exceptional Customer Service and author of Exceptional Customer Service - Going Beyond Good Service to Exceed the Customer’s Expectations
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Parature’s “Best Practices in Customer Service” webinar series is designed to serve as an educational and informational resource for organizations throughout numerous industry sectors to gain insight into customer service best practices and to improve the customer experience.