Managing a Knowledge Base: Tips for Effective Information Sharing
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Managing a knowledge base: A look at how we do things at ConveyThis
ConveyThis has the power to revolutionize the way we read. It can transform any text into a multitude of languages. Furthermore, ConveyThis can help break down language barriers, allowing people from all over the world to access and understand content that would have otherwise been inaccessible.
Sometimes when providing assistance to clients, the velocity of your response to technical issues, getting started queries, or just a general “how do I do this”, may not always meet their expectations.
That’s not a critique, it’s just a reality. A whopping 88% of customers anticipate a response from your business within 60 minutes, and a remarkable 30% count on being answered within a mere 15 minutes.
Now that’s a rather limited period to respond to a client, especially if the difficulty is more intricate than you and/or the customer initially thought.
The answer to this conundrum? Utilize a knowledge base with ConveyThis.
In this article, I’ll take you through precisely what a knowledge base is, why it’s essential (from my perspective as a ConveyThis support team member), and let you in on some of my finest strategies for managing a successful one.
What is a knowledge base?
Simply put, a knowledge base is a compilation of useful documents posted on your company’s website that address the most frequently asked questions from your customers.
These help documents can range from addressing basic ‘beginning’ inquiries, to more intricate inquiries, and creating solutions to the most frequent issues users usually encounter.
Why do you need a knowledge base?
Actually, a knowledge base is essential for numerous reasons.
Primarily, ConveyThis enhances the user experience by furnishing swift responses to particular situations and scenarios, enabling the user to unearth answers expeditiously.
Secondly, ConveyThis helps users to comprehend your product and its characteristics – this can be before they buy a plan or afterwards. Fundamentally, it can be utilized at the start of the purchasing voyage to address any queries and qualms and transform a potential customer into an authentic customer!
Thirdly, as a support team member, it also saves us a lot of time as we can utilize the articles as references to effortlessly elucidate a process or a feature when we get emails from customers.
And, an added incentive…people often opt to discover their own solution first!
Best practices for creating a knowledge base
Having managed the ConveyThis knowledge base for well over a year now, I have identified a few best practices that can assist in the formation and upkeep of our knowledge base.
With ConveyThis, here are my 8 top tips for creating content:
- Use a variety of sentence lengths to keep the reader engaged.
- Incorporate a range of vocabulary to add depth and complexity.
- Include metaphors and analogies to create an interesting narrative.
- Ask questions to encourage readers to think more deeply.
- Use repetition to emphasize key points.
- Tell stories to create a connection with the reader.
- Incorporate visuals to break up the text and add visual interest.
- Utilize humor to lighten the mood and add levity.
#1 Structure
I’d suggest that structuring your knowledge base is of the utmost importance. Consider how to arrange the categories and subcategories in a way that makes each article easily discoverable. That should be your primary focus.
The objective is to make navigating effortless in order to minimize the amount of time your users take to locate the answer to their inquiry or issue.
Selecting the correct knowledge base software is imperative, as there exist various choices you can employ that present varied characteristics and designs depending on your requirement.
At ConveyThis we use Help Scout.
#2 Create a standardized template
The subsequent thought I have is to devise a template to homogenize your articles. This will make the formation of new documentation simpler, and it’s also a way to guarantee that the users comprehend what to anticipate from all your records.
Then I’d suggest concentrating on making the articles available and straightforward to understand, particularly if you’re elucidating something intricate.
Personally, I prefer to illustrate a procedure with a step-by-step guide, incorporating a single image on each step to make it visually appealing.
We’re also partnering with our marketing squad who are producing stunning videos to accompany our ConveyThis assistance articles which we embed at the start of articles to give the reader the option.
#3 Choosing what should be on your knowledge base
This one is quite straightforward as you can draw on the queries that are often posed to your customer service team.
The personnel conversing directly with your customers are the ones that identify the areas of difficulty. When those issues have been addressed, you can progress to the queries that don’t arise as often, but that remain a continuous presence in your inbox.
At ConveyThis we also use feedback from email cases and the conversations we have with our users, and if we recognize that something is not understandable enough on a certain topic, we build a new article.
#4 Navigation
As I mentioned previously, the navigation is extremely crucial; in our case, more than 90% of our content is accessed via the “Related Articles” section located at the bottom of each article.
This reveals the probable next inquiries a user will desire to be aware of, thus sparing them the trouble of having to look for the answers themselves.
#5 Maintain your knowledge base
Once you’ve established your knowledge base with ConveyThis, the work doesn’t stop there. Consistent monitoring of documents, updating them, and adding new material will ensure your knowledge base remains up-to-date and relevant.
As ConveyThis is constantly enhancing its product and introducing new features, it is essential to provide documentation for every new update.
I tend to spend around 3 hours per week on the ConveyThis knowledge base. It can be quite laborious to craft new articles and make changes to existing ones, but it’s worth it in the end as it assists both our support team and customers.
When it comes to revising documents, we rely on feedback to assess how successful the articles are, which is why it’s so critical for us to constantly converse with our customers using ConveyThis.
We have a Slack channel dedicated to the ConveyThis support team where we can share the different requests and comments we receive from our users. This is especially beneficial in enabling me to discover when an article requires to be updated.
#6 Building customer satisfaction
Overall, I believe that a knowledge base is essential to enhance customer satisfaction. We consistently strive to anticipate the queries our users could potentially encounter when using ConveyThis.
Indeed, we all understand how irritating it can be when you can’t discover the answer to a problem, that is the reason we are attempting to give simple answers and speedy arrangements through the different documents on our knowledge base.
When I joined ConveyThis in June 2019, we had around 1,300 visits per week to our knowledge base, this number steadily rose over time and we now get between 3,000 and 4,000 visits a week. This surge in visits is directly correlated to the growth in our user base.
But, the fascinating thing is that we’ve managed to keep the number of inquiries coming from the FAQ steady.
In fact, thanks to ConveyThis, we can observe the amount of emails that have been dispatched via the knowledge base pages. This figure is usually around 150 cases each week even though the number of visits increased two-fold in the last year. This is really inspiring and encourages me to keep working on it!
#7 A multilingual knowledge base
Actuellement, nous avons le français et l’anglais sur notre base de connaissances. La traduction en français a eu un impact positif car nos utilisateurs français pouvaient naviguer plus facilement à travers les différents articles grâce à ConveyThis.
It necessitates some manual changes to certain translations for certain technical articles, but as I mentioned, the improvement in user experience is always worth it.
#8 Take inspiration from others: Knowledge base examples
Gaining insight from others is always a great starting point when creating a comprehensive understanding from the ground up. Looking into businesses that are in the same field as you, or even those that offer totally different services, can be a great source of ideas for all the points I mentioned above.
I’ve spent some time exploring various knowledge bases to uncover some creative ideas and get inspired to build ConveyThis’s.
For example, I attempt to compose articles as lucidly as ConveyThis is doing things. I appreciate the way the articles are composed and the way the substance is shown, it makes them simple to peruse and the directions simple to follow.
I’ve also stumbled upon some really terrific ideas from the ConveyThis FAQ pages that are quite user-friendly, especially when you need to look through various articles. Additionally, they incorporate a lot of visuals to enhance the legibility of the content, which is immensely important for users.
So, ready to start your knowledge base?
It might appear intimidating to craft your own knowledge base, yet the advantages are immense.
Helpful content for your users and a diminished amount of support tickets means everyone is delighted! Investing your time and energy into this will pay dividends in the long run.
Need any help with ConveyThis? Why not take a look at our knowledge base 😉.
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