Having an external knowledge base provides companies with many benefits. The ultimate goal is to empower customers for self-service. To accomplish this task, the external knowledge base must be searchable, optimized for search engines, rich with valuable content, available around the clock, and accessible through any device.
Although, some of these requirements are easily met using external knowledge management software, some must be achieved during process implementation and maintaining structure and design.
It is important to know that an external knowledge base will be valuable to your customers only if you put extra effort into building it. Because it plays such an important role in the customer service department, we have compiled a list of the 6 most common mistakes to avoid when designing a knowledge base.
Not Searchable
The usefulness of your external knowledge base depends on the quality of its content and its searchability. If you want users to be able to quickly find answers to their questions and experience the benefits of ticket deflection, your knowledge base needs to be searchable. Merely publishing a document like an FAQ won’t accomplish the goal, but it should be searchable as well. In simple words, a help desk page should include all the necessary information that a customer will find useful.
Since ease of search is an integral part, it is best to embed a large search bar on the home page of your help desk page. It is best to review the features of free knowledge base software to make sure you choose one that meets your needs and improves your customer service as well.
Improper Structure
When building an external knowledge repository, attention should be paid to structure as it enhances functionality. Apart from the search bar, category and navigation widgets are essential for a good structure as they help customers in trouble.
The content and title of the article must be relevant to the category name to speed up the search process. Maintaining this kind of consistency across the knowledge base will ensure that customers get what they are looking for. Placing the “Recent Articles” and “Frequently Accessed Articles” categories on the homepage is also a good idea.
Poor Visibility
When you decide to reach out to your customers who need help with a product or service, you must try to point them in the right direction. This is why it’s important to place links to your help services on the pages of your website – the homepage, or the checkout page or product pages – such as those that attract the highest traffic.
If there was previously a web page with a contact form where customers asked for help, it’s a good idea to place a link in your knowledge base as well. Also, make sure to provide a link to your customer support in the articles available in the knowledge repository, which will save you clicks and time in the end.
Irrelevant content
This common mistake results in non-actionable help articles that fail to help consumers by offering irrelevant content. To ensure that customers are satisfied, your knowledge base articles must follow a proper structure, be concise in their approach, and focus on solving problems. When you create long help articlethe content writer is responsible for dividing it into sections and providing actionable steps for each section.
Underestimating the power of SEO
Believe it or not, SEO plays a key role in helping websites achieve success. Therefore, the external knowledge base must follow SEO rules. By doing so, you will increase the chances of your saved articles bagging the top results in search queries.
This will increase traffic to your website and increase the chances of converting genuine leads. With this in mind, be sure to check keywords before you start writing content for your external knowledge base.
Focusing on solving too many problems in one piece of content
While it may seem tempting to answer more than one question in a single post, it can have negative repercussions, especially if a customer is looking for answers and he or she is stuck with results where the answers are provided at the bottom.
It is best to avoid this practice. Instead, you can use context sensitive help and allow the customer to click for further clarification if needed. Additionally, adding related categories that clients can jump through when deemed useful.
Conclusion
One should proceed to design an external knowledge base keeping these common mistakes in mind. The whole process may take some extra time and effort but considering all the benefits of having an external knowledge base it is well worth it.
