How to Create a Knowledge Base?

What is a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base is an online repository of documentation containing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting guides, how-to instructions, and product information.

Your knowledge base is a one-stop shop for customers to consult when they run into problems and prevents them having to ask for help from your support team.

Knowledge bases are typically built with dedicated knowledge base software that contains all the features you need to publish a user-friendly, accessible knowledge base website.

What type of data is included in a knowledge base?

All knowledge bases share valuable information with customers and prospects, but the type of data and information you include in it depends on your business’ purpose for creating one. Common types of data included in a knowledge base are:

• Directions and tips for using your products and services,
• Answers to FAQs,
• Content you’ve created that can provide in-depth solutions,
• Video demonstrations,
• Company information,
• Knowledge on different business departments.

Why is a Knowledge Base Important?

Improve Employee Productivity

According to a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8 hours every day searching for information. This has a serious effect on productivity. Having an internal Knowledge base helps employees to access and look in for the information quickly.

Also, with the increase in hybrid environment it becomes compulsory for the employees to connect with centralized Knowledge base to outperform their tasks.

Relieves the burden on customer support

A knowledge base allows you to automate away most repetitive customer service queries and frees up the time your support agents have to focus on the more complex cases. With a knowledge base in play, you will need to hire fewer support reps and you can do more with fewer resources.

Enhances customer satisfaction with self-service

Most customers want to help themselves without reaching out to a member of your support team. If a customer has questions about your service or product, an interaction that could have taken ten seconds now takes ten minutes after they have to contact support.

Customers will be more satisfied and increasingly loyal if you offer them the option of self-service.

Improves the onboarding process for new employees

When you bring new employees into your organization, you have a ready-made resource for them to consult while learning about your company and its operations. If new hires have questions they can check the knowledge base and get up to speed more quickly.

Provides 24/7 customer support

Unlike your customer support team, your knowledge base never sleeps. No matter what time zone your customers are in, a self-service knowledge base can provide customer support at all hours of the day, reducing the time customers have to wait for a member of your team to become available. A knowledge base makes your business truly global.

How to Create a Knowledge Base?

Come up with the topics to write about

As any project – and building a base is definitely a project – it requires planning and designing. Spend some time defining what you want to have in your base and how you want it to function.

Now, the most burning question when approaching a base is “what do I write about?”

Finding the right topics and tailoring your marketing content to customers’ needs is not an easy task.

Map out your base structure

The most optimal base structure is category-section-article with category being the most general level and article – the most detailed. It is universal and can fit the requirements of any business.

Start with defining the categories and sections. Set up the categories that will be the top level units of your base and represent the logical subdivision of the entire content. Categories should lead the user to the marketing content they are searching for and clearly indicate what’s inside.

Decide on its design

There’s no one-size-fits-all example of how a well-designed base site should look like. However, it is always a good practice to have all company resources maintaining a uniform company style. The  base should follow the general style guidelines, too. Use the customization options to design it similar to the rest of your digital website.

Create your custom domain and shorten the URLs

Another important aspect of the base building craft is its domain address. Most of the base tools provide a default domain name for their new clients. However, you can change it whenever you want and get yourself a custom one. This way, it won’t even look like you’re using some third-party solution as your help center will be located in your digital website’s subfolder.