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The Ultimate Guide to Company Knowledge Base (Includes a Comparison of the Top Tools!)

Building up a strong customer support that satisfy customer expectations is becoming a bit challenging for a business. That’s where a self-service knowledge base comes into the role. Read on to know why every business should create and maintain a knowledge base.

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Since time unknown, marketers have been talking about and overcoming customer pain-points. In fact, effectively solving pain-points is an important part of a firm’s customer experience strategy.

As a result, businesses invest in a variety of technologies, a strong customer support team, and self-service tools that can assist customers and convert them into loyal brand advocates. However, the fast-paced digital world and the ubiquitous connectivity have made customers increasingly impatient. A vast majority of customers (64 per cent of consumers and 80 per cent of business buyers, to be precise) expect businesses to respond to them in real-time.

Meeting these ever-increasing customer expectations is a tall order, even for large enterprises equipped with adequate customer support resources. That’s where a self-service knowledge base (KB) fits in!

Read on to know why every business should create and maintain a knowledge base. You will also find effective tips on choosing the most suitable knowledge base software for your company.

Benefits of Having a Knowledge Base

A knowledge base comprises an online library of guides, tutorials, and responses to common customer questions and concerns. It is a self-service platform that helps businesses stay ahead of customer issues. Thus, having a knowledge base helps businesses build a loyal customer base and boost productivity.

A well-maintained knowledge base can help your business in more ways than one.

Enhances Customer Experience

If you think a product’s price and quality are the only factors driving customer loyalty, think again! A recent Walker survey found that by the end of this year customer experience will overtake price and product as a key brand differentiator.

What’s more? Having self-service options can significantly improve CX. Today’s customers are a do-it-yourself kind of breed, wanting to find solutions themselves. Automated customer service can help businesses improve their online experience and boost conversion rates.

Ensures Employee Satisfaction

A knowledgebase is a critical aspect of a firm’s automated self-service strategy, allowing customers to help themselves in case of an issue. Thus, with a knowledge base in place, customers can easily take it upon themselves to find answers to a query. This enables the support team to focus on other pressing customer issues, making them more productive and effective on a call.

Further, since the knowledge base is a central database of information, all the departments are equally empowered and on the same page when answering customer queries. This leads to improved employee motivation and reduces downtime.

Organizes All Company Information in One Place

As mentioned above, a knowledge base is a central library of information-rich resources on the company’s offerings. This makes tasks like onboarding new employees easy and quick.

Boosts Organic Traffic

Google offers clear instructions on making a website SEO-friendly. The search engine giant ranks sites based on several factors, a major one being, high-quality content.

A knowledgebase maintains relevant, authoritative, informative, and unique content that informs and guides readers through the various stages of the marketing funnel. By creating and maintaining a knowledge base you stand to improve your online authority, attract qualified traffic to your site, and ultimately please Google.

Prime Features of an Ideal KB Software

Choosing a suitable knowledge base platform for your business can be quiet challenging, especially when there are a plethora of tools available in the market. Consider the features mentioned below to invest in a KB tool that takes you closer to your business goals. Make sure the platform you choose possesses these features.

Search Function

Check out this user review for the knowledge base tool, Document360. It clearly shows how users appreciate a platform offering a search function.

Users often look for a search bar (like Google) on the main page of the knowledge base platform. It helps them look for specific guides or articles or know more about the product.

Analytics

Analytical reports can help you improve your knowledge base and create effective user guides and articles. This in turn will lead to improved customer satisfaction. Only a few knowledgebase tools offer detailed reports on failed searches, all searches, articles with no views, and other insights. Make sure the knowledge software you choose offers such advanced features.

A Simple Categorization System

Organizing articles and guides in the knowledge base is of utmost importance. Choosing a tool with a great categorization system (categories, sections, and folders) will help you organize your articles conveniently and systematically.

Advanced Customization Options

A knowledgebase is a critical part of a firm’s website. Hence, choosing a platform that offers advanced customization features like changing the theme as per the brand logo color and adding header images is important. This will enhance brand recognition and visibility.

SEO Settings

Who doesn’t want their content to be easily discoverable by Google? The KB tool you use should allow you to specify title tags, meta descriptions, target keywords, and other SEO-friendly features.

Contact and User Feedback System

Regardless of how equipped your knowledge base is, there’s always some support required. An ideal KB software offers ample options for users to get in touch with the support tea. It also offers avenues for users to leave feedback. For instance, a thumbs up or down option.

Multilingual Content

Users often want to find answers to their queries in their native language. Check out this user review on HelpCrunch where the user wishes the tool offered a multilingual content option.

Make sure the tool you choose offers the option of translating your company’s knowledge base into other languages.

The Top Knowledge Base Tools Compared

A company knowledge base is much more than a self-service library of data. It helps businesses stay on top of customer issues, giving them an edge over their competitors. If you are looking for a knowledge base platform that meets your business needs, here’s a direct comparison of the most popular ones.

Document360

Document360 is a powerful and popular knowledge base software for SaaS products that allows you to create a well-organized self-service knowledge base. The platform offers cloud-based app features and an AI-powered search that solves customer issues instantly. No wonder, Document360 is preferred by top firms like Ralph Lauren, HP, and Pfizer among others.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Offers detailed reports
  • Loaded with a variety of collaboration features
  • The markdown editor allows easy content writing and editing
  • Allows the creation of private and public KB for customers
  • Powered with SEO features, allowing a company’s product knowledge to rank high

    Cons

  • Though Document360 offers a variety of pricing plans, starting from $49 per month, it may come across as pricey for a few businesses

Helpjuice

Helpjuice is yet another SaaS platform, suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers all the collaboration and customization features needed to create and manage both internal and external knowledge bases.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Offers innovative search features and functionality
  • Offers insights into knowledge base analytics
  • Ideal for internal and external knowledge bases

Cons

  • Helpjuice is among the most expensive options today (about $120 per month for up to 4 users). Thus, small businesses and startups find it pricey
  • Limited features. It doesn’t support several third-party integrations

Zendesk

Being one of the oldest customer support platforms available today, Zendesk offers a variety of support features, including a knowledge management system. It also helps integrate your knowledge base with support tickets.

Pros

  • Offers a variety of tools for creating an effective customer support system
  • The platform can be used to manage customer support tickets, chat, managing customers (CRM), and other functions
  • Offers modern knowledge base designs

Cons

  • It’s not beginner-friendly. Zendesk is an advanced system; hence, it needs a lot of training for anyone to start using the platform
  • Confusing UI
  • The cost of 24/7 customer support is high

HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch is a customer service tool that offers live chat, ticketing, email marketing, and knowledge base functionality on one platform. Also, it allows you to manually take charge of the SEO details, allowing search engines to understand your content better.

Pros

  • Features like live chat enhance customer experience
  • Manually customizable SEO settings for each article and knowledge base
  • Simple and sleek, designed for user convenience

Cons

  • Lacks multilingual content
  • No role-based access control
  • Its help desk is not as advanced as Document360 or Helpjuice
  • Not ideal for internal knowledge bases
  • Poor integration with social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

ProProfs

The ProProfs Knowledge Base tool offers unique features and robust integrations for creating an online knowledge base, documentation, and help sites among others. The platform offers a variety of features for content authoring, publishing, customization, and collaboration.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Extremely feature-rich
  • Integrates well with tools like Google Analytics and Salesforce Desk

Cons

  • For using the advanced features, the user may need to have basic knowledge of languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • All the templates have a similar structure
  • Price may be a barrier for startups and SMEs

The Way Forward: Help Customers Help Themselves!

Satisfying customers and inspiring them to stay loyal to your brand is not just about offering a great product, price, or service. Modern customers want to address issues independently with minimum human interaction. No wonder, they expect businesses to give them access to immediate knowledge without any personal assistance.

Creating and maintaining a knowledge base can help businesses meet this requirement, adding to customer delight. Thus, firms striving to showcase their customer support greatness should invest in building and maintaining a knowledge base.

Use the tips and product comparisons shared in this post to supercharge your customer-centric efforts.

Written By

Gaurav Belani is a senior SEO and content marketing analyst at Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He has more than seven years of experience in digital marketing and loves to share his thoughts in publications like Business 2 Community, IEEE Computer Society, E27, Innovation Enterprise, and Addicted 2 Success to name a few. In his spare time, he enjoys watching movies and listening to music. Connect with him on Linkedinand Twitter @belanigaurav

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