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As a businessman, your mind may be overflowing with countless questions about how to
- provide top-notch help to your customers and keep them coming back
- get employees to stick around and play a significant part in your company’s growth
- attract more customers and boost sales
There is a simple solution – a knowledge base!
The benefits of knowledge-based implementation are limitless. This self-service tool makes customers and employees happy by catering to their needs. Not only does it make customers’ lives easier, but it also tightens up teamwork and boosts productivity at work.
In this article, you’ll discover eight fantastic benefits of building a knowledge base to empower your business growth.
First off, let’s define “knowledge base.”
What is a knowledge base?
A knowledge base (KB) is a self-serve online library where consumers or employees can search for helpful info about your service, products, team processes, etc.
Its content varies from the documented strategies of your marketing team and HR onboarding guides to an explanation of the product features workflow.
The knowledge base can include this data in different forms:
- Repetitively asked questions
- How-to manuals
- Video demonstrations
- Troubleshooting guides
- Glossaries, etc.
Depending on the target audience and content, there are two types of knowledge base.
| The internal knowledge base is created for company employees. It provides all the info they need to do their job best. |
An external knowledge base serves your customers directly. It helps them access knowledge about your company’s products without human assistance. |
| An internal knowledge base is perfect for onboarding new employees, sharing product updates among the team, and answering FAQs about company processes. | Usually, there are articles or videos like “What is a chatbot,” “How to get a refund?”, “How to integrate [product] with your Zappier?” “What to do when the [feature] doesn’t work,” and so on. |
| Due to a private nature, among its distinct features are robust security and team management with different access levels. | Due to a private nature, among its distinct features are robust security and team management with different access levels. |
businesses use:
Businesses widely use both of them. And for a reason 👇
Benefits of Internal Knowledge Base
Internal knowledge bases serve as rapid info-fetching platforms, empowering employees to nail their tasks efficiently. What are the perks of these in-house info hubs? Consider safeguarding vital knowledge, saving your budget, and improving team performance and communication.
Let’s check out each of them 👇
1. Faster training of new employees
The onboarding time is crucial for both sides: for businesses, it is about budget and human resources spent; for employees, it is about stress and completing the probation period tasks.
Think about business tasks your managers could do instead of training new copywriters to work in WordPress. Leaving them one-to-one with onboarding tasks is not an option as well. What’s the solution then?
Automate this process with the internal knowledge base. Having a place with all the project data, training guides, and team contacts reduces the number of new hires’ questions to your managers.
In the copywriter’s case, all you have to do is to do is follow these steps:
- Create accounts in services they’ll use
- Share the onboarding plan tasks
- and a list of relevant knowledge base guidelines
Now, even if they forget something, there is no need to distract teammates. All the info is at hand. This not only makes getting newbies up to speed faster and cheaper but also gives the whole company’s productivity a healthy kick-up.
2. Increasing employees’ productivity
It is a common practice to ask peers for help when unsure about something. Unfortunately, it takes about 15–30 minutes for an employee to focus back on the initial task after answering a coworker’s question.
You can save their time by keeping information like company policies, refunds, or specific process guidelines available 24/7 in an internal knowledge base. Thus, there is no need to disturb others or waste time scrolling through old chats, emails, and Google Docs to find it.
3. Preserving company knowledge
Let’s be fair. Adding data to an internal knowledge base document isn’t among the priority tasks of your team. That’s why most businesses don’t document their business processes or team knowledge.
The result?
As you may have noticed, Gen Z and Millennials switch companies almost every two years. Thus, every two years, your processes slow down because, together with employees, you lose valuable insights they keep.
An internal knowledge base is an excellent solution to this issue. This one-stop platform is created to collect your employees’ insights about projects or clients they work on.
Just add KB as a step of the offboarding process. Invite senior employees to record a Q&A session about their experience within your company. Upload that video or its transcript to the knowledge base for the rest of the team.
4. Better team collaboration and internal communication
Another reason for the low performance of your teams is company growth. An increasing number of people/departments obstructs communication and leads to their desynchronization.
Companies try to solve this issue with long meetings and training sessions. But it is impossible to be focused on the conversation for 60+ minutes. So, there is still an opportunity to miss vital info.
The fix?
Store and share any needed info in an internal knowledge base. For example, add and update content on the product features, share with other teams, and answer their questions in comments.
This seriously reduces the hassle of managing stuff and amps up the team vibes. Plus, it takes our content up a notch and sparks off cool chats, bringing a big win for the company.
Benefits of External Knowledge Base
The external knowledge base, a.k.a. help/resource center, is about customer support. This self-service library contains guides on your products, pricing plans, delivery, and other FAQs available for everyone 24/7. People love it as an excellent alternative to human agents.
There are plenty of benefits an external knowledge base brings to your customers and team. Check them out 👇
1. Improved customer retention by fast resolution of customer issues
Waiting on hold and slow response time are the significant issues customers experience in business communication. People want instant replies. Unfortunately, hiring more managers to work 24/7 won’t help here. Over time, you’ll get more clients, and the problem arise again.
The fix?
Instead of waiting for agents to reply, let customers find answers independently in an external knowledge base. For instance, there is no need to wait till morning when banking clients want to know details of a remote deposit at 8 p.m. With an external knowledge base, they can easily find this info at any time of the day.
Moreover, when some customers switch to a knowledge base, your managers get fewer requests and more chances to meet the desired reply time speed.
The result? – A shorter hold time and better customer satisfaction.
Since people tend to repeat positive experiences, businesses enjoy increasing retention rates and revenue.
2. Lower costs for customer support team
Did you know that handling basic inquiries takes 49% of your customer service agents’ time?
Just imagine how much money you can save by delegating these tasks to an external knowledge base and letting your staff focus only on critical issues.
Let’s count:
The monthly salary of a customer service agent in the USA is about $3-4K. The monthly subscription to a knowledge base service varies from $5 to $60.
The benefit is obvious!
A good knowledge base article reduces the number of customer requests your support has to answer. That means there’s no need to hire more customer service representatives even when the number of clients increases.
3. Useful insight on customers’ issues
Loads of knowledge base software provide customer analytics functions. That means you can monitor which articles get the most customer views and which keywords they use in searches.
Such reports can bring you valuable insights on
- the info people look for most of all
- product features to improve because of the high number of problems
- top issues your customers have
- specific topics to write because the knowledge base doesn’t cover them now
- current articles to improve
The external knowledge base is an excellent data source for your product, marketing, sales, and support teams. For example, you can use it to form a backlog of product bugs to fix or social media posts to write.
4. Improves SEO
Businesses compete for the top seats on the search engine results page for a given keyword. Here is what we can see on the “top knowledge base” keyword.
The higher you are, the more visits and clients you get. Thus, companies hire dedicated content production teams to write blog posts for Search Engine Optimization.
But support agents write articles as well. With the right knowledge base software, you can get additional positions in search engines results.
How?
In addition to keywords, Google and Bing evaluate content based on its structure: headline bold, italic tags, title, description, alt text of images, etc. Many knowledge base tools offer ready-made templates and a visual editor to add those tags to your article.
If you’ve got all the necessary info and customers can find answers in your knowledge base, you have a strong shot at a high ranking. And the best part? You don’t even have to lift another finger!
To sum up
Having a knowledge base rocks. For your team, it’s like a brainy sidekick available round the clock, slashing down time spent hunting for info and dialing up productivity. For your customers, it’s like a personal assistant on your site, serving up answers day or night.
Feeling pumped to get started? For a foundation, use the questions your team and customers ask most frequently. Keep it fresh and updated, and you’re golden. More knowledge, fewer headaches, and more time to focus on growing your business.
FAQs on knowledge base benefits
1. What makes a good knowledge base?
An ideal knowledge base software should have these key features:
- Usability. It should be easy to use for both creators and users.
- Powerful search. Users should be able to find answers quickly and easily.
- Content management. Smooth editing and publishing really make a difference.
- Analytics. Knowing what your users are searching for helps you optimize.
- Integration. It should play nicely with your other tools.
- Multimedia support. Flexibility to include images, videos, or gifs can help clarify complex ideas.
- Feedback option. It’s great to know how well you’re doing, right?
- Responsive design. It should look good on any device.
2. Can a knowledge base help get new clients?
A knowledge base is all about showing off your expertise, providing answers to potential customers, and making them feel like you’ve got everything under control. For instance, a software company can get new clients by answering FAQs about pricing plans or trial days.
3. How do knowledge bases help build trust with customers?
A knowledge base establishes customer trust by providing accessible, accurate, and transparent information 24/7. In addition to demonstrating your expertise, responsiveness, and commitment to customer support, this self-service option shows that a business truly cares about its customers’ needs and experiences.
