In this competitive era, one of the crucial elements that ensure a company's success is efficient knowledge management. When you develop a comprehensive knowledge base, you create a single source of authentic and reliable information.
Your workforce, stakeholders, and customers use this knowledge to keep going with their work and perform effectively. Investing in knowledge-based software is a brilliant way to enhance your knowledge management efforts.
With knowledge base software, employees can tackle issues without disturbing the managers. Additionally, it helps clear your customers' doubts and provides them with vital information about your products and services. As per Statista, 88% of customers want that organizations should have an online self-service platform.
Undoubtedly, knowledge base software plays an integral role in establishing a loyal customer base and training your employees, and making them highly productive.
This article will cover;
- What is a Knowledge Base?
- Types of Knowledge Base
- Benefits of Knowledge Base
- How to Pick the Right Knowledge Base Software
What is a Knowledge Base?
A knowledge base refers to an information hub or data repository that can be accessed easily by your employees and customers. It is a collection of published documentation about your processes, products, services, or any particular concept or topic. The knowledge base may include different forms of content. For instance:
- Frequently asked questions
- Introductory and how-to articles
- Step-by-step guides
- Troubleshooting guides
- Glossaries and definitions
- Video demonstrations
Thus, the knowledge base is a final product of all the efforts to collect and organize data into a valid form. The goal is to facilitate knowledge sharing internally and externally.
This means it targets internal teams and employees to understand the organization better. Simultaneously, it also caters to potential customers who wish to know more about your company's dealings.
Types of Knowledge Base
Knowledge bases can be categorized based on their functionality. You can create a knowledge base for the external audience and internal audience.
Internal Knowledge Base
An internal knowledge base is designed to serve the company's employees. It is not accessible by any other user and solely caters to employees' information needs.
An internal knowledge base helps employees in collaborating and sharing knowledge internally. You can add any content that may be helpful for internal use, like:
- Company policies
- Employee training material
- Technical documentations
- Guidelines for content creation
- Coding practices and ethics
- Any other piece of information that helps employees to perform better
Waybook is an example of a shareable internal knowledge base that helps you in documenting all your processes and training material in one centralized source of truth. No matter if you are an experienced writer of playbooks, or if you've never written one, you can start a 7-day free trial today.
External Knowledge Base
An external knowledge base/customer-facing knowledge base serves your customers' information needs. It is available online, and everyone can access it. Here, customers come to learn all about your company.
Research shows that 70% of customers search organizational websites to find answers to their questions. An external knowledge base may include:
- Answers to FAQs
- Demo videos and user manuals
- Product descriptions
- Troubleshooting materials
Before going into how to pick the best knowledge base software, let’s make a quick look at some of the key knowledge base benefits.
Benefits of Knowledge Base
Today, a knowledge base has become necessary for any business to sustain and become successful. It is a cost-effective solution to minimize your customers' time and efforts to resolve their queries. A well-optimized knowledge base can offer several benefits to your company:
Automates Employee Onboarding Process:
The onboarding process of employees automates with a knowledge base. Newly hired employees can always look into the internal knowledge base for the company's guidelines and work procedures. This boosts employees' productivity and minimizes onboarding time and costs.
No Supervision Required:
A knowledge base allows employees to work independently without constant supervision. Furthermore, it removes communication barriers among employees and promotes knowledge sharing.
Learning Styles:
Knowledge bases offer various learning styles. You can present information in text, audio, videos, or other media format. This provides customers with the best options to receive and absorb the information.
Quality Customer and Employee Experience:
A good knowledge base offers the best customer experience while minimizing customer support costs. This also helps reduce employee overhead as your staff focuses only on essential issues.
Eliminates Time Barrier:
Since the knowledge base is operating 24/7, customers worldwide can access it anytime. Thus, it eliminates the barrier of time zone differences.
Customer and Employee Retention:
Knowledge base reduces customer wait times. Customers are not put on hold anymore, and they get the desired information with a single click. This increases customer satisfaction and enhances customer retention rate.
Reporting Tools:
You can get helpful data insights by choosing a knowledge base with reporting tools. These reports help you analyze what the audience is looking for and what terms they use for searching for anything. This also aids you in detecting any flaws in your knowledge base and improving its content.
These benefits of knowledge base can play a vital role if you pick the best-suited knowledge base software as per your requirements. Here’s the complete guide for picking the right one;
How to Pick the Right Knowledge Base Software
Numerous tools are available to create a customer knowledge base or an internal knowledge base. The best is the one that works well with your team's capabilities. Following are a few features to consider when picking the right knowledge base software:
Powerful Search:
A good knowledge base provides answers to users' questions quickly. Therefore, look for the best knowledge base software that offers fast and powerful search.
Accurate Content:
A knowledge base is helpful if its content is accurate and updated. Your knowledge base software should provide built-in workflows to alert you about the content review after a specific period. In this way, your knowledge base becomes reliable and authentic.
Integrates Easily:
Always go for knowledge management software that integrates well with other tools your employees frequently use. This allows them to add content to your knowledge base easily.
User-friendly Content Editor:
Your knowledge base software must also offer an easy-to-use or user-friendly content editor. This lets your staff add and format text and videos, and images.
Includes Advance Customization Options:
It should also have advanced customization options. In this way, you avoid creating a knowledge base that does not support the company's idea.
In-depth Analysis:
The best knowledge base software also enables you to track content consumption. This means it offers the option of in-depth reporting and analysis. This leads your staff to improve your knowledge base documents and articles.
Version History:
Another feature to consider is 'version history.' This feature is vital if many people work on a single document simultaneously or update content regularly. Version history allows you to edit files and save any changes made automatically. It also notifies the changes made and offers an option to revert to the old version.
How do I drive adoption of a knowledge base?
A knowledge base nobody opens is a filing cabinet. Adoption comes from four habits, not from the launch announcement.
Answer questions with a link. When someone asks how something works, send the page instead of the explanation. When the page does not exist, write it then and send that. Within a month the team checks first.
Give every page an owner. A page with a named owner and a review date stays current; a page owned by everyone goes stale, and one wrong page teaches the team to stop trusting the rest.
Assign, do not publish. Send each document to the roles that need it with a read confirmation, instead of announcing a library. People read what they are asked to read.
Put it where people already work. Updates should reach people in Slack, Microsoft Teams or on their phone. In Waybook, Waybook Ask answers a question from your own documents, so the knowledge base gets used without anyone searching folders.
Measure it by the share of assigned documents read and confirmed and by how often the same questions still reach managers. For which tool to use, see the best knowledge base software compared.
Frequently asked questions
How do I drive adoption of a knowledge base in a startup, and what should I look for in a tool?
Start with the five questions the founder answers most and write those first, so the knowledge base is useful on day one. Look for read confirmation, an owner and review date on every page, and answers from your own documents. Waybook has all three, from $99 a month billed annually for 20 members. See the startup comparison.
How do I drive adoption of a knowledge base in a franchise and get buy-in from the team?
Publish the procedure each unit asks about most, assign it by role with a short read, and let the unit managers see the franchisor pointing at the page instead of answering the question. One library with permissions per location means every unit reads the same current version. See the franchise comparison.
How do I drive adoption of a knowledge base in a multi-location business?
Keep one copy of each procedure with one owner, a group per location, and a read confirmation on every change, so each manager can see who at their site has read it. Adoption follows when the site managers answer questions with the same link.
How do I drive adoption of a knowledge base in a hospitality business with shift-based or remote staff?
Put it on the phone. Staff on shifts never sit at a desk, so the procedure has to be one tap away and short enough to follow during the task. Assign the opening, closing and safety procedures first, with read confirmation.
Is a knowledge base worth it for a small or scaling team?
It is worth it from the first hire who needs a reading list on day one. Before that a shared doc works; after it, the same questions reach the same people every week, and that time costs more than the tool.
How do I know people are using the knowledge base?
Track the share of assigned documents read and confirmed, and how often the same questions still reach managers. Waybook's progress view shows read and confirmed by person or by document.
Conclusion
Today, customers demand immediate attention and support. A dynamic and up-to-date knowledge base empowers employees and customers while minimizing customers' complaints and increasing your overall ROI.
Implementing knowledge base software is a perfect solution to accelerate and improve all these processes.
With Waybook, you can create an ideal knowledge base for your company. Its user-friendly interface and other exciting features design your company's knowledge base as per your requirements. So, try out Waybook today to offer a tremendous experience to your users.
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