Knowledge can be a valuable business asset, especially when companies manage it carefully.
Businesses can increase their productivity by using a knowledge base to make important information easily accessible to their customers and employees. A knowledge base that stores internal knowledge, such as B. Employee best practices, can improve knowledge retention, employee training, team consistency, and remote work. An external knowledge base can increase customer satisfaction, reduce hiring costs, improve search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, and provide customer analytics.
If companies can handle the challenges of a knowledge base, which include assigning roles and updating information, they can benefit from the system.
What is a knowledge base?
A knowledge base is a centralized online repository of information that people can use to find answers about a topic, company, or product. Organizations typically provide a private, internal knowledge base to their employees, but may also provide a public, external knowledge base to their customers.
An internal knowledge base enables employees to find the information they need to do their jobs correctly. This information may include company policies, onboarding materials, ongoing training materials, and tips on using company software.
Customers can find answers to their questions about products and services in an external knowledge database. These customer-facing knowledge bases typically include FAQ pages, product user guides, how-to videos, and troubleshooting walkthroughs.
4 advantages of an internal knowledge base
Internal knowledge databases enable employees to quickly find the information they need to do their jobs. Benefits include knowledge retention, staff training, team consistency, and remote work.
1. Preservation of knowledge
Employees who remain in an organization for many years acquire valuable knowledge that can benefit other employees. However, organizations can lose these insights when those employees retire or find a new job. Instead, companies can develop knowledge management strategies to capture important information from these experienced employees and store it in a knowledge base.
For example, as part of the offboarding process, an organization may ask senior employees to participate in recorded question-and-answer sessions about their experiences and what they have learned. The organization could then upload these recordings or transcripts of these recordings to the knowledge base for other employees to learn from in their free time.
2. Employee Training
Companies need to train new employees extensively and should provide ongoing training for all other employees, which takes time and effort. However, a knowledge base can improve training efficiency by allowing employees to revisit training materials frequently.
In-person training can provide employees with a knowledge base. However, workers may forget important details at these meetings. In addition to classroom training, organizations can create training documents such as cheat sheets and step-by-step guides and store them in a knowledge base. Employees can then access these training materials whenever they need them.
3. Consistency between teams
Large organizations have many departments, often with multiple teams within those departments. Over time, individual teams can forget, change, or abandon company protocols and best practices, reducing consistency across the organization.
To help with consistency, companies can leverage a knowledge base to store best practices, branding templates, and style guides for their employees.
A lack of consistency across teams can hurt CX and brand awareness. For example, when multiple customer service representatives within an organization give different advice on the same issue, customers can become frustrated and confused. When different editorial teams of an online publication use their own formatting and style, it can be difficult for the publication to build a recognizable brand.
To help with consistency, companies can leverage a knowledge base to store best practices, branding templates, and style guides for their employees. Teams can access the knowledge base for questions about best practices and stay on the same page.
4. Remote work
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to adopt social distancing protocols and adopt remote and hybrid workspaces. Although most governments are no longer enforcing these social distancing measures, many workers still prefer to work from home.
A flexible work environment can improve the employee experience, but remote employees cannot reach out to their colleagues for help as easily as on-site employees can. However, a knowledge base allows these remote workers to find answers to their questions on their own.
Advantages of an external knowledge database
Unlike internal knowledge bases, which only employees can access, external knowledge bases offer access to everyone. The benefits of an external knowledge base include customer satisfaction, lower hiring costs, SEO, and customer analytics.
1. Customer Satisfaction
An external knowledge base can improve customer satisfaction by providing customers with 24/7 support. For example, if a bank customer wants to know how to make a remote deposit at 7 p.m., they can search their bank’s knowledge base for the answer rather than waiting for business hours.
An external knowledge base can also reduce the waiting time for calls in contact centers. Customers can use the knowledge base to find answers to frequently asked questions, reducing the strain on contact center phone lines. Shorter wait times can reduce frustration and increase customer satisfaction and retention.
2. Lower hiring costs
Because a knowledge base helps customers find answers, it reduces the number of customer service agents a company needs to hire.
Before contact centers offered knowledge bases and other self-service channels, live agents had to answer common questions, such as store hours and return policies. In modern contact centers, most of these common queries are handled through knowledge bases, freeing agents to focus on more complex customer problems.
3. SEO
Search engines like Google and Bing use ranking systems to determine which search results for a particular keyword should appear on the search engine results page (SERP). A well-organized article structure and a strong SEO strategy can help articles rank higher on the SERP. Many knowledge base software tools provide ready-made article templates to help companies create well-structured content for their knowledge bases that can help their content show up in Google searches.
Organizations can also use their knowledge bases to write and publish informative articles on common industry topics. For example, a CRM vendor might regularly publish articles about marketing, such as “The Importance of Marketing Personalization” or “5 Ways to Use AI in Marketing.” These generic articles can appear in search engines, bring new audiences to the organization’s website, and improve brand awareness.
4. Customer Analysis
Many knowledge base software products provide customer analytics capabilities, allowing businesses to track which articles customers viewed most and least. These tools can also track what keywords customers are using in their searches.
Organizations can use this customer data to improve their future knowledge base content strategy. For example, if analytics show that many customers have started searching for a specific topic that the knowledge base doesn’t cover, content teams can proactively write articles on that content.
Challenges of a knowledge database
Internal and external knowledge databases offer many advantages. But companies should understand the following challenges before considering a system:
assign roles. A knowledge base requires a content team that writes and edits its articles and a well-defined leader who manages those content teams, configures the system, and analyzes user data.
Maintenance. Knowledge bases require ongoing maintenance and updates. As companies make changes to their internal policies and product lines, content teams need to update the information in the knowledge base accordingly.
Promote a culture of knowledge sharing. A comprehensive knowledge base includes knowledge from different departments and employees of a company.Organizations should encourage their employees to regularly share knowledge with their peers.
Education. As with any new software tool, a knowledge base can have a learning curve. Organizations must provide training to ensure employees are using the system correctly.
Organizations looking to improve employee productivity and team cohesion may consider an in-house knowledge base, while contact centers struggling to keep up with ticket traffic should consider an external option. In either case, knowledge base proponents may need to demonstrate the system’s potential business benefits, such as ROI, before company executives endorse the tool.
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