As your business grows, so do the number of customer inquiries – many simple, others complex. While your support agents work hard to tackle them all, rising ticket volumes can lead to higher stress levels and longer response times.
Does this sound familiar?
The good news is there’s a solution: building an AI Knowledge Base. This powerful tool helps reduce pressure on your support staff and enhances the overall customer experience. However, simply having a knowledge base isn’t enough. To enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction, it must be simple, intuitive and adaptable.
In this blog, we’ll talk you through the key steps to building a knowledge base and share 3 best practices to ensure it drives value for your customers and team.
What is an AI Knowledge Base?
An AI Knowledge Base is a virtual library filled with everything customers need to know about your products or services. From step-by-step guides on getting started to in-depth troubleshooting solutions, it helps customers find answers instantly without agent support – and in a format that suits them.
AI Knowledge Bases are an integral element of self-service, allowing customers to get the information they need, on their own, at any time. Plus, they enable agents to streamline workflows by providing quick access to helpful articles or fast answers to common questions. This enables them to resolve common queries faster and focus on more complex issues.
Why build an AI Knowledge Base?
A knowledge base empowers customers to solve their own problems – inside or outside business hours – rather than reaching out to a support agent. This reduces customer effort, decreases contact centre calls, and keeps customers happy.
A well-designed knowledge base doesn’t just benefit customers. Agents can quickly search resources to find solutions to customer issues. Rather than writing answers themselves, they simply send customers a link to a relevant article. With more time on their hands, agents can focus on resolving complex customer problems.
When you have a small number of customers, it’s feasible for your support staff to provide them with all the answers and attention they need. But as your company grows, the task becomes more difficult. A knowledge base management system enables you to deliver high-quality customer support at scale without burning out your agents.
4 simple steps to creating a knowledge base
Building your first knowledge base can feel overwhelming. You might be wondering which questions to cover, how to structure the answers or where to host the content. But with the right approach, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow these 4 simple steps to create a well-organised knowledge base that makes information easily accessible for customers and agents.
1. Identify key questions to answer
With multiple customer queries spanning an array of topics, start by focusing on the most frequently asked questions. These recurring issues should form the foundation of your knowledge base. Next, move to less common queries that still revolve around customer challenges.
To pinpoint top concerns, analyse support tickets. As manual review can be cumbersome, use a CRM to track trends automatically or heat mapping tools like Hotjar to see how users interact with your website and where they struggle.
Your customer-facing teams – sales and support, for example – are also valuable sources of insight. Host quick meetings or create a shared document where they can contribute common customer pain points.
2. Structure your knowledge base for easy navigation
With customer queries spanning different topics, organising your knowledge base effectively is key to ensuring users find answers quickly. A clear, intuitive structure enhances the self-service experience, reducing frustration and requests for agent support.
Your knowledge base should be tailored to your audience and your product or service. At Engage Hub, our AI-powered solutions, including on-premises large language models (LLM), help optimise your existing FAQs – sorting and structuring your content for clarity. This ensures customers always receive accurate, timely responses while self-serving.
Key elements of a well-structured knowledge base include:
- A prominent search bar at the top of the page – for quick customer access to relevant content
- Easily accessible FAQs – ideally placed on the left-hand side of the page
- A visible contact option – a support number at the bottom of the page, for example – for unresolved queries
When your knowledge base is well designed, it will streamline support and improve customer satisfaction.
3. Create engaging and effective resources
Written content is the foundation of most knowledge bases, but incorporating videos, screen recordings, diagrams, infographics and illustrations can make complex topics such as processes easier to understand. Plus, offering multiple formats ensures customers can consume information in the way that suits them best.
Once you’ve decided on the types of content to include, set clear deadlines to keep contributors on track. If multiple team members are involved, appoint a project lead with strong organisational skills to oversee progress, ensure consistency, and keep everything moving on schedule.
4. Upload and publish your content
The right knowledge base software simplifies content uploads and reviews performance data. While the publishing process will vary across platforms, your chosen solution should include these essential features:
- A search engine – that swiftly delivers relevant answers to customers
- Feedback and analytics – to track how customers use your products and identify areas for improvement
- Content management tools – for easy content creation, editing, scheduling and publishing
- AI and machine learning – to streamline maintenance, highlight relevant resources and fill knowledge gaps
Bear in mind that a well-structured, AI-powered knowledge base ensures customers can find the information they need – and fast.
3 best practices for setting up a knowledge base
When building your first knowledge base, avoiding common pitfalls is crucial. Poor navigation, technical jargon or vague answers can frustrate users rather than help them. Your knowledge base should be intuitive and genuinely helpful – empowering customers to find answers quickly.
Create a knowledge base that delivers seamless, user-friendly experiences with these knowledge management best practices:
1. Make complex knowledge simple to consume
An effective knowledge base design features intuitive navigation that makes it effortless for self-sufficient customers to find answers fast. Use clear, concise, and consistent categories to help users find what they’re looking for without frustration.
To make articles easy to discover, include keywords in titles so they show up in the search results. When crafting article titles, think like a customer. For example, people are more likely to search for “How can I report a stolen card” than “Reporting your lost card.” Aligning content with natural search behaviour ensures users get the right answers faster and with minimal effort.
2. Design a highly tailored experience
Jam-packing your help centre with information about every product and feature can overwhelm customers. If they can’t find relevant content, they’ll give up and reach out to an agent instead.
To improve accessibility, organise knowledge bases by product or service so customers can quickly locate answers. Add advanced search capabilities and position the search bar prominently for easy access. You can also use AI-powered chatbots to enhance the experience by delivering relevant knowledge base content based on the user’s inquiry, website activity, or stage in the buyer journey.
3. Use analytics and AI to detect trends and content gaps
Self-service analytics provide your support team with valuable insights into which knowledge base articles are the most effective and where customers are struggling – and AI-powered CRMs can detect self-service trends and patterns that an individual support agent might miss. This can help you identify any content gaps and emerging customer needs.
By analysing this data, you can refine existing resources and create new knowledge base articles that better align with customer queries – ensuring your knowledge base remains relevant and optimised for customer needs.
Remember, building a great knowledge base isn’t a one-time challenge – it requires ongoing updates and optimisation to remain relevant and effective
Start by creating articles that address your most common customer issues, then expand from there. Regularly review and update articles to ensure they remain relevant as your products, services and business evolve. Use metrics like page views and bounce rates to identify what content resonates with customers and where improvements are needed.
By maintaining a well-organised knowledge base, you’ll be equipped to grow your community and build deeper connections with your customers.
Ready to enhance self-service and scale 24/7 support? Quick and easy to implement, Engage Hub’s AI Knowledge Base intelligently responds to your customers and helps you discover gaps and blind spots in your FAQs – empowering you to efficiently handle customer queries.
Get in touch to find out more.
