Customer Service Knowledge Base: Process & Best Practices

A customer service knowledge base could very well be the silver bullet to many of your customer service challenges – clogged helplines, burnt-out agents and frustrated customers, to name a few. Sounds like a gross overpromise? Go through this scenario and you’re sure to have a change of heart:  

“Please stand by for further assistance…” 

(Gibberish Music) 

“Your needs are important to us. Please hold while we connect you to a representative…” 

Have you been on the receiving end of an automated message like this? Probably yes. Being left on hold for a good 10 or 20 minutes to get simple troubleshooting assistance was an everyday occurrence sometime back. Until the customer service knowledge base came on the horizon. 

A customer service knowledge base enables brands to deliver proactive customer support so customers get the information they seek quickly, without calling 1-800, leading to instant gratification. Since it empowers customers to self-solve routine queries, there are fewer calls made to call center agents, which frees their bandwidth for more cognitive queries. 

A knowledge base also has business benefits: a study by Aberdeen Group shows that companies that invest in strong knowledge management practices see a 15%-30% improvement in agent productivity in their contact centers.  

Higher productivity = Higher efficiency = Significant cost savings 

Setting up a knowledge base for customer service may sound intimidatingly technical, but with the stepwise approach outlined in this article, it will be super simple, we promise! But before getting into that, let’s discuss what a customer service knowledge base is, what it should consist of and how you can build an impressive one for your company.  

What is a customer service knowledge base? 

A customer service knowledge base is a company-created help portal that collates resources to help customers find solutions to problems and queries on their own. One of the key pillars of customer self-service, a knowledge base offers information pertaining to: 

• Product and service documentation: Includes how-to manuals, explainer videos, product catalogs, among other resources.  
• Frequently asked questions: Skimmable answers to regular customer queries around product or service details, pricing, shipping, renewals, returns and more. 
• Business information: Location, contact information, company policies, directory, etc. 
• Policies and procedures: Including privacy and security, terms of service, return policies and warranties. 
• Press releases and updates: Information for customers to stay updated on your company news including media coverage, and the latest product updates, bug fixes, and new features. 

In a nutshell, it functions like a digital help center, delighting the 59% of customers who prefer to self-seek resolutions instead of calling support, as well as agents who save up to 40% of time that they were erstwhile spending on calls.   

From a business standpoint as well, customer service management becomes effortless when you create a one-time, extensive knowledge base that resolves routine issues at source and frees up agent resources to tackle more complex issues. Let’s take a deeper look at its benefits below. 

Benefits of a customer service knowledge base  

As explained, a customer service knowledge base is invaluable for any customer-centric company. If you’re still skeptical, take a look at its indisputable benefits here:   

1. Round-the-clock support 

Did you know that about 80% of Americans say that a good customer support experience includes speed, convenience and knowledgeable help? Customers in other geographies say the same thing. In the era of instant gratification, a knowledge base can help provide customers with quick and 24/7 support that live support just can’t deliver.  

2. Higher customer satisfaction 

Given that 89% of companies today compete on customer satisfaction, providing impeccable customer experiences is key to business success. Self-service via a strong knowledge management system is a tried-and-tested way to increase customer satisfaction by at least 15%, according to Gartner’s estimates. 

3. Cost savings 

A regularly updated knowledge base can reduce costs by solving most customer issues in first contact, reducing costly support calls. Your call center agents can then focus on important queries. For instance, a DIY resolution can cost pennies to a B2B company while a live chat support interaction can cost more than $13!  

4. Higher agent productivity

Acting as the first line of defense, the customer knowledge base handles repetitive queries independently, ensuring only high-touch customer service queries reach your contact center agents, keeping their queues unclogged and productivity high. It can also act as a ready repository of answers and resources to help agents during calls, saving them considerable time and effort and allowing them to handle more calls. 

5. Maintains consistent service levels 

A customer service knowledge base is also a good way to ensure consistent service levels across all customer service channels. By standardizing the troubleshooting process, brand voice and product information in its content, the knowledge base ensures your brand’s service levels are maintained, which helps foster customer trust.   

Learn More: A Detailed Guide to Calculating Call Center Service Level 

How a customer service knowledge base works: A practical example  

An effective customer service knowledge base is accessible, discoverable, comprehensive and dynamic, tailoring the self-service experience to match every user’s needs and content consumption preferences. Let’s understand what that looks like for an e-commerce brand:  

As you can see, a comprehensive and customer-oriented knowledge base can eliminate friction from all the touchpoints a customer/prospect encounters in their interaction with a brand, speeding them from awareness to purchase and ever-lasting loyalty. Is your customer self-service strategy working as well as depicted or intended? Maybe not. Here’s what might be going wrong, as explained by Service Guru, Martin Hill-Wilson. Give it a watch! 

Building an efficient customer service knowledge base 

Creating a customer service knowledge base does not have to be complicated. With a clear self-service strategy and robust knowledge base tools, you can get your knowledge base up and running in a short time. Here’s how to get started: 

Step 1: Define the scope and objective of your knowledge base 

The first step to begin with is to determine the "why" and "how" of your knowledge base. For starters, you could want to improve customer self-service and reduce agent workload. To achieve this, you could aim to make answers to common queries easily accessible on your website. 

How?  

• Identify common customer pain points: Use your audience profiles, customer journeys and survey forms to get an in-depth understanding of what troubles your customers. Apart from explicitly stated feedback, look into the unstated needs and pain points of your audience by studying their interaction behavior at all customer touchpoints. This way, you are able to predict issues they may have now or ahead.   
• Identify required content themes: Find broad content themes from your top contact drivers. These will make the base of your knowledge base and help customers explore more. These could be contextual or directly linked to your offerings.  
• Identify content formats: Determine how you want to address these issues. Think of varied content formats to present topics most effectively. For example, technical troubleshooting is best presented through explainer videos whereas product catalogs are through descriptive product descriptions, FAQs and images. Additionally, caters to different consumption patterns via FAQs, manuals, user guides, blogs, thought articles, videos and interactive learning.  
• Define clear-cut goals, KPIs and metrics: Create a measurable knowledge base strategy outlining goals and metrics to measure its success and identify gap areas.  

  Expert tips: 

• Clearly define the boundaries of your knowledge base to avoid scope creep and ensure focused, relevant content. 
• Scrape social media and third-party chatrooms to get deeper insights about customer pain points (called social listening).  

Step 2: Get the right tool and team 

No project can be successful without clear accountability. Likewise, building a customer service knowledge base requires collective team efforts under a leader who understands your product as well as your customers. Build a cross-functional team from product, support and sales to get a holistic perspective on what must be included in the knowledge base.   

Expert tips: 

• Choose a cross-functional leader who understands the market, your product and customer pain points.  
• Provide the leader with decision-making authority to decide the direction of the knowledge base.  
• Equip the leader with all required tools such as access to the best knowledge base software, project management software and a reliable team.   

Additionally, choose the right knowledge base software that offers features like AI assistance and codeless architecture, making it easier for you to build out your knowledge system. Here are some other must-have features to look for: 

Step 3: Gather and organize content 

Once you have the team and tools sorted, it is time to get to work. As with other customer service tools, make customer-centricity a priority in your knowledge base. Focus on creating high-quality content that will resonate with your audience. The steps to arrive at this are:  

Content collection: Gather existing documentation, customer queries and feedback from all customer-facing teams like support, sales and success.  

Categorization: Organize gathered content into logical categories and subcategories (based on product, topic or issue type) and decide on tagging.  

Content prioritization: Prioritize the high-demand content and develop it in different formats to cater to all types of audiences.  

Content standardization: Build authoring guidelines and templates to maintain consistency in the messaging, positioning and quality of content.  

Review process: Delegate a team of reviewers for editorial and product check. They should ensure your content is discoverable, readable and accurate at all times. 

Content migration: Migrate all content from your CMS to your KB, housing it in logical folders that are searchable by all. 

Example: 

For a software company, a troubleshooting guide may include step-by-step instructions for specific bugs, annotated screenshots and a video tutorial. In search, categories could include Installation & Setup, Feature Guides, Error Codes & Troubleshooting, and User Account Management. 

  Expert tips: 

• Post content based on priorities such as product releases or updates. 
• Include different content types to match the learning preferences of different users.  
• Create a style and language guide for consistency. 
• Use a tiered structure with broad categories leading to more specific topics and include a search function for quick access. 
• Include a community forum for customers to help each other.  
• Review content periodically for relevant updates. 

Step 4: Create and publish your content 

Once you organize your content structure, it is time to actually create your knowledge base. This would include written content, multimedia elements to support different types of learners and search engine optimization to ensure discoverability.  

Whether you choose to create content in-house or outsource it to external creators, it is important to have a review process to establish standardization. Consider having subject matter experts for technical accuracy and editors for language and tonal consistency.  

Expert tips: 

• Create broad templates for different types of content to maintain consistency.  
• Have internal subject matter experts look at every piece of content that is published.  
• Restrict editing access to certain members only.  
• Outline clear delivery and publishing schedules to stay on track.  

Step 5: Integrate with existing systems and channels 

Your knowledge base’s accessibility and integration play a key role in its application and adaptation. Let’s tackle these factors one by one. 

Accessibility: Ensure your knowledge base is accessible not just on desktop, mobile and in-app help sections, but also integrated with your chatbots, live chat, social media, WhatsApp and more. This will ensure an omnichannel customer experience that is seamless and memorable.  

Integration: Effective integration of your knowledge base with your tech stack is vital for efficient information retrieval. Key integrations include CRM integrations, helpdesks, call center software, sales and marketing tools and other customer-facing systems.  

Expert tips: 

• Track your knowledge base’s usage metrics closely and conduct root cause analysis in case of dips. 
• Integrate it with your Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems with options to allow callers to receive help resources on texts.  
• Make support escalation easier for customers who do not find satisfactory responses. This can be done by including support details in all your content. 

Step 6: Test and refine 

Before publishing your knowledge base, it is recommended to do a beta test on a sample group of internal employees or real users, to identify bugs and experience gaps proactively. Incorporate user feedback before going live to avoid ugly surprises and last-minute mishaps.  

After bug testing and fixing, soft-launch your customer service knowledge base internally, distributing it among your team, partners and vendors. You may also want to incorporate this into agent consoles and tools to monitor their dependence on your new database.  

Monitor analytics to understand your KB’s usage and customer feedback and keep refining the experience until it works as intended. Track basic metrics like article views, search terms and time spent on pages. For more in-depth insights on your KB’s business impact, track KPIs like ticket volumes, call volumes, chatbot usage, etc.  

If you use Sprinklr’s Knowledge Base Software, you get advanced analytics such as: 

• Consolidated reports across all channels 
• Top referring domains 
• Agent feedback insights, and more! 

Expert tips: 

• Leverage AI-powered analytics to detect and analyze patterns in user behavior and predict potential issues before they get out of control. 
• Use customer surveys to understand user sentiment and content utility. Feedback should be solicited around navigation, content clarity and user experience. 
• Set real-time alerts to monitor sudden KPI changes, such as a spike in ticket volume, grabbing these opportunities to improve your content.  

Use AI to simplify and scale up your knowledge management 

If establishing and maintaining a customer service knowledge base looks like a lot of work, integrate AI at every step of the journey. AI-powered knowledge bases offer enhanced functionality, efficiency and user experience without burning a hole in your pocket.  

Wondering how that happens? Here are just some of the ways how AI simplifies and scales up your knowledge management: 

Intelligent search and retrieval: AI-powered algorithms are being used to improve the accuracy and relevance of search results. Powered by Natural Language Processing, AI-led knowledge bases can understand user queries better and optimize them for search engines.  

Content generation: AI can be an excellent tool to assist in creating and updating content by providing outlines, first drafts, summaries or translations.  

Content categorization: AI is adept at and efficient in categorizing and tagging content based on its relevance and subject matter.  

Interactive learning: Using AI, you can create and facilitate interactive learning modules and simulations within the knowledge base. For example, AI-driven interactive guides and tutorials can help users understand complex procedures through hands-on practice and feedback. 

Insightful analytics: Trend jacking in user interactions to predict future information needs is a forte of AI. This can guide the creation of new content and identify areas where the existing knowledge base may need enhancement. 

Best practices to implement in a knowledge base 

Establishing and maintaining a customer service knowledge base is a perennial task as new user needs and product issues keep cropping up. While you navigate through the maze of knowledge management processes, implementing the best practices below will ease many of your challenges and set you up for success.   

1. Avoid jargon 

Many of your knowledge base users may not be industry experts or technologically savvy. Throwing complex language and industry jargon can deter them from using the KB to its full potential. Use simple, jargon-free language, using visual aids for explaining technical concepts and multistep processes. Also, keeping in sight the special needs of visually challenged users, ensures your content is compliant with accessibility regulations.  

2. Leverage AI 

As explained, AI can make a world of difference to improve your knowledge base’s search functionality, content recommendations and analytical powers, saving you tons of time while delivering a gratifying experience to your customers. Take advantage of AI as much as possible, making it a strategic partner in your customer self-service strategy. 

Read more: The A-Z Guide to AI Self-Service   

3. Integrate across all channels 

A customer service knowledge base is only as useful as it is to find and implement. Integrate your knowledge base in all digital channels (email, chatbot, live chat, social media, review platforms, etc.) and ensure you update everywhere when you release changes. 

4. Focus on user education 

A knowledge base can be useful for internal employees just as much as customers. Distribute it across all teams and train important stakeholders in using the knowledge base via live demos and tutorials. Include it as part of your customer onboarding so that all new customers know how to use it right from the start. 

Ready to build an AI-powered customer service knowledge base? 

Unlock the full potential of your team’s knowledge with Sprinklr’s AI-powered knowledge base software. Seamlessly integrate and organize your company’s information, making it easily accessible and searchable. Our advanced AI algorithms ensure that your team can find the right answers quickly, boosting productivity and reducing downtime. With intuitive interfaces and smart suggestions, your teams will have the tools they need to collaborate effectively and innovate faster.  

Say goodbye to information silos and hello to a smarter, more connected workplace. Sign up for a Sprinklr demo today! 

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