The way modern businesses succeed these days is by aiming to be as customer-centric as possible.
And that’s not just to thrive and be the best – it’s the minimum standard.
You see, modern customers have a ton of choices when it comes to the businesses and services they choose to work with; the differences between them are defined by a slight price difference, a quality variation, but most notably, the customer experience they have.
This can be broken down into so many different elements, including:
- Great products with fast delivery times
- Rapid and effective problem-solving
- Valuable content
- A human experience
- Great customer service
Did you know that 63% of customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience?
92% will leave after two or three.
These stats showcase how important it is to give your customers what they want, and one of the best ways to do this is by offering a comprehensive knowledge base.
And don’t worry, a fully-fledged, comprehensive, and quality knowledge base isn’t just reserved for the largest companies in the world with all the resources to invest. Even small companies can offer such a complete solution.
And today, we’re showing you how.
In this guide, you’ll gather key insights on creating a knowledge base, even as a small business. We’ll guide you every step of the way—from confronting the challenges small entities face to exploring how knowledge base software can be a real problem-solver and finally into the practical steps of creating your knowledge base.
Remember, creating a knowledge base isn’t about being a tech whizz or having endless resources—it’s about compiling the knowledge at your fingertips in an easily digestible and searchable form for your team and customers.
All coming together to offer the best customer experience possible.
Let’s dive in.
Addressing Small Business Challenges
First things first, let’s be honest and say that small businesses are likely to find the idea of putting together this massive collection of information in a customer-centric way daunting:
- Limited time to research and compile information
- A small team, which usually means resources are stretched thin
- Lack of initial technical expertise to set up and manage a knowledge base
Thankfully, there are accessible paths forward that can minimise these constraints significantly:
- Leverage Knowledge Base Software: Opt for user-friendly options that don’t require deep technical knowledge to set up or maintain.
- Start Small: Begin with a basic FAQ section and gradually expand your content as you gather more insights into your customers’ needs.
- Utilise Existing Resources: Repurpose content from manuals, product descriptions, and customer service logs as your initial knowledge base content.
On top of this, choosing the right tools and strategy can turn the creation of a knowledge base from a daunting task into a manageable and even enjoyable process.
To simplify things, we’ve broken the process down into just seven streamlined steps, offering a more streamlined structure.
How to Create a Knowledge Base in 7 Steps
1. Identify the Purpose of Your Knowledge Base
Determine the necessity for a knowledge base – is it for customer self-service, employee reference, or both?
This means taking the time to understand your audience’s needs, frequently asked questions and the gaps in current knowledge. You could spend weeks/months putting together a knowledge base answering thousands of potential questions, but what’s the point if no one is asking them?
Take time to figure out your audience (using data from your business), find the FAQs and create quality content that answers it fully. You don’t need to do more than that.
2. Define Core Elements
With the core information in mind, it’s time to start building your knowledge base. Take your top questions (let’s say 20 of them), and break them down into sections, menu options, or tabs.
Check out the Lyft knowledge base as an example:
As you can see, there’s a section for people who drive for Lyft and a section for those riding. A third section for those wanting to drive helps keep everything organised and easy to navigate.
Design-wise, you’ll need to include essential elements, such as an FAQ section, a search bar for easy navigation, and a contact/support link for further help.
Consider additional features such as putting popular articles front and center on the homepage, related content recommendations (automated using data), and feedback options to enhance user experience.
3. Plan Your Knowledge Base Structure
The aim of the game when it comes to knowledge bases is to make it as customer-centric as possible. This means focusing on usability and organisation to facilitate smooth navigation and easy answers.
If people struggle to find what they’re looking for, thus leading to frustration and possibly an irritated phone call, your knowledge base isn’t doing its job correctly.
The best way to cover this is to structure the knowledge base according to audience type, for example, different sections for customers and employees or categorisation based on product types, user actions, or user expertise levels.
4. Gather and Prepare Content
With all this setup and ready to go, it’s time to start writing and compiling your content. Start with maybe 10 – 20 posts, defined by looking over the information, such as customer support enquiries and common questions.
You’ll probably want to consult with your support and sales teams for the best results and identify any existing relevant content you can use or repurpose (saving you time and resources)
Utilise a spreadsheet or a similar tool to list topics and assign subject matter experts for content creation.
5. Organise and Refine Knowledge Base Content
Take all your compiled content and curate it into the predefined categories from the earlier step.
Ensure every article is placed in an appropriate category to maintain structure and coherence.
6. Implement and Customise with Knowledge Base Software
With your content ready to go, it’s time to choose a suitable knowledge base software that meets your requirements and allows customisation. You could always create your own web pages, perhaps designing the site and uploading your content via blog posts.
However, a dedicated knowledge base application, like Issuebear, will make life so much easier. Simply copy and paste your content into the text boxes, organise where you want the content to go, and that’s it.
7. Review, Test, and Launch
As amazing as this would be, the chances are you won’t get your knowledge base right the first time. Sometimes, you can never guess what customers and their expectations will be, even with a ton of data on your side.
Therefore, view your knowledge base as a living, breathing entity that needs love and care to develop. Before going live, thoroughly review the knowledge base for accuracy, completeness, and usability.
You may even want to consider conducting a beta test with a limited audience to gather feedback and make necessary adjustments.
When you’re happy with the result, launch the knowledge base and continue to update and refine it based on user interaction and feedback.
By following these seven steps, organisations can create a functional and efficient knowledge base that serves the needs of their users while providing a self-service option for accessing information.
How to Create a Knowledge Base with Issuebear
Looking to make this process even easier?
It’s time to bring Issuebear on board.
Designed with small businesses in mind, Issuebear helps make knowledge base creation as easy as possible yet ensures far better results than just a simple FAQ page. Simply load up Issuebear, create your knowledge base, and access a ton of easy features, including:
- Comprehensive text formatting
- Write articles in Markdown or via a word-processor style editor
- Easy image uploads and embedding
- Syntax-highlighted content
- Complete collections and category control
- Full access control (everyone or only agents, staff, customers)
- And so much more
All you need to do is get your content, paste it into the simple text editor, refine and optimise, and publish.
Creating a knowledge base has never been easier.
Conclusion
And there we have it: knowledge base creation made simple.
As you can see, a well-executed knowledge base can be invaluable, enhancing customer experience by providing quicker, more comprehensive responses and streamlining internal processes by creating a centralised source of vital information.
Basically, it helps your business win when it comes to customer support.
So, why not get started today?
