What is a Knowledge Base Software?

Let’s say you are an online retailer selling sportswear on your website. You probably get a lot of queries from customers - questions regarding size issues, what materials the clothes are made of, shipping costs, and so on. Instead of answering the same questions again and again, you can compile answers for these frequently asked questions using a Knowledge Base software, and host them in your support portal so customers can get the answers they need without having to talk to your agents.

Over 53% of respondents in a Forrester survey said they are likely to abandon their purchase if they can’t find an answer to their question quickly. A comprehensive Knowledge Base can ensure that you don’t lose that 53% of customers at all.

So if you are a online retailer, let’s say selling sportswear, a help desk software will help you store all the queries coming in from multiple places. You can automatically categorize and prioritize them and respond as necessary.

Let’s say a customer emails you to ask when a particular brand of sneakers will be available. You say it will be available again only during the fall season, which is three months away. If the customer contacts you again on twitter in three months, your helpdesk software will provide you the context of the previous conversation so you know in advance what the customer is going to ask. You can use this knowledge to respond to queries accordingly or even be proactive with your answers. Your help desk software can also seamlessly merge these two conversation threads across Email and Twitter so it is easier for you to manage without having to switch between tools. But the customer will still get the response on the channel they want - which is Twitter in this case.

Small and growing businesses should typically focus on developing their product, services and customer experience better. Without adequate agents, a small sized business might become overwhelmed with too many tickets quickly. However, hiring too many agents early on can also be a huge drain on the finances. The best way to tackle both problems is to create and maintain a comprehensive Knowledge Base. With a well-stocked knowledge base, your customers can go find answers themselves, removing the need for extra agents to interact with them. With a well-structured Knowledge Base, you can still have a small, nimble support team to tackle tough issues while ensuring your customers still have a good experience and get the answers they need quickly.

Enterprises typically cater to customers across countries, and languages. They need to have answers prepared for a wider variety of questions across a larger base of products. Agents may be hired rapidly to scale as per business requirements but will still need to be trained for day-to-day operations. Having an extensive independent Knowledge Base portal, structured to contain answers segregated by products across topics, with an FAQ section for quick reference will help enterprise businesses to easily deflect any routine incoming queries to their knowledge base so customers can fix problems themselves while still having agents on hand to deal with any problems that the knowledge base cannot handle. With a good knowledge base system, Enterprises can also customize the portal entirely to reflect their brand so the customer experience is never broken through the entire support cycle.