When it comes to running a business, it’s important to ensure that your customers are well cared for whenever a question or issue arises. Great customer support is one of the key things a business can have, not only in supporting their customers but also in building a level of trust in your company within them. However there can be times when you can’t get to all of your customers’ inquiries: how can you still bring them high-quality support when things either get too busy or when you and your employees are away from the office? One way to do this is through the creation of a knowledge base, which is a library of helpful articles that can help your customers resolve their questions and issues themselves when it’s needed. In this article we’ll discuss the importance and benefits of these knowledge bases, and how you can create your very own for your business!
As mentioned previously, a Knowledge Base is essentially a library of helpful information and articles that can assist your customers in solving any questions or problems they may be having at that time. Knowledge bases are usually broken up into a variety of different categories and subcategories, allowing you to better organize your content and in turn making it easier for your customers to find what they’re looking for.
Gone are the days of scouring through search engine results or outdated manuals. A knowledge base allows businesses to consolidate their wealth of information into a single, easily accessible hub on their website. Whether it's FAQs, troubleshooting guides, product manuals, or best practices, everything resides in one place. This centralized approach not only saves time for your customers but also ensures consistency across all customer interactions.
Imagine a customer encountering an issue at any hour of the day: what would happen if you or your team is offline and unavailable to help resolve their issue? With a dedicated knowledge base, customers can have 24/7 access to a comprehensive library of resources. This empowers them to find answers to their questions independently, creating a sense of self-reliance and satisfaction. Remember: quick resolutions lead to happier customers, which in turn can help boost retention rates and loyalty.
For support teams, having a knowledge base created and maintained can be a game-changer. It can act as a first line of defense, deflecting repetitive inquiries from customers and freeing up your support team to focus on more complex issues. It can also assist your support team by being a robust resource to reference while supporting your customers, which can lead to decreased response times and more accurate solutions for your customers. This in turn can result in both increased efficiency and higher productivity for your support team.
When you’re first starting off on creating your knowledge base articles, the best thing you can do is to focus on common questions and problems your customers face. Speak with your customer support team to learn what common inquiries they receive day to day, review your support inbox to see if there’s a pattern of specific issues that come in, or review comments under your social media posts to see what your customers are saying. Focusing on creating knowledge base articles around those common questions can not only help resolve most of your customers’ inquiries more quickly, but can also lead to saving your support team more time from needing to answer said inquiries in the future.
Another key step to take when creating knowledge base articles is to be as detailed as possible when writing up the solution. Imagine that your customer is brand new to your product or service: break the information down into easy to understand steps that they can follow without confusion. Using bullet points or numbered steps within your articles can also help with making your content much easier to follow along with. Doing this will allow your customers to better understand how to solve their question(s) as well as prevent your article from being difficult to follow (remember: you want your articles to solve your customers’ questions, not add more confusion or frustration to them).
Another way to help make your knowledge base articles more simple to follow is through the use of images and videos, as some of your customers may better understand information visually rather than through reading an article. Take images of each step that you can use for the different steps outlined in your article, and circle or point to key areas via shapes and arrows within the image (this can be done through tools such as Canva’s free online photo editor). You can also record yourself walking through each step of your solution through such tools as Loom and add it to your article as another way for your customers to digest the information.
One final key step to take for your knowledge base articles is to ensure that you organize them clearly within your knowledge base, and to keep them up to date with any changes that occur. As mentioned before, it's key to organize your articles in different categories and subcategories within your knowledge base in order to make the information your customers are looking for more simple to find. Create these categories/subcategories as new page paths on your knowledge base, and from there create each new article under their corresponding category/subcategory.
It’s also important to review and update your articles regularly with any changes that have occurred since the last time you updated it, ensuring that your customers are not following outdated information. We recommend updating articles relative to the product or service being updated as soon as possible after a new change is implemented, and to also review your articles at least once a quarter to ensure no key updates or information are missing from them.
Although this may require support from a developer, one of the best things you can also do when setting up your knowledge base is to implement a search bar for it. This will allow your customers to find the information they’re looking for much faster than scouring different sections and pages, saving them more time.
Now that you know the importance of having a knowledge base on your website and how to create effective knowledge base articles, what if I told you there was a tool that could easily help you get your brand new knowledge base up and running? Not only that, but what if I told you that this tool could show you key insights about your knowledge base, such as how helpful your customers thought specific articles were or what they were searching for on your knowledge base? Enter HubSpot’s Knowledge Base tool, a tool that can do all this and much more in order to help your customers find the answers to their questions quickly and give you insights on how well your knowledge base is performing and how to improve it! Let’s go through some of the top benefits of hosting your knowledge base on HubSpot:
HubSpot's Knowledge Base tool isn't just a place where you can create your knowledge base—it can also be a goldmine of insightful data just waiting to be explored! You can gain valuable insights into what your customers are searching for the most in your knowledge base, how long they view each article, and ratings on how well the article was able to help answer the customer’s question. Armed with this information, you can refine your knowledge base with new articles, optimize your current articles, and tailor your support strategies for maximum impact.
Your business is unique, and HubSpot understands this! The Knowledge Base tool allows you to completely customize your knowledge base to align with your brand aesthetics and voice. From customizable brand templates to custom URLs, businesses can create a knowledge base that reflects their brand identity, helping build trust and credibility with their customers.
As mentioned above, it’s important to organize your articles into different categories and subcategories in order to create a well-organized knowledge base. With HubSpot’s Knowledge Base tool, you can easily create new categories and subcategories for your knowledge base without the trouble of needing to manually create new page paths for each category/subcategory. You can also associate specific words and phrases to your articles through the use of tags, which can help improve the search results for your customers when they search your knowledge base via the search bar.
There may be times where your customers may not be able to find the answer they’re looking for on your knowledge base—how can you ensure they still receive the answer they’re looking for? With HubSpot’s Knowledge Base tool, you can quickly set up a support form that customers can submit when they need more assistance. These submissions will then be created as support tickets for your support team to review and respond to.
What if you’d like to use all of the features of HubSpot’s Knowledge Base tool, but feel like you can’t because you already have an existing knowledge base? Not to worry, you can import all of your existing knowledge base articles from your current system over to HubSpot through their import tool, allowing you to quickly get your current knowledge base up and running on HubSpot in no time!
The last thing your support team wants to do is give your customers repetitive information that they already viewed and tried. With HubSpot’s Knowledge Base tool, your support team can view what specific knowledge base articles your customers have already viewed, helping prevent them from sending the same information and work towards other potential solutions. And as mentioned previously, it can also help your support team in answering questions they may not have the answer to much quicker and more accurately.
With the importance of customer satisfaction continuing to be a major part of companies’ business goals, having a detailed and well-organized knowledge base can help your business reach those goals at a much faster rate. By centralizing knowledge, empowering users, optimizing support workflows, and providing valuable insights, knowledge bases transform customer interactions into delightful experiences.
For businesses looking to elevate their customer support game, drive support team efficiency, and gather valuable data, adopting HubSpot's Knowledge Base tool is not just a choice—it's a strategic advantage.