Knowledge base is a centralized database of knowledge about a product or service, designed to promote a deep understanding of a company’s sales cycle.
With this tool, a company can be ahead of competition and ensure a higher level of security for information about products, services, and internal processes.
Read this article to learn more about this topic!
What is knowledge base?
Knowledge base is a platform that centralizes information about its solutions, procedures, processes, and other business aspects.
Then, it can be defined as a virtual library that stores contents in different formats and about various subjects, democratizing the access to internal knowledge, providing rapid problem resolution and fast answers to user questions.
How does knowledge base work?
As seen above, knowledge base is a large virtual library with information about many aspects of a company, stored in different formats such as videos, e-books, infographics, and much more.
It is a central repository of relevant data that is accessible to customers and/or employees. It allows users to easily and quickly find answers for their questions by themselves, improving self-service and customer experience.
Types of knowledge base
A knowledge base can have different shapes and sizes. However, the main types are internal and external:
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Internal knowledge bases
Refers to a company’s private database, commonly used in employee onboarding, SaaS customer service, and support and self-service calls.
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External knowledge bases
External is usually for product users. Therefore, regardless of where it is hosted, it offers reading, convenience, and entertainment materials for current or potential customers.
Why you need a knowledge base
In a connected world, people demand increasingly easier and faster access to accurate information. That’s why a rich and comprehensive knowledge base is important for different departments of an organization:
- IT: it proposes everything from problem resolution to employee training/onboarding and general questions for instructions and support;
- HR: it offers employee training/onboarding, distribution of company policies and payment schedules;
- Legal department: it helps with contracts and other approval processes, policies, trademarks, and registrations.
Benefits of a knowledge base
1. Fast service
One of its the main benefits is that customers can find the answers for their questions by themselves, which speeds up service.
This is possible because the answers are ready and documented. Customers only have to access the knowledge base and find the content to solve the problem.
2. Reduced employee costs
Customer service queries are often repetitive and have a low degree of complexity. Therefore, tutorials, articles, and videos that explain in detail how the solution works can help users solve the problem on their own.
Therefore, with a lower number of queries, a company can focus on more urgent and complex tasks.
3. Improved training to new employees
A knowledge base is also important for employee training. After all, the content can be used to train new hires on the company’s solutions, customers, and processes.
4. Reduction of rework
With improved employee training, failures are reduced and, consequently, rework is avoided, increasing productivity and reducing costs.
5. Increased team engagement
A good knowledge base needs the support and collaboration of employees from different departments, leading to highly engaged teams. As a result, professionals feel motivated and customer service reaches another level.
6. Higher customer satisfaction
It also helps improve customer experience as it allows users to solve problems by themselves, increasing their level of satisfaction.
Main knowledge base tools
Several tools can be used to create an internal knowledge base. To help you implement this system, we list the main platforms below:
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Trello
Trello is a management tool that allows the creation of project and process templates, which can be replicated for every new customer. It also allows board editing to fulfill every customer’s needs.
With Trello, you can create boards with employee and customer onboarding templates, ensuring that all steps are completed.
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Notion
Notion acts as a data library, facilitating access of authorized people and reducing the time spent searching for information.
It allows users to organize libraries with other departments and processes, centralize meeting notes, manage data, share content on pages, organize project stages, among other things.
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Miro
Miro is another workflow management tool for fast internal communication and creation of flowcharts. It’s an important resource because it combines relevant information about different departments of the company and facilitates communication between teams and team members.
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Sales CRM
One of the critical steps to good knowledge management is ensuring that information and data are not lost. For this reason, you should use a solution that can integrate contents into the company’s strategy, such as Milvus, which allows integration with various tools.
How to create a knowledge base
Now that you understand how this solution can help your company, it’s time to learn how to create a knowledge base.
1. Identify the purpose of your knowledge base
First, determine the target audience. It will help you define the content language, data formats, and organization strategies.
2. Assemble a multidisciplinary team to develop and validate contents
Then, create a multidisciplinary team for content development. The team members should know the processes and services offered by the company, such as technicians and users of every process listed.
3. Use agile methodologies to conduct the project
Creating a knowledge base takes time and involves the development of an implementation strategy. We suggest combining the process with an agile methodology for project management, as it will help you organize tasks and optimize results.
4. Keep it constantly updated
Every company implements changes in processes and resources. Therefore, you need a team for regularly analyzing the content and updating information based on the feedbacks you receive.
5. Use a comprehensive knowledge base software solution
When choosing a knowledge base software solution, don’t forget to consider the following aspects:
- Business size
- Resources required
- Tools available
- Compatibility with brand image
Conclusion
One of the main benefits of having a well-structured knowledge base is the easy access to information. After all, when customers quickly find answers to their questions, they feel more confident and satisfied with the company.
Also, efficient service can reduce demands for direct support and, consequently, team workload, optimizing internal resources.
You can create content that will increase productivity of analysts and customers, promoting much more efficiency in IT management. Milvus, as the best omnichannel solution, offers a comprehensive knowledge base resource.
Contact our consultants and take a free trial to learn how Milvus can help increase the efficiency of your operators and improve your service quality.