Category: Knowledge-Management

Why an FAQ Page Is Not A Substitute for A Knowledge Base

Posted on | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment on Why an FAQ Page Is Not A Substitute for A Knowledge Base

There are two key approaches that companies take to facilitate this. They include an FAQ page or a knowledge base.

But how do they differ?

FAQ Pages

Insufficient Data Leads to Insufficient FAQs

Generally presented on a static web page, FAQs are simply a list of frequently asked questions and answers. They aim to cover and address customers’ routine questions online and effortlessly, but unfortunately often miss the mark. Due to the lack of knowledge analytics, the frequently asked questions and answers that are included on such a page are usually based off gut or opinion rather than data itself. Because there is no data stored regarding popularity of routine questions, many companies don’t truly know their FAQs and rely on guesswork. Consequently, the FAQ content is often lacking, limited or general, resulting in customers feeling frustrated – which in customer service is exactly what you want to avoid.

An image that shows the lack of information available on an FAQ page.

Lack of Ownership Results in Inefficiencies

When it comes to the management of an FAQ page, editing, adding and updating can prove cumbersome. Built using basic code, even making one simple update to the content can involve a long chain of command. For instance, someone at head office notifies their team who must tell the web team or agency, who must then notify the developers to make a change. This inefficient way of information sharing means that mistakes are easily made or customers miss out on vital information due to FAQ page mechanics. This is only exacerbated in larger companies where small changes are not made ad-hoc, but instead they are collected and sent in bulk, denying customers of even more important information.

Information Architecture: The Lack Thereof

FAQs page do not utilise information architecture: the structural design of shared information for efficient user experience. Without the organisation, labelling, categorisation and lack of effective search systems, FAQs cannot deliver a positive customer experience. Instead, customers often find themselves going around in circles with no adequate results found and a limited access to content.

Existing Customers’ Needs Are Not Catered To

Furthermore, the content on FAQ pages generally address the basic queries of new customers, for example opening hours, delivery information, returns policies and so on. What they fail to cater to are the needs of your regular customers who will have more detailed routine queries. Questions that are product related, how-tos and purchase follow ups. Whilst customer acquisition is important, neglecting existing customers can prove detrimental to business. Consider the importance of customer value and loyalty and choose a knowledge tool that suits both new and existing customers’ needs.

Knowledge Bases

A knowledge base on the other hand acts as your company’s centralised library of knowledge, connecting to all outlets to provide customers with a wide range of accurate, consistent answers.

An image to demonstrate how customer service technologies interlink

Ownership Allows for Efficient, Real-time Knowledge Updates

A knowledge base is a fundamental knowledge management tool that is overseen by a Knowledge Manager to ensure the right information can be found by the right people at the right time. It can store thousands of knowledge articles containing key questions and answers, multimedia and downloads. The content residing in a knowledge base can be developed, updated and edited in real-time, these changes are instantly reflected on your website and any internal users are notified to promote transparency. Such knowledge is intricately organised using multi-layered algorithms, Natural Language Processing (NLP), categories and advanced search systems to ensure customers are served adequate results regardless of how a query is phrased.

Knowledge Analytics Reveal Your Most Popular Questions and More

Because knowledge bases are built on AI, every customer interaction is stored as data and can be interpreted using its analytics. This is how knowledge becomes a true asset, providing valuable intel on customer behaviour, product and services, errors, bugs and of course, what a company’s most frequently asked questions are.

One Centralised Source Promotes Company-wide Consistency

Companies that implement knowledge base software benefit from operational efficiency. Because all knowledge belongs to one single source, the risk of error is significantly reduced. There is no long chain of command as a Knowledge Manager who is committed to optimising knowledge will amend content whenever is necessary. A knowledge base’s agility allows it to integrate with every customer facing and internal portal your company has, whether its live chat, web self-service , chatbot or internal knowledge , the results generated come from the same source every time for consistency and quality.

All Customer Types Are Served Through A Range of Tools

Unlike the static web page that FAQs are hosted on, a knowledge base gives companies choices as to how to present knowledge to their customers, including:

A self-service pop-up

A self-service widget

A self-service page

A chatbot

An icon for Synthetix Chat product

Live Chat

A combination or all of the above

Find out more about knowledge base integrations here.

This allows a greater volume of customers with different needs, at different stages of the buying cycle and with different query types to be catered to, enhancing CX, the likelihood that the query is resolved and therefore positive CSAT scores.

The key differences between a KB and FAQ page

Knowledge BaseFAQ page
Artificial intelligence:
AI and NLP are utilised to enable First Contact Resolution and therefore reduce overall costs.		✓✗
Knowledge analytics:
Knowledge analytics are available to provide intel on knowledge content, customer behaviour, errors and more.		✓✗
Ownership:
A dedicated Knowledge Manager has full ownership to ensure smooth and efficient operations.		✓✗
Consistent knowledge:
One centralised source of information is used, allowing for consistent company-wide knowledge sharing.		✓✗
Information Architecture:
Information is organised using search systems, categorisation and labelling to help users find the information they require.		✓✗
Focus on new and existing customers:
Knowledge can be presented in a variety of ways to serve customers at different buyer stages.		✓✗

Impact on Consistency of Information

A key difference between FAQs and a knowledge base involves the consistency of information that is delivered to customers. The processes behind an FAQ page are inefficient and different sources of information are updated at different times leading to discrepancies which can prove detrimental for companies.

A small information divergence is annoying for customers, proving time wasting as they must take care of problem solving and discrepancies by themselves, this in turn can affect customer satisfaction resulting in poor CSAT scores.

However, what is more damaging for a brand is when a major update is not cohesive across channels and therefore the FAQ page is not changed in a timely manner. Inconsistencies in major delivery updates or critical allergy announcements can not only result in influxes of complaints that lead to a bad reputation, but more seriously, PR nightmares, legal complications and at worst, someone is hurt.

It is crucial for business that the information served to customers if always consistent, up-to-date and accurate. All of this can be guaranteed using knowledge base software. Because all information outlets, such as self-service pages, chatbots and live chat tools get their information from one centralised source – the knowledge base – the risk of inconsistencies are significantly reduced encouraging smoother operations and happier customers.

Impact on Operational Efficiency

Another fundamental difference between FAQs and a knowledge base includes operational efficiency, in particular operational costs and overheads.

Knowledge bases are significantly more cost efficient to run than FAQ pages, this is because the updating of an FAQ page requires a long chain of command, multiple people and teams, plus several layers of signoffs. This equates to an accumulation of high staffing costs. A knowledge base on the other hand, is managed, maintained and updated by one Knowledge Manager, removing all operational costs that would otherwise be associated with an FAQ page’s operations.

When it comes to running an FAQ page VS running a knowledge base, an FAQ page is considerably more expensive. The larger your company is, the larger the cost gap will grow.

Due to a knowledge base’s depth of answers available and the agile AI-powered search system that customers use to retrieve results, contact levels are significantly reduced, which subsequently cuts overall customer service and contact centre costs. In fact, a study by Gartner revealed that an 18% reduction in support costs occurred by encouraging knowledge management tools such as a knowledge base. Because a knowledge base has the capability to automate routine queries – giving customers the tools they need to answer their own questions online – agent assisted channels are given more capacity. These expensive contact channels like email or telephone now have a greater bandwidth to deal with customer issues that are more complex and require human assistance.

FAQ pages, in comparison, seldom provide customers with the answers they need, due to their simple setup, that unlike knowledge bases, are not built on AI or utilise NLP, they can never truly be a self-service tool. Instead they often send customers round in loops whereby customers’ frustrations only grow before inevitably having to call customer service to solve their problem. Their customer query has not been automated, high costs still occur and the customer is now annoyed.

To learn more about essential knowledge management tools, including knowledge bases, click here.

While it’s easy to get FAQs and a knowledge bases mixed up, the two are intricately different from one another. One includes a simple overview of basic information, whilst the other is an effective means to streamlined self-service. Most importantly, an FAQ page cannot be a substitute for a knowledge base.

Implementing a knowledge base into your customer service ecosystem helps to promote efficiency, reduce overheads, boost CX and of course improve CSAT scores. If you would like to learn more about knowledge management tools such as knowledge bases, you can do so here.

If you enjoyed this article and would like any advice regarding knowledge base solutions, please

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What Is Knowledge Management?

Posted on | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment on What Is Knowledge Management?
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“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” -Lewis Platt

What Is Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a practice used by a variety of companies to optimise their collective knowledge and the way is it used. It focuses on the process of identifying, capturing, organising, sharing and managing company knowledge.
Knowledge comes in many forms and can include:

  • Data
  • Information
  • Experience
  • Ideas
  • Perspectives

In recent decades, a shift in digitisation saw a greater demand for knowledge management; organisations learnt that the controlled and optimised sharing of knowledge could contribute to achieving operational and strategic objectives.

As a key function, it is responsible for integrating people, processes and knowledge management tools and technologies to encourage the seamless flow of knowledge throughout a company. Knowledge management considers knowledge as an asset and can reshape business culture into one that is collaborate, transparent and promotes knowledge sharing. 

The practice of knowledge management extends far beyond intranets and databases and helps businesses deal with both explicit and tactic knowledge.

Let’s discuss the differences:

Explicit Knowledge

This is the codified knowledge that can be found in company databases, documents, records and files. It is essential to business and simple to extract and share. Examples include policy documents or agent scripts.

Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is difficult to communicate and therefore hard to capture and share. It is usually derived from experience and practice and is unique to a business – which is why it is so valuable.

Tactic knowledge requires good knowledge management that handles it with great care, ensuring that nothing gets lost in translation.

Knowledge management seeks to extract explicit knowledge, unlock tactic knowledge and seamlessly distribute both to the appropriate people. This could include serving employees or customers via knowledge management technology such as CRMs, knowledge bases or customers self-service tools

What Is Knowledge Management Software?

One of the greatest challenges when it comes to knowledge management is knowing how to execute it. The best way to do this is by implementing knowledge management software that can help you deliver your knowledge management strategy successfully.

Another prominent challenge that businesses find is getting employees to embrace the discipline. Just like any new practice or change within the workplace there will always be some uncertainty. How do you overcome this? By making it easy for your employees to embrace – which is where good knowledge management software comes in.

Knowledge management software helps businesses simplify the knowledge management process by organising, storing and sharing knowledge in a sophisticated yet user-friendly way.

Read: The knowledge management system buyer’s guide.

A Knowledge Base for example, is a popular knowledge management tool that acts like a library of knowledge that can be accessed by your company and developed whenever is necessary.

Such knowledge management software can hold thousands of articles of knowledge. They are engineered using advanced search algorithms, categorisation and views to help companies save time and organise knowledge in a digestible way.

Machine learning principles and Natural Language Processing (NLP) make finding answers simple. An employee can type a question into the search bar and a series of relevant results will be displayed. A knowledge base will learn over time based on user interaction and results to optimise the answers given. These results can easily be edited, developed and shared to assist the successful execution of knowledge management.

Employees become advocates of such software, not only is everything available at the click of a button, all in one place, but they are given the freedom to learn and retain crucial knowledge before it is potentially lost with employees that leave a company.

Find out how to effectively roll-out internal knowledge base software, here.

What to Look for in Knowledge Management Software

Any good knowledge management strategy is centred around effective knowledge management software
But what should you look for in knowledge management software?

Implementation and Integration

Effective knowledge management software integrates seamlessly into an existing ecosystem of products.

The knowledge platform should fit in with current processes, workflows and other knowledge and customer service software, such as:

  • Internally-facing applications that gives your team access to your company’s wider information, assisting them when talking to customers. This allows agents to quickly pull answers from one reliable, centralised source resulting in an improvement in First Contact Resolution (FCR) and Average Handling Times (AHT).
  • Customer self-service software, helping customers answer their own questions online. This reduces the overall number of inbound contacts for contact centres to process.

To integrate with 3rd party systems such as email management tools or CRMs, knowledge management software should be built on open RESTful APIs. This ensures compatibility with most 3rd parties, providing you with a full, ‘360 degree’ implementation of shared knowledge into your organisation and holistic analytics.

An image showing how Self-Service, 3rd Party Tools and Contact Centres all integrate with Knowledge

For more on essential knowledge management tools, click here.

User-friendly Interface

Consider software that offers a practical agent desktop or web interface for you to choose from. Software that includes user-friendly features such as note-taking, categories, views, internal tabs for quick viewing and customisable interfaces can help employees navigate software better, giving them the right knowledge quickly.

Such knowledge management tools can increase agent efficiency, offering relevant answers and optimising the time and accuracy needed to resolve customer queries.

Natural Language Processing

Knowledge management software that uses natural language processing (NLP) and AI-powered machine learning principles can enhance the quality of the answer that is delivered to the user (whether that’s an employee or customer).

Choose software that understands naturally phrased questions, can learn and uses search intent; taking into consideration the keyword, intent, grammar and popularity of the question to deliver the most relevant result.

Analytics

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Without comprehensive analytics, companies are working in the dark, blind to the effectiveness of the content in their knowledge base. Reporting and analytics suites help businesses learn and develop their knowledge management and should be central to any knowledge management product. Popular queries can be pulled to develop content around, whilst agent performance reports can be produced to measure efficiency.

Why Is Knowledge Management Important?

Knowledge Management concentrates on what is known and not documented. An approach that can help enhance company culture, remove siloed knowledge and by doing so, increase organisational efficiency.

We have significantly more knowledge stored in our brains than we do written down. All too often this becomes a problem for businesses when their long-term employees leave – their knowledge leaves with them. Years of accumulated tacit knowledge is lost just like that. Recovering and reteaching such unique knowledge proves incredibly time-consuming, costly and often impossible.

Another risk that companies face by not adopting knowledge management, involves knowledge silos. In a time when flexi and remote working is becoming the new norm and teams are often dispersed across locations, there comes a lack of sharing and collaborative culture – and this is how knowledge silos are formed. Knowledge management aims to eliminate knowledge silos within organisations so that information is accessible to the right people whenever they require it.

Unless it is encouraged, teams don’t always communicate. If the value of knowledge sharing is clear to employees and knowledge can be seen as an asset, then it will eventually become part of the culture.

Without knowledge management your company could miss a lot of invaluable, irreplaceable knowledge, resulting in wasted resources, high costs and frustrated employees and customers. It’s all about knowing what your business needs to know and making this available to the right people in the best way for them.

Benefits of Good Knowledge Management

How can knowledge management benefit your company and customers?

Improved Efficiency

One of the biggest impacts on business when it comes to knowledge management, is improved efficiency – particularly at an operational level.

Organised, accessible and digestible knowledge makes for faster decision making and therefore less time spent dealing with routine questions. The impact of this can be seen on the bottom line – a study by Gartner revealed that an 18% reduction in support costs occurred by encouraging knowledge management.Knowledge management means no more waiting around for that email response from HR, which you will then have to reply to a couple of times before eventually reaching an answer. It also results in significantly less time spent training and onboarding new employees, on average a 30% reduction in agent training times. This is because the internal knowledge that has already been captured and stored is permanently available for future starters at any time.

Customers can benefit from your knowledge management too, existing in the context of self-service, customers no longer need to wait for the answer to a FAQ, they can solve it themselves using the knowledge stored in your knowledge base.

Greater Accuracy

It’s perfectly normal for humans to make mistakes, but without knowledge management, companies run the risk of the same mistakes happening time and time again, whether it’s years apart or in different departments. The beauty of knowledge management is that resolutions can be stored and made available to prevent this from happening.

Knowledge management also allows for consistent information to be shared which is particularly important if you are communicating with customers. Providing inaccurate, inconsistent information to customers can prove problematic but easily avoided through knowledge management. All it takes is a simple search using a knowledge management tool and standardised company information and policies are available to consult.

Empowered Employees

Employees just want to do their jobs. So, when obstacles are put in the way of them fulfilling their tasks, such as lack of information or delays waiting for access to information, it can become incredibly frustrating for them.

In fact, a recent study revealed that 51% of participants felt frustrated at the inability to access a former colleague’s institutional knowledge, while 25% said they were overwhelmed. The impact of which can include low staff morale, subsequently affecting productivity.

Making knowledge available to agents who need it or wish to learn more can empower them. When given quick, easy access to the right information, without having to ask permission first can boost productivity and staff retention.

Customer-facing knowledge management tools, otherwise known as web self-service automate routine questions, removing the mundane from agents’ roles. As a result they can deal with more complex customer issues, promoting staff morale.

Satisfied Customers

The internal benefits your company experiences from adopting knowledge management can positively impact your customers too, enhancing the service and experience you provide them.

When knowledge is optimised effectively companywide, stored and shared in a knowledge management tool such as a knowledge base, customers can benefit from quick access to information such as return policies, how-to guides or troubleshooting videos.

20%

Did you know that 20% of routine questions can be handled online using knowledge management tools?

Source: Synthetix research
Self-service software integrates with your company knowledge base which, by utilising a filtered view, grants customers access to vital answers to their routine questions. Customers, who prefer to self-serve can resolve issues themselves, rather than having to contact a company representative directly and therefore has an enhanced experience – reflecting positively on NPS and CSAT ratings.

Cultural Shift

Embracing knowledge management within a company can have huge positive effects on teams. Whilst this culture shift won’t happen overnight, companies that embed knowledge management eventually experience a transparent knowledge sharing culture.

Not only does a knowledge sharing culture encourage collaboration across an organisation, producing a new array of ideas and innovation, it also helps to reshape employees’ perceptions of knowledge. Instead of viewing knowledge as a thing we all have in our heads, employees begin to see knowledge as an asset. They appreciate that just like people, finance and brand are valuable assets that require management and specialised systems , so does knowledge.

Get the most out of knowledge management with these 12 best practices.

Knowledge Management Process

The overall knowledge management process doesn’t need to be complex or lengthy. It does however require specialised technology to ensure smooth execution.

There are several ways that the knowledge management process can be broken down, but in its simplest form it can be categorised into 4 parts: discover, capture, organisation, share.

Let’s unpack these 4 steps further.

Discover

‘We only know what we know when we need to know it” – Dave Snowden

The discovery stage of the knowledge management process is responsible for finding out what exactly a business needs to know and where knowledge already exists. This generally includes explicit knowledge that is already documented, but perhaps in a fragmented way.

Knowledge management will extract this explicit knowledge through the data mining of company documents, intranets and other records. Good Knowledge Management software will be able to semi-automate this time-consuming but necessary process.

Capture

As the name suggests, this step focuses on the capturing of knowledge that is not documented. It concerns turning the tacit knowledge into explicit, consumable knowledge.

This is arguably the most challenging and time-consuming step of the knowledge management process; knowledge management must capture the knowledge that resides in employees’ brains, which has become second nature to them and therefore difficult to communicate.

There are a number of methods that Knowledge Managers use to capture tacit knowledge including:

  • Observation
  • Interviews
  • Surveys
  • Retrospect (reflection meetings that take place after the completion of a project)
  • Knowledge harvesting (often involving senior employees)

Organise

Once knowledge has been discovered and captured, knowledge management must unpack and process it in a way that makes it consumable for all. This requires deep analysis to see how knowledge can be best organised, displayed and incorporated into the company.

The organisation and accessibility of knowledge is the very essence of knowledge management. Therefore, it is crucial that this step is conducted successfully.

Most businesses use knowledge management software to organise and store their knowledge. Purpose-built systems order and display knowledge effectively to remove the fear, uncertainly and ambiguity surrounding knowledge.

Share

Making the right knowledge available to the right people at the right time is key. Without this step, a company would have masses of vital knowledge intricately stored and organised with no way to access it.

Knowledge sharing pulls all the other knowledge management steps together. It takes all the acquired knowledge and communicates it throughout a company. Some Knowledge Management Software even gamifies aspects of knowledge sharing, allowing employees to submit articles for approval, which if used lets others comment on and interact with.

Knowledge can be delivered via presentations and meetings but the most effective way to share it is through knowledge management software, allowing knowledge to be consistent and available on demand depending on who you are in the company.

Knowledge Management Process Diagram

To find out more about the knowledge management process, click here.

Conclusion

Mastering knowledge management can be challenging, it’s an elusive discipline that deals with complex knowledge types and intricate processes. But if your company objectives are based around efficiency and wish to encourage a more transparent, collaborative culture then knowledge management is fundamental for you.

If you would like to explore knowledge management further, you can read more here, or

Get in Touch

if you’d like to discuss your organisational needs.

What is a Knowledge Base?

Posted on | by Áine McInerney | Leave a Comment on What is a Knowledge Base?

What is Knowledge Management?

A knowledge base is a centralised library of information that has been captured, collected and curated in a way that is easy to look up, edit and share with teams and customers.

Acting as your company’s repository of knowledge, a knowledge base contains knowledge articles that have been expertly converted from data and configured into consumable, bitesize pieces of information. Such articles contain answers to common queries and generally surround your company, product or services.

In short, a knowledge base helps to provide the right people with the right knowledge at the right time.

The knowledge contained within a knowledge base has been specially harvested and extracted from several data sources, including:

  • Company documents
  • Intranets
  • Databases
  • Observation
  • Employee interviews

Whilst some data is explicit and already codified, for example, HR policies and product specifications, some is tacit and therefore difficult to identify and articulate, for instance, a salesperson’s subconscious expertise. To turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, expert skill, time and deep analysis are required before it’s subsequently ready to be converted into consumable articles.

Knowledge articles can contain text, images, video and other formats to communicate results, they are generally configured to match brand personality and tone of voice.

Read: Why an FAQ page is no substitute for a knowledge base

How Does A Knowledge Base Work?

An intelligent knowledge base is built using AI and harnesses powerful Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify search intent. In response to a new query, the knowledge base retrieves and delivers the most relevant results to the searcher – whether that be an employee, agent or customer. NLP achieves this by unpicking, isolating and analysing each word that is entered to comprehend context and intent and subsequently match it with the best possible result.

NLP-driven knowledge bases ensure efficiency and fast answers both:

  • Internally as a centralised data repository for sourcing answers
  • Externally through customer-facing self-service applications for answering routine queries
An image to show who can benefit from a knowledge base

For Your Teams

Knowledge for your teams is the internal-facing knowledge base view used by agents to facilitate customer support.

This technology is purpose-built with the contact centre in min, providing agents with a library of results and resolutions at their fingertips. Whether an agent is interacting with a customer via live chat channel or telephone, they simply begin by typing in the customer query and on each keypress and through the power of NLP, your knowledge base suggests relevant articles. This impacts Average Handling Times (AHT) and helps to significantly reduce support costs.

With access to the right knowledge, time otherwise spend asking supervisors questions is eliminated, the result of which means more time is dedicated to helping customers, contributing to improved CSAT and NPS scores.

An image showing the knowledge interface

Editing, updating and adding new knowledge articles happens in real-time to ensure that all sources that are linked to your knowledge base distribute the same, consistent information.

For Your Customers

Knowledge for your customers provides them with access to your knowledge base content via self-service tools online. Whether it’s a self-service widget or chatbot, website visitors seeking support can resolve their own issues by accessing a version of your company knowledge base. This customer-friendly version, otherwise known as a ‘view’ is configured within you wider knowledge base; a view determines and filters the content that is available to an audience – for instance, the view connected to a self-service tool, targeted at customers would exclude any internal or HR-related articles.

Customers simply type their query into the search bar and NLP gets to work; by unravelling the sentence structure of the query, it identifies intent and matches it with the most relevant results. This is particularly valuable for contact centre efficiency as these self-service tools can deal with large volumes of routine queries that would otherwise make their way to contact centres, often causing congestion. Instead, such tools deflect an average of 25% of contact by automating the vast majority of routine queries. This not only cuts support costs but provides agents with the bandwidth required to deal with more complex, non-routine customer issues.

Knowledge for your customers also helps to enhance CX and as a result, boosts CSAT and NPS ratings. Today most of you customers prefer to self-serve if there is an option to do so – 67% in fact – it is far quicker and more convenient than agent-assisted channels. Therefore, by including self-service tools, powered by your knowledge base as part of your online offering, customer satisfaction improves.

An image to show Customer Self-service

Why Use a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base underpins any effective knowledge management strategy and is considered an essential tool within the customer service ecosystem.

At the core of knowledge management, it is what makes deployment successful, all whilst:

  • Boosting operational efficiency
  • Assisting in critical decision making
  • Saving support costs
  • Improving CSAT scores
  • Enhancing CX
  • Empowering employees

Benefits of Using A Knowledge Base for Teams

Improved First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Customers expect their queries to be answered during the first interaction they have with an agent. They don’t want to be called back, transferred or have to use an alternative channel to ask the same question.

The internal-facing knowledge base that is utilised by agents when engaging with customers through live chat or telephony helps to increase First Contact Resolution (FCR). It is their centralised library of knowledge and is available to them within the same interface. Because all relevant information is readily available and easy to find, this removes the need to transfer customers or call customers back whilst agents find adequate answers.

How could an improvement in FCR affect your company’s bottom line?

If a call centre of 50 agents has an average FCR of 74% and is increased by even 1%, it could lead to an annual saving of £46,100 based on an average cost per call of £3.64.

But there are potentially bigger savings to be made. By implementing a centralised knowledge base with a good knowledge management strategy, companies can experience significant increases to their average FCR, positively impacting the bottom line.

Reduced Average Handling Times (AHT) And Support Costs

Equipped with a knowledge base rich in answers, solutions and resources, agents no longer have to frantically research or put customers on hold whilst they consult supervisors for resolutions. An internal knowledge base helps teams resolve customer queries more efficiently and as a result, can cut AHT by up to 40%.

The internal knowledge base that agents use to resolve customer queries includes features that speed up handling times. The interface includes a ‘mini knowledge base’, that makes looking up answers quick and easy with no need to switch between tabs and windows. The AI-predictive suggestions feature recommends articles in the same window with every keypress, significantly reducing the time it would otherwise take to source an article.

Furthermore, when you integrate your knowledge base with live chat, the live keypress feed feature helps to reduce AHT further. It reveals what a customer is typing on every keypress so that agent can proactively solve a query often before the customer has hit send.

The result of such features that bring your AHT down includes significant savings in operational costs. It allows agents to work more efficiently, minimising downtime and resolving more customer queries.

Reduced Training and Onboarding Times

Companies can reduce their training and onboarding times by up to 30% by storing important training, company and product information in their knowledge base. You can essentially skip the learning curve by providing starters with the tools to upskill themselves. The provision of the knowledge base ensures that new employees don’t have to know an answer to a query or process in your contact centre, only to know how to find that information.

This fast tracks new users to proficiency in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take to manually train them.

Consistency and Accuracy of Information

One study revealed that 76% of customers receive conflicting answers when it comes to customer support. Providing inconsistent or inaccurate information to your stakeholders can prove detrimental to brand credibility and reputation, resulting in anything from poor reviews to serious legal action. By placing a centralised knowledge base at the heart of customer service, communications and other operations you ensure that all information that is circulated is consistent. Because it can integrate with all your customer service and 3rd party business tools, any information that is served is from the same source, therefore eliminating conflicting answers.

If any knowledge must be updated, any changes reflect in real-time through all channels.

Read: How to roll-out a successful internal knowledge base. Here

Benefits of Using Self-Service for Customers

Customer Satisfaction

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect quick access to relevant information, delivered conveniently. Depending on a company’s capabilities to provide this could be the difference between a good CSAT rating or a damaging customer complaint.

There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than struggling to find an answer to a simple routine question online. One study found that 53% of customers are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question. Which is why offering self-service tools that are connected to your knowledge base is critical.

Such AI-powered tools utilise NLP to ensure that regardless of how a query is phrased, the most relevant result is always served. It helps to avoid redundant responses that negatively affect CSAT scores.

Enhanced CX

Knowledge for your customers can take on the form of different self-service tools. Powered by your centralised knowledge base, customers can access knowledge articles in several different ways, including through:

  • An FAQ-style portal: customers who are actively seeking answers can navigate here and find answers to their questions
  • A widget: this self-service option can be configured to display on certain pages, or when certain conditions are met to promote CSAT and revenue
  • A chatbot: acting as your digital concierge, it guides your customer through their journey, helping them to reach their destination
Images to show the multiple ways in which web self-service software can be displayed to customers. Images to show the multiple ways in which web self-service software can be displayed to customers. Images to show the multiple ways in which web self-service software can be displayed to customers.

For more on the different types of self-service, click here.

Each type of self-service journey ensures a positive CX and escalation options for when an agent is required to deal with questions that are non-routine.

An image to show how Synthetix products connect

If you enjoyed this article and would like to know more about knowledge management, you can read our guide here, or for advice about knowledge base software, please get in touch.

Get in Touch