How to Roll-out A Successful Internal Knowledge Base

Ease of Access Through AI

Choose internal knowledge base software that is built on AI and that utilises NLP. With these forces as work, agents have access to a rich library of knowledge articles at their fingertips using a simple search function. As NLP takes care of identifying, retrieving and producing relevant results rather than the agent doing this manually, significant time is saved and efficiency is boosted. For some contact centres the result of which is up to 25% reduction in Average Handling Times.

Without an AI-powered tool in place, First Contact Resolution (FCR) rates suffer. Without a tool that helps agents quickly find that critical piece of information that will satisfy a customer’s issue, often customers are transferred or a call back is arranged for when the information has been found. However, internal knowledge bases that utilise NLP’s intent-based search features increase FCR rates considerably. This is due to its capabilities to understand what is being asked and matching queries with their most relevant results.

Real-Time Article Updates

When it comes to the distribution of information, whether that is internally to agents or externally to customers and other stakeholders, consistency is key. Distributing inconsistent, inaccurate or outdated information can prove detrimental to companies, damaging reputation and worse in some cases. Ensure you choose internal knowledge base software that enables the straightforward editing and updating of knowledge articles in real-time. This means that once an article has been amended, the changes will instantly be reflected through whichever channel your knowledge base connects to.

With circumstances frequently changing and therefore the way many businesses operate, changes must be quickly made available to those who have direct contact with your customers.

A simple knowledge base editor allows those with permission to easily add, edit and update knowledge article whilst agents can make article suggestions and flag those they suspect require updating.

Integrations That Help Serve Customers

Including an agent-facing knowledge base is hugely beneficial to your business operations. However, what happens when you introduce a customer-facing knowledge base, or in other words, an online FAQ or self-service tool is of significant value.

By choosing knowledge base software that powers both an internal interface for agents and an external interface for customers, not only are you providing consistent information across channels, but also contact reduction. By including a self-service option on your website, the level of contact that would otherwise reach the contact centre – most of which including routine queries – is significantly reduced. This not only improves CX but allows agents greater bandwidth to effectively deal with customers’ more complex issues – resulting in higher CSAT scores.

Internal Knowledge

Customer Facing Knowledge

Features That Promote Productivity

Some internal knowledge base tools. offer additional features designed to further promote agent productivity.

For instance, AI-predictive suggestions use AI to recommend relevant knowledge articles on every agent keypress. These suggestions are displayed within the internal knowledge base and can easily be opened, then copied and pasted over to the customer to further reduce AHT.

When integrated with your live chat solution, features such as the live keypress feed help agents deal with chats with optimal efficiency. It lets agents see what customers are typing with every keypress, often allowing them time to solve and prepare a resolution before the customer has hit “send”.

Embed into Culture

Introduce employees to the idea of knowledge sharing and the internal knowledge base well in advanced to prepare them for the roll-out. This might involve weekly company meetings or even tasks that help them become familiar with the initiative. When practised over time, this will become engrained in your company culture.

Assigning Advocates

Before the roll-out takes place, assign several advocates whose responsibility will be to coach others on the upcoming internal knowledge base deployment. Have them act as other employees’ first port of call if they have any questions regarding the roll-out.

By having people of influence within your company advocate the internal knowledge base, it encourages the wider team to get excited about change. If employees are prepared and championing new technology it is likely that other stakeholders will also buy-in.

Employee Involvement

Involve everyone in the initiative as much as possible, as early as possible. This not only helps employees get used to the idea of any changes, but it’s also an opportunity for any employee input.

Organise company-wide surveys and smaller in-depth meetings for those directly involved, for example, agents. This will help with the internal knowledge base’s effectiveness by enriching the content from those with first-hand experience but also helps with user adoption. By familiarising agents with how it will work and having them contribute to the roll-out, the more likely they are to support the new initiative once it is deployed.

Encourage Engagement Through Gamification

To keep agents motivated and engaged, gamified visuals are available to champion user wins and encourage healthy competition in the contact centre. User scoreboard metrics such as most queries solved and top searches are visible to all and displayed in graphics to incentivise and create transparency.

Measure Effectiveness Against Objectives

To make sure that your internal knowledge base is proving effective in its intended areas, it is good practice to have its core goals and objectives always in mind. This way you can easily measure the system’s metrics against objectives to assess whether you remain on track or not. From this, appropriate changes can be made if necessary.

Measure metrics that reside in the tool’s analytics suite, such as search result metrics which reveal how many queries were successfully dealt with using the internal knowledge base and how many are optimisable.

Optimise Your Internal Knowledge Base with Analytics

Keep your knowledge articles up to date and your internal knowledge base accurate by assessing top query analytics that identifies any gaps in your existing content. This is also an opportunity to discover trends as they emerge.

To optimise your content, you can also carry out regular employee surveys and agent interviews to capture new insights and information, continuing to develop your internal library of knowledge.