A knowledge base is essential to assist you with practical customer support. Some issues arise with knowledge base management that you should be aware of and change as soon as possible.
If a piece of knowledge is managed correctly and errors rectified, you can have a successful support system that satisfies your customers.
However, there are often companies that neglect this process leading to a less successful knowledge base system.
It’s imperative to have your support knowledge well defined and set up your software to display search results correctly. Attaching relating content assists in providing your visitors with the ideal information to solve their problems.
Let us discuss the nine knowledge base mistakes that you should avoid at all costs.
Boring Page Design
Nobody likes boring content, so why would you have it on your site for your visitors to view? If the content is not attractive, there is less of a chance that the user is going to browse your site.
The same goes for your knowledge base, and if the information is written in a mundane and boring way, you can struggle to answer the client’s questions.
Even worse, they might leave your site and try to find the relevant information from another provider.
The same goes for the design of the page itself. It needs to look attractive for the visitor while effectively delivering engaging content.
Slow Page Loading Speed
On the internet, people want things that load quickly. Ensure that you have enabled compression on your site, optimize images, and use a content distribution system. These are just a few things you can do to speed up your site.
There are methods of leveraging browser caching to improve your server response time. You can also look at optimizing your HTML, JavaScript, and Minify CSS.
Whatever you do to increase your page speed it’s going to benefit your knowledge base effectiveness significantly.
Using Long-Form Articles
As you know, people online like to access information quickly, and the same goes for the length of your knowledge base article. A long article might scare a person off as it is an overload of information.
Be sure that you use specific sentences and paragraphs, making your point in the least words possible.
Long-form articles are better suited for your blog or information on the product or service you are offering.
Using Jargons
The point of a knowledge base is to solve customer’s problems, not make them more complex.
So, be sure not to overload them with unnecessary data that doesn’t relate to the issues they are trying to solve.
Jargon is often too complicated for most readers to understand as it goes deep into a topic’s terminology.
Keep things simple, and you are going to see success with your knowledge base and customer support.
Writing Sales-y Knowledge Base Copy
A knowledge base is not your sales page, so don’t treat it as such. That is only going to scare customers away from your product or services.
It is a self-service that customers turn to when there are problems. Be sure to treat it in such a way, and you get better overall customer satisfaction from your knowledge base.
People want to find information relating to the troubles they are having. Having a sales-y knowledge base is not only unfavored but highly unprofessional too.
Complicated User Interface and Sign Up Process
It would help if you made it as accessible and straightforward as possible. Having to log in to access a knowledge base is highly undesirable.
That complicates the process for the users and delays them in getting the data they need to fix their problem.
The same goes for the design of your knowledge base; it needs to be intuitive so that your users can gain access to vital information.
No Contact Page or Information is Available
Suppose your website doesn’t have a contact page or contact information. This is a cause for concern. People look for this information to provide validity to a company or service provider.
A contact page is a crucial part of any online business; it should be the first thing available for your visitors.
Make sure that this information is easily accessible, and be sure to show clients that you are there to help them.
Writing FAQs That Aren’t Straight to The Point
Providing overstimulating content in the FAQs is a common mistake when dealing with knowledge base management. You need this content to be as simplistic and easily digestible as possible.
Nothing is more frustrating than having a problem that takes you forever to solve. Solving your client’s issues can be easy if you make sure that you get straight to the point.
Not only are your clients going to appreciate it more, but you are going to have a quicker turnaround time resolving any issues they might have.
Not Utilizing the Power of SEO
SEO is an incredible thing, and your knowledge base management often overlooks it.
By writing with relevant keywords in mind, you attract more visitors to your site and improve your search result ranking.
Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this resource in your knowledge base? Writing with specific keywords is going to benefit your business and grow awareness of your website.
The power of SEO can be harnessed to take your knowledge base to the next level, so take advantage of it to produce fantastic results.
Conclusion
These are just some of the most common mistakes people make when developing their knowledge base. You need a clever design system to handle all your support requests efficiently.
Each mistake needs to be worked on diligently so that you can provide the best results for your site visitors.
Short sentences and paragraphs are effective when relaying your support knowledge base to your customers.
Page optimization and load speeds are essential to get the information to them in lighting speed.
Knowledge base management is one of the most important things for people looking to provide solid customer support.
Make sure to take care of these nine knowledge base mistakes, and you are going to have faster problem solving and happier customers.
