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More and more customers prefer self-service over having to engage with a company’s support team. Support-seekers often think of self-service as the fasted method to resolve their issue. No waiting in a queue, no explaining the problem, just searching for the results and following along. Having this information readily available for customers can greatly reduce customer support tickets.
But that also means when a company’s self-service knowledge base is lacking, customer satisfaction can take a big hit.
That means the key to a successful support strategy is to provide customers with the right information at the right time. This means that you need to know what your customers want, when they want it and how they want it. With this information, you can drastically reduce customer support tickets by creating a knowledge base.
Looking for more advice on nailing your customer success and support strategy? Download Zight (formerly CloudApp)’s free eBook, How To Deliver Incredible Customer Support Experiences.
What To Include In Your Knowledge Base to Reduce Customer Support Tickets
What constitutes as a great knowledge base for your customers? How do you make sure your self-service section is optimized for customer success? How can you make sure customers don’t leave your site even more frustrated than when they first arrived?
To do this, you need to have a clear understanding of your customer’s journey as well as their pain points and frustrations. Then can you create a self-service customer support strategy that will help them achieve their goals without having to contact support.
Here are a few example questions you should be able to answer with your knowledge base content:
- What are my customers’ pain points?
- What are my customers looking for? How can I help them find what they are looking for?
- How can I make sure they don’t get frustrated while searching for what they are looking for?
- How can I make sure they don’t have any questions after finding what they were looking for?
- How can I make sure that my customers keep coming back?
If you cannot answer these questions, then you need to start by answering them. You cannot give your customer base the appropriate support without knowing their needs or common issues.
Providing these answers can decrease customer support ticket times and volume.
3 Mistakes When Creating A Knowledge Base
1. Poor User Experience
One of the easiest ways to cause frustration or exacerbate customer woes is not providing a pleasant user experience. You can have the most helpful site with the clearest information, but if the customer can not get to it or find it, then it is useless. Your site should be designed with both desktop and mobile user interfaces in mind.
The navigation system of your knowledge base should be clear and intuitive. It should also provide easy access to the most frequently searched topics. Keep your navigation succinct so as not to clutter the layout, but explicit so that common topics are top of mind.
A weak search system that makes it hard to get the most relevant results is the first way to make customers write off your knowledge base. Too often a search system will return inaccurate results, making the beginning of the process a major turn-off.
A knowledge base that is not visually appealing can dissuade customers who are looking for answers. A good knowledge base should look professional and have a clean layout. The more organized the information and the design, the easier it is for customers to find their way around.
2. Making Your Content Hard to Find
The design of your website is important align with the organization of the information, but the truth is content is king. Your information needs to be well-researched for your audience; otherwise the knowledge base will just collect dust.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important things that you need to keep in mind while writing a blog post. It’s a common mistake to write a great article without optimizing it for search engines. It doesn’t matter how great the information is if no one can find it.
Having too many FAQs in your knowledge base will make it difficult for customers to find the answer they are looking for. Instead, you must focus on creating a few high-quality FAQs that cover all the important topics.
Social media is an effective way to reach out to your target audience. You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc., to promote your blog posts and increase traffic.
3. Text-Heavy Information
Less is more when it comes to writing. Often knowledge base articles are lengthy and arduous to read. As our attention spans lessen, it’s imperative to make articles short and to the point.
Avoid heavy blocks of long-form text. Present information in short, bite-sized paragraphs. It can be a tedious task to read through even the most detailed instructions and things still may be missed. Customers want clear and concise information. Lengthy instruction guides and large amounts of text can turn off a customer.
Using images, screenshots, or videos in your blog posts makes them more interesting, easier to read, and helps you rank higher in search engines. Utilizing visuals within your knowledge base will not only make it easier and quicker for customers to understand the process of solving their issues, but they will also be more engaged with your product.
Using video in customer support provides many advantages when it comes to helping customers with self-service. A video can easily show the customers the steps to take by walking them through the process, highlighting what to look for such as specific links or codes, and allows your company to put a face and/or a voice into the video as well to provide a more personable experience. For general and common questions, having a templated video response can reduce the number of overall support tickets and resolution times by supplying an instant solution.
If you avoid these common mistakes, you can create a knowledge base that knocks it out of the park and encourages the least friction and the most self-service!
How Zight (formerly CloudApp) Makes Your Knowledge Base Even More Powerful
Time is and will always be one of the most valuable resources for anyone. When faced with an issue that requires seeking help, everyone is looking to solve the problem in a timely manner and as quickly as possible.
Zight (formerly CloudApp) makes it quick and easy for your support team to create clear, concise, and demonstrative videos, GIFs, or screenshots that can make self-service even easier for customers.
Empowering customers to solve problems on their own and providing them with a knowledge base that contains the resources to do so, especially in a highly informative and easily digestible format like a “how-to” video, can greatly increase customer experience and satisfaction levels.
The best customer success strategies shouldn’t be a secret. Download Zight (formerly CloudApp)’s free eBook, How To Deliver Incredible Customer Support Experiences to see some of the SaaS industry’s best examples of customer success strategy at work.
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