6 steps to a knowledge base that empowers your customers and employees
Companies can no longer afford to waste time searching for the knowledge they already possess. Especially at a time of technological progress, channel diversification and the development of Big Data, when customers expect immediate and precise answers...
This is where the knowledge base comes in. Not only does it act as a catalogue of information, it is also a central platform for disseminating the right knowledge, at the right time, to the right people. Focus on this tool that has become indispensable for businesses.
What is a knowledge base?
General definition of a knowledge base
A knowledge base can be illustrated as an archive in which companies can find all the information they have acquired since their creation. It is therefore an organised system for storing, managing and sharing information, knowledge and resources.
Information is grouped and categorised according to predefined themes. For example, information can be categorised according to the type of product or service, or based on the different departments within the organisation.
The self-service operation and online accessibility of the knowledge base aims to centralise knowledge within an organisation, in order to facilitate access to information and promote efficiency, whether for :
- solving problems
- answering questions
- improving work processes.
⚡It is imperative to distinguish between a knowledge base and an information base!
The information base mainly stores unstructured documents and makes them available. Whereas the knowledge base transforms this information into instantly usable knowledge.
Two types of knowledge base
The internal base
An internal knowledge base is a centralised system within an organisation for storing and sharing the information and resources required for the smooth running of the business. It is mainly used by employees to :
- access relevant information related to their work,
- solve everyday problems
- improve productivity.
Employees can locate all their company's procedures, guides and best practices. This internal database facilitates the management of internal knowledge to strengthen collaboration, avoid redundant tasks and ensure continuity of service, even in the event of a change of personnel. As a general rule, given the desire for exclusive use of this library, the knowledge base is highly secure and the information it contains is reliable.
The external database
In contrast, the external knowledge base concentrates data intended for the public, such as customers, users and partners. The aim of this space is to help these external parties. This platform shares practical information to :
- help customers use a product
- find answers to frequently asked questions
- read instructions for use
- identify solutions to common problems.
The external knowledge base is accessible to everyone via the internet. By disseminating knowledge, this digital infrastructure optimises consumer autonomy while reinforcing the company's transparency.
What are the benefits of a knowledge base?
Improving the customer experience
A knowledge base improves the consumer experience by offering them all the information they need in a self-service environment.
Quick access to information
Customers can quickly find answers to their frequently asked questions:
- FAQ
- Procedures
- User guides, etc.
In his study of hypermodernity, Gilles Lipovetsky describes a society marked by immediacy, mobility and flexibility. He defines modern consumers as "hyperconsumers" in search of instant gratification. In line with these changing consumer habits, customer service needs to be adapted.
As a result, this library - the knowledge base - can be accessed without having to contact customer service. As a result, there is no delay in keeping customers informed, while responding to the ATAWAD phenomenon : Any Where, Any time, Any Device. ATAWAD reflects the fact that today's consumers want access to information or other resources at any time, anywhere and from any medium. This data platform shares its help 24/7. So, when this database is well organised, it enables customers to access help at any time, even outside support hours.
✅ In short, your customers get a rapid response, and you save time managing their requests. It's a win-win situation!
Develop your ability to act independently
Knowledge bases offer self-service. In other words, customers have completely free access to information via all their digital media. However, free access does not mean faulty information. The company must ensure that its resources are reliable in order to provide accurate, high-quality answers to customers. This leads to greater customer satisfaction, sometimes even strengthening customer loyalty.
What's more, helping to empower customers leads to the development of their self-care. In other words, making tools available to customers enables them to solve their problems independently and obtain information without contacting an advisor.
Optimising business performance
Of course, a qualitative and varied knowledge base plays a major role in consumers' quest for immediacy. And that's just one of the advantages of this platform! Your company can benefit in terms of internal communication and cost savings.
Promoting transparent, fluid information internally
A knowledge base, as its title implies, stores and makes accessible uniform, verified and multidisciplinary knowledge. The quality and management of these resources are powerful levers for growth.
Firstly, effective management of the knowledge base ensures that tasks are carried out uniformly and that there is fluid collaboration between a company's various departments. This helps to reinforce the coherence of the organisation, promoting a pleasant working environment and a strong brand image.
Secondly, employees on this digital platform have free access to resources, in the same way as consumers. In the knowledge base, employees can find help via :
- practical guides
- tutorials
- safety protocols,
- work regulations and policies
- responses to problems that have arisen, etc.
Employees are thus more autonomous: managers and human resources can manage their time optimally so that they can focus on more important operations.
Finally, the knowledge base encourages exchanges between its expert employees and other parties. The aim is to create a framework that encourages the sharing of knowledge and feedback between employees.
Reduce internal training costs
The knowledge base enables several internal processes, such as training, to be digitised. Digitising these processes has a number of benefits, all of which have an impact on reducing the organisation's costs.
Firstly, these savings can be explained by the fact that new recruits are able to develop their skills more quickly , thanks to immediate access to best practice and the work of the most experienced employees.
Secondly, employees have access to ongoing training based on up-to-date, high-quality data.
What's more, employees' better understanding of procedures reduces risk and costly errors.
Create your knowledge base in 3 steps
Step 1: Identify your target audience's needs
Like all offerings, the usefulness of knowledge base services depends on their ability to meet the real needs of their target audience .
What's more, it's essential to understand the motivations behind end-user behaviour beforehand, so that you can personalise the content. To achieve this, there are methods for classifying these drivers.
One of the best-known methods is Maslow's Pyramid. Maslow ranks consumer needs by considering the factors that lead to consumption.
You can also create a mind map. The empathy map gives you a visual overview of the motivations of each persona, summarising what they say, think, feel, hear, see and do. This method also allows you to identify the target's frustrations, which helps you to identify their needs. To help you identify your target's needs, see below for an example of an empathy map.
The SONCAS method can also be used. This method relies on the psychological biases of customers to identify the factors that justify their consumption. SONCAS is an abbreviation for the origins of consumer needs and desires:
- Security
- Pride
- Novelty
- Comfort
- Money
- Sympathy
Step 2: Content integration
First of all, define a clear and relevant structure for your knowledge base. Once you have reached this stage of the process, there are several steps you can take:
- classify resources by category and sub-category: FAQs, procedures, products, technical support, etc.
- organise information by theme and subject: connection problems, data management, etc.
- categorise knowledge by user profile: for administrators, for end users, etc.
- arrange information by level of popularity: most viewed content, recommended content, etc.
Then select and group the information you want to access via your knowledge base. Prepare your content so that the information is clear, concise and useful. With this in mind, formulate structured content using :
- Hn titles
- lists
- boxes
- images, etc.
Opt for simple language tailored to your target audience. Communicate knowledge by taking into account the nature of the knowledge base, whether internal or external.
Ensure that you choose quality resources by checking that the data is reliable, up-to-date and relevant.
Facilitate search functionality by inserting an internal search engine for rapid access to information.
Step 3: Choose appropriate hosting
Selecting the right hosting for your knowledge base is essential for :
- reach your target audience
- respond to search algorithms
- secure your resources
- ensure the overall performance of your database.
The criteria you need to take into account when choosing your hosting are :
- your target audience
- the expected volume of content
- expected traffic,
- whether access is exclusive or not.
How can you exploit the potential of a knowledge base?
Feed your knowledge base
☝️Conformément as we said earlier, the reliability, relevance and variety of the information are key parameters in the quality of the service offered by your knowledge base.
To ensure the success of your knowledge library, you need to analyse the relevance of the existing content.
- When the base is internal, group together the resources relating to the work of your most experienced employees and all the internal documents dictating the methods and practices applied in your company.
- When the base is external, select content relating to frequent customer questions and opinions.
Employees are directly responsible for populating the knowledge base. Each department in the organisation participates in the publication and management of content, depending on their expertise and status. In this way, the knowledge base is developed coherently and efficiently.
Optimise its use
You've followed all the creation stages correctly... but that's not enough!
First of all, make it more interesting for your employees by making it easy to navigate and understand. You need to ensure that all the tools are available to enable employees to answer their questions independently, and if the audience is part of the organisation, train them to use the database and share new resources. Appoint people to be responsible for validating information and articles before publication.
Make sure your information is up to date to maintain the credibility of your brand and inspire confidence in your contacts. In the same vein, avoid creating confusion and dissonance in their minds; the layout of the knowledge base must be consistent and each page must be identical.
To continually improve your knowledge base, monitor user feedback and engagement indicators. This will enable you to assess its performance and implement corrective measures. Regularly promote its benefits to employees to maximise its use.
Make sure your knowledge base is constantly updated
As you will have realised, up-to-date and reliable content is essential when you're overseeing knowledge sharing. It is therefore essential to put in place systems for updating articles and ensuring that they are relevant to users' needs. Here are some ways of finding out which content needs updating:
- Encourage feedback from users: satisfaction forms, feedback, etc.
- Analyse the performance of your database: number of clicks, length of visit, etc.
As far as updating is concerned, modify or even remove obsolete content, notify and date the changes, and finally, highlight the article on your home page.
7 examples of software for your knowledge base
| Solutions | Types | Benefits | Cost | Free trial |
| BookStack | Self-hosted |
|
FREE | ❌ |
| Confluence | SaaS and On premise |
|
From €5.50 /month/user |
✅ |
| Document360 | SaaS |
|
Price on request | ✅ |
| Notion | SaaS |
|
From as little as €5.00 /month/user |
✅ |
| Slite | SaaS |
|
Price on request | ✅ |
| Zendesk Guide | SaaS |
|
Zendesk suite from €49.00 /month/user |
✅ |
| Zoho Desk | SaaS |
|
From as little as €7.00 /month/user |
✅ |
BookStack
BookStack is a wiki-style open source software package designed to provide a simple, intuitive, self-hosted documentation management solution.
To set up a knowledge base, this :
- uses a simple hierarchical structure (books, chapters, pages) to organise information,
- offers an intuitive interface with a WYSIWYG editor and Markdown support,
- facilitates collaboration through customisation and access management options,
- integrates tools such as diagrams.net to enhance documentation,
- offers efficient searching and direct links for quick navigation,
- is lightweight, open source, multilingual and easy to host.
An example of the look and feel of a BookStack page:
Confluence
Confluence
Confluence is a tool designed by Atlassian to provide your teams with an online collaborative workspace.
When it comes to choosing a medium for your knowledge base, this platform :
- centralises knowledge
- facilitates collaboration between members (face-to-face or remotely),
- enables employees to create documents
- encourages resource sharing ,
- organises content seamlessly,
- reinforces collective efficiency.
Example of a knowledge base set up at Confluence :
Document360
Document360
Document360 is an advanced knowledge base management solution, specially designed to meet the needs of SMEs and large enterprises alike.
It offers a complete platform that will benefit your knowledge base by enabling you to :
- centralise public and internal documentation
- facilitate the creation, organisation and updating of vast libraries of content,
- facilitate knowledge sharing and optimise team efficiency thanks to its intelligent search engine and multilingual support.
Example of adding an article to your Document360 knowledge base:
Notion
Notion
Notion is an all-in-one collaborative platform, ideal for entrepreneurs, SMEs and large organisations wishing to structure their teamwork in a clear and flexible way.
It offers a complete virtual workspace for project and knowledge management, because Notion lets you :
- centralise internal documentation and corporate culture in dynamic wikis,
- simplify project management with customisable roadmaps, templates and tables,
- promote onboarding and collaboration by providing an overview of processes, accessible to all employees in real time.
Example of the presentation of a page on Notion :
Slite
Slite
Slite is a knowledge management solution designed to make teams' work more fluid, by eliminating the repetitive tasks associated with documenting and searching for information.
For your knowledge base, it offers :
- an intuitive, collaborative platform that benefits your knowledge base
- easy document creation with an AI-assisted editor, ready-to-use templates and advanced visual options,
- keep information up to date with tools for checking, analysing and managing content en masse,
- find the right answers instantly, thanks to intelligent search,
- Slack integration and a multilingual AI assistant based on access rights.
An example of the layout of your knowledge base on Slite :
Zendesk Guide
Zendesk
Zendesk Guide is an integrated knowledge base solution designed to improve the customer experience while increasing the efficiency of support teams.
It offers a complete omnichannel platform that benefits your knowledge management by enabling you to :
- centralise FAQs and documentation on a customisable interface, accessible via all your communication channels,
- streamline customer exchanges by unifying data from email, chat, social networks and the telephone,
- improve agent productivity through automation, AI and analytical dashboards (Zendesk Explore) for real-time strategic management.
Example of a knowledge base on Zendesk Guide :
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is contextual customer support software that adapts to the changing needs of businesses of all sizes, unifying communication channels and simplifying request management.
It offers a comprehensive, intuitive platform that benefits your customer service by enabling you to :
- centralise all customer interactions (email, telephone, social networks, chat) within a high-performance omnichannel ticketing system,
- boost team productivity thanks to AI, automated workflows and a customisable interface,
- offer multilingual and multi-brand support, with self-service portals, knowledge bases and community forums for a fluid, proactive and engaging customer experience.
Example of an article to your knowledge base on Zoho Desk :
The essentials for a high-performance knowledge base
In short, a well-structured and effectively implemented knowledge base is a growth driver for any business. By centralising and organising resources, the knowledge base makes it possible to offer an optimal customer experience while meeting the need for immediacy and flexibility. What's more, internally, it encourages productivity and collaboration. In this way, companies that invest in the creation and management of a high-performance knowledge base benefit not only from a reduction in support costs, but also from greater operational efficiency.
However, for this base to be truly effective, it is crucial to ensure that it is managed on an ongoing basis, guaranteeing that the information shared is relevant and up-to-date. With regular updates, smooth navigation and content that is well adapted to users' needs, you can not only offer a quality customer service, but also create a genuine culture of sharing and collaboration within your company.
FAQ on the knowledge base
What are the best practices for structuring a customer-focused database?
Classify your content on the basis of your offers or the requests and profiles of web users. Make sure your layout and language are clear and meaningful to the end user, whether they are a customer or an internal employee. To do this, order your structure in a relevant way and use a simple vocabulary that recalls the key words in the query. The aim here is to make navigation easier while ensuring that they find the answer to their question.
Remember, to build customer loyalty, offer reliable resources. So, have your articles checked by several people and allow them to be updated when the information becomes obsolete.
How can I keep my knowledge base up to date?
The starting point for updating is to schedule regular audits to find out whether information is still relevant and true. Keep yourself informed, encourage communication so that all the teams can be alerted when a change is made to a product or service, so as to modify the out-of-date information. With this in mind, encourage your teams to work together.
User feedback and performance indicators can also identify incomplete or out-of-date items. Performance indicators are also useful for identifying search trends and establishing the degree of urgency for updating each article. Slite and Zendesk Guide are software applications that offer a user feedback system.
How do you ensure security and access to the various parts of the database?
To ensure the security of data while allowing smooth browsing, it is essential to explicitly define the level of access (public, private or mixed). To identify each user's level of access, assign roles that will limit their rights according to their profile. In addition, keep track of all user activity by automatically recording all versions of content in a history.
It is essential to provide more advanced security when it comes to sensitive content. Restrict access to sensitive information and limit the number of collaborators who can edit or share data. Pay particular attention to access revisions and user rights, and check authorisations regularly.
How can I automate the updating of obsolete articles?
There is a wide range of software that can automatically detect articles that are no longer relevant. For example, Confluence, Document360 and Zendesk Guide use an alert system to flag up content that needs to be reviewed.
In addition, you can integrate a monitoring function to keep abreast of any changes to the policy, functionality or interface of a product or service.
Go even further by automating your content audit schedule or your customer feedback system by defining the keywords that indicate dissatisfaction with a response.
Article translated from French