Knowledge.
Company product knowledge.
Customer support FAQs.
Troubleshooting guides.
SaaS companies need a space to bring together their company knowledge and share it with their customers. In order to reduce the support burden and improve the customer experience, SaaS businesses should document their knowledge and make it publicly accessible.
Customers have a question and they’re looking for instant answers. If that support is not immediately available, this could lead to increased customer churn. SaaS businesses must be obsessed with this metric when considering a self-service customer support strategy.
A customer support knowledge base is the way forward for customer-obsessed SaaS companies. It’s a place to document your knowledge, share help with customers, and provide self-service.
Self-service is the best way to show customers you’ve thought about their needs and provided relevant solutions.
What is knowledge base software?
Knowledge base software is an online repository of information that is like a content management system for your knowledge. It’s a place for companies to share knowledge, store it online, and disseminate it to their customers.
Knowledge base software is different to a standard website because of the information architecture, with the ability to organize your knowledge into categories containing articles. A prominent search bar allows users to search for information contained within the knowledge base, often powered by Artificial Intelligence.
A sophisticated authoring system allows teams of technical writers to work together on your customer knowledge. The content management system organizes your articles in the back end so you can see what needs to be worked on and knowledge that has become out-of-date.
Knowledge base software is unique software that enables you to host documentation in a single dedicated site for the purpose of educating your users.
What are the benefits of knowledge base software?
Make knowledge readily available
Knowledge base software makes knowledge readily available to customers by providing an online source of content. Whenever customers have a question, they simply check the online knowledge base for an instant answer, reducing the time spent waiting for information from your customer support team.
Offer self-service to customers
Customers like to solve problems themselves, so providing self-service content in your knowledge base gives a way for them to do that. Automated content from a self-service knowledge base is another channel for customers to access support on their own terms, in their own time.
Save time for customer support teams
Instead of spending too much time working on support tickets for customers, customer support teams can direct customers to the knowledge base. They can insert knowledge base articles into support answers and save time typing out the same answers over and over again.
Reduce customer churn
By enabling customers to self–serve their own queries, customer support teams can reduce churn. Instead of customers growing frustrated with your software or waiting around for your support team, they can check the knowledge base for instant answers to any problem. If you’ve taken time to document common queries, you can keep churn under control with a self-service knowledge base.
Improve customer onboarding
Onboarding new customers can be automated with an online knowledge base containing articles that help them get set up with their new software. Whenever customers have a question during the onboarding process, they can simply consult your knowledge base. Knowledge base software augments the efforts of your customer success team to onboard new customers.
Increase product adoption
Instead of getting stuck with your software, customers can learn about your product through the self-service knowledge base. By documenting features and use cases, customer support teams can increase product adoption and ensure customers understand how to use the software.
How does knowledge base software help your customer support team?
Customer support teams have a myriad of tasks they have to get done on any given day. A knowledge base is intended to help the customer support team by automating common queries and reducing the number of support tickets received in your help desk. By documenting once, customer support teams can deflect dozens or hundreds of support tickets.
By offering self-service as a channel for support, a knowledge base shows that your company cares about its customers. Investing in a self-service resource means customers don’t have to wait around for your support team, saving them valuable minutes, hours, or days with your software.
Customer support agents can also check their answers against the knowledge base and use it as an onboarding tool for new team members. Having a place to document knowledge helps your customer support team as well as customers.
A knowledge base is a resource that keeps on giving once you’ve set it up, helping your support team an invaluable amount.
Knowledge base software features
- Authoring portal – collaborative authoring environment for writing documentation
- Category manager – organizational capabilities for articles into hierarchical categories
- Knowledge base site – customer-facing knowledge base site
- Customization – the ability to design your knowledge base in line with company style guides
- Search – search capabilities for discovering content on the knowledge base site
- Widget – the ability to embed a widget into a software or app so customers can access documentation on the move
- Analytics – the ability to analyze article performance in a data-driven dashboard
- Integrations – integrations with other popular software tools such as a customer support help desk
- Access control – control who can access content on your knowledge base site
- AI – Artificial Intelligence to help you write articles in your knowledge base
Top SaaS knowledge bases to learn from
Attio
A clean, black and white knowledge base displays the Attio knowledge clearly for their customers. A prominent search bar and list of categories on the right hand side means customers can easily discover the information they’re looking for.
Help Scout
A plain and clear knowledge base with onboarding materials clearly visible, along with product adoption for the main features of Help Scout. Help Scout takes a standard knowledge base and makes it their own.
Absorb LMS
The Absorb LMS knowledge base directs customers towards release notes so they can easily find product updates. Products and Services are general categories that take customers towards topics they might want to learn about. The search bar contains popular searches that other customers have searched for.
Top 3 knowledge base software for customer service
1. HelpDocs
Help Docs is simple knowledge base software that enables customers to help themselves. It’s a fully customizable knowledge base with CSS, JavaScript and HTML that is modifiable to create a site that matches your brand.
Use Clips to insert saved content into your knowledge base articles. Use the rich editor to author your help articles, with callouts, tables, and HTML blocks. Invite your entire team to manage your knowledge base with specific roles for authors.
Set reminders to update your content before it gets stale. Use HelpDocs’s in-built translation features to translate your articles into hundreds of languages. Get instant feedback on your knowledge base articles with the easy feedback system.
2. KnowledgeOwl
KnowledgeOwl is complex knowledge base software designed to make customer support easier. With detailed permissions capabilities, you can control who accesses your articles and keep track of who is authoring your content.
You can customize your content with different templates, so for example you can create a blog style layout to display your documentation. Customers find the KnowledgeOwl interface intuitive and easy to use. It’s easy to customize your knowledge base with CSS and JS code if you have access to developer support.
Use an existing SAML provider to log into your private knowledge base. KnowledgeOwl search is typo tolerant so customers will still find what they need as long as the word has the same root.
3. Document360
Document360 is an AI-powered knowledge base designed for customer support documentation. It comes packed with features that help you design your articles with the aid of AI to turn ideas into content. Eddy AI is Document360’s AI assistant that helps you categorize, tag and write your articles smoothly.
Document360 comes with three editors including WYSIWYG and Markdown so you can choose how you author your documentation. Up to six levels of categories allow you to organise your articles in a fully customized knowledge base using the drag and drop editor.
Authoring workflows enable you to keep track of who is writing articles and when content is getting stale. Ticket deflector allows you to track when your help desk is deflecting articles to the knowledge base to monitor self-service success.
Final remarks
Adopting a self-service knowledge base for SaaS customer support is an essential tool in your support arsenal. Empowering customers to help themselves vastly improves the customer experience and makes it easier to get an answer to any question.
If you install and publish a knowledge base, your SaaS customer support team will thank you. Self-service resolutions means more support tickets deflected, and more time to focus on the work that really matters.
While support agents like to help customers, they don’t need to answer the same question over and over again. It makes sense to document common queries in the self-service knowledge base using software such as Document360 or KnowledgeOwl. Knowledge base software solutions offer the most outstanding authoring experience when it comes to writing documentation for a self-service knowledge base.
