Help center Knowledge Bases (KBs) and community forums need to be highly organized to make information easily searchable. They should be like libraries and catalogs – all in one – with the accessibility of online resources and freedom that comes with hosted solutions.
In Zendesk and other cloud-based help desk ticket management platforms, these qualities allow involved organizations to:
- Provide users with quick self-service options
- Equip help desk reps with databases of known issues and solutions
- Educate end users and train staff through whitepapers, troubleshooting guides, how-to articles, and so forth.
- Conveniently supply developers and support agents with templates, macros, snippets and other tools they might need, and
- Attract consistent web traffic by offering unique and valuable content in specific areas of interest.
Your Zendesk Knowledge Base is the fastest, easiest way for your customers to find specific answers, and your forums are essential in building that base of information. To be of the most value to your company, organizing that content is crucial. Keep in mind that you have access to information that most users of the system do not, and layout your data so that it matches the most common needs of the customers.
Pairing Forums and Knowledge Bases
Resist the urge to create a wide range of forums at the outset. Begin with basic categories and build future forums from the questions users pose over time. Populate your KB using best responses out of the forums.
Quick Searches and FAQs
Put all of your quick reference material at the top for faster access. A good idea is to create a Frequently Asked Questions sheet for each primary category, and then split them into smaller sheets as sub-categories develop.
Organization and Access
Divide the forums and knowledge bases into areas of specific access. Customers and inhouse service reps have different needs and questions, and while the service rep may need to review information provided to the customers, customers should not be browsing through company policies and procedures.
Avoid Duplicating Content
Where multiple categories share the same information, it is better to set them up as sub-categories than to repeat content in different locations. Duplicating content can lead to updates only reaching certain areas, clogging up the search features and other problems.
Every stakeholder in the organization is likely to benefit. Marketing departments, partners, third-party vendors, and social media support agents all heavily rely on these tools to meet customer needs. Over time, given that users are able to find answers more easily instead of opening new tickets for common issues, KBs can save organizations a lot of
